Educated Guess

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ani781: Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts; Posts: 141; Joined: Fri Jun 24, 2011 4:35 amFollowed by: 1 member; Location: Edison; Thanked: 12 times

by ani781 » Sun Sep 29, 2013 6:19 am

Hi experts / friends,
I have been really doing poorly so far as timing is concerned in verbal.
I have my test coming up failly soon, and I wanted to know how to do 'educated guess'.
Say , I have 20 mins left and 15 questions still to be answered; there is a big RC passage still to come ,and am not very good at confidently converging an RC especially when running out of time. How do I tackle this situation ( which has been my case in almost all the recent mocks)?

Suggestions pls...

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Source: Beat The GMAT — GMAT Strategy | Sun Sep 29, 2013 6:19 am

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[email protected]: Elite Legendary Member; Posts: 10392; Joined: Sun Jun 23, 2013 6:38 pmFollowed by: 511 members; Location: Palo Alto, CA; Thanked: 2867 times; GMAT Score:800

by [email protected] » Sun Sep 29, 2013 10:24 am

Hi ani781,

The real solution to this problem is to overhaul your verbal tactics altogether so that you're more efficient in all areas. That having been said, if you need to "shoot past" an RC prompt, here's something you can try. It's not perfect, but it will give you something to work with:

Try reading the first and last sentence of each paragraph and then picking an answer that "fits." You still have to work fast, but you should be able to increase your chances of getting some of the questions correct. Keep in mind that this type of problem in the Verbal section essentially means that you're not likely to score 700+.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

Contact Rich at [email protected]

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Brent@GMATPrepNow: GMAT Instructor; Posts: 16207; Joined: Mon Dec 08, 2008 6:26 pmFollowed by: 1268 members; Location: Vancouver, BC; Thanked: 5254 times; GMAT Score:770

by Brent@GMATPrepNow » Mon Sep 30, 2013 9:21 am

When trying to make up time on the GMAT, you should be on the lookout for OPTIMAL guessing opportunities.

As you're preparing for the GMAT, you should be identifying any weaknesses you may have. For example, you may have a lot of difficulty answering probability questions. Or perhaps distance-rate-time questions give you problems.

If you've already had little or no success with certain question types, then these are excellent candidates for guessing, since you may not be able to answer them even if you did spend 2 minutes trying to do so.

For Verbal questions, a great candidate for getting time back is guessing on a very LONG critical reasoning question. Another great candidate is a SENTENCE correction question where the entire sentence is underlined.

All of this (and more) is covered in our free time-management video: https://www.gmatprepnow.com/module/gener ... es?id=1244

Cheers,
Brent

Brent Hanneson - Creator of GMATPrepNow.com

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