Guessing on the GMAT can be a painful decision, especially for advanced test takers. On the GMAT, test takers should minimize the amount of guessing that they do, but having a guessing strategy in place for certain situations is important. A guessing strategy is more important in the Quantitative section because most test takers have a more difficult time finishing that section. However, it is also important not to lose track of time on the Verbal section. On the GMAT, there are two distinct times when students may want to guess.
Don’t Know the Concept
On GMAT Test Day, nervous test takers have a chance of forgetting one of the many equations they have memorized. Sometimes they may look at a Problem Solving question and have no idea how to structure the variables or the situation. These are both great times to guess. The key is to avoid spending a great deal of time on situations like these.
Too often, test takers spend considerable time examining the question and looking at the answer choices for clues. Generally, this is a good approach. However, spending too long doing the analysis is detrimental. Test takers that don’t know the concept should look at the answer choices and quickly guess between the two or three that look consistent in order to bank valuable time on questions like these. Spending that extra time on other questions that they do know how to approach could repair any damage that may have been done to their score by making a strategic guess.
Running Out of Time
Students taking the GMAT need to pay attention to the time posted on the screen and the current question number. Time Management is not just an activity to be concerned with at the end of any given section – it must be considered throughout each section.
However, if a student finds herself running out of time on a Computer Adaptive Test, she should start to strategically guess on a couple of questions to ensure that she gets to the end of the section (remember, the GMAT has a harsh penalty for test takers who leave a string of un-answered questions at the end!) The best questions to guess on are Problem Solving questions with real numbers in the answer choices. On these types of problems, students can often read the problem quickly and strategically cross out a couple of the answer choices because they are outside the realm of reasonableness – at this point, the probability of guessing correctly increases exponentially.
Takeaway
Guessing is not the best way to get through the GMAT, but it’s a key part of GMAT execution and test takers want to plan for it accordingly. Failing to guess on just one question (that would otherwise take too long to solve) can have severe consequences on Test Day.
