importance of First 10 questions

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borntobreaktherecord: Junior | Next Rank: 30 Posts; Posts: 12; Joined: Tue Apr 06, 2010 10:07 am

by borntobreaktherecord » Mon Feb 03, 2014 12:37 pm

In one strategy session,the attachment was shown;the data is taken from the gmat prep.My question here is:If some answers first two question incorrectly,then it is never possible to reach higher score?

IMHO,the gmat prep has very limited difficult questions.In actual gmat the difficulty level goes up almost immediately and most difficult questions appear,so even someone answers first 3-4 questions incorrectly,still can score higher...

Experts opinion plz....

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Source: Beat The GMAT — GMAT Strategy | Mon Feb 03, 2014 12:37 pm

David@VeritasPrep: GMAT Instructor; Posts: 2193; Joined: Mon Feb 22, 2010 6:30 pmFollowed by: 512 members; Location: Vermont and Boston, MA; Thanked: 1186 times; GMAT Score:770

by David@VeritasPrep » Mon Feb 03, 2014 12:52 pm

The key to the first 10 questions is to do what you should be doing throughout the entire test - namely you need to get the questions right that you can get right.

You see if there are really tough questions in the first 10 and you miss those it is not a big deal. You will have the opportunity to work back up to those 80th or 90th percentile questions. The problem comes in missing lower difficulty questions out of the first 10. It is true that if you miss lower difficulty questions on the first 10 then the computer will not trust you to get those questions right and so will present you with lower level questions until you have gotten enough of these right in order to move up.

Basically you goal on the first 10 is not to miss "easy" questions.

By the way, the chart that is displayed lacks some very important information. What is the difficulty level of the questions missed? It is not a revelation to say that one person can miss 11 questions and another miss 9 questions and the one who missed 11 questions scores much lower. The questions missed could have been less difficult.

I have a problem with these examples where someone only tells you how many questions they missed or which numbers. Let me see the level of the questions and that will tell the tale. For example, you can miss 12 questions on Quant and score a 49/50. You can also miss 12 questions and score more like 43. That is a big difference. The importance is not the number of the question missed but the level of difficulty.

Here is an article on GMAT scoring for you to read - please read it. And remember the first 10 question are not different from any others - you want to get the questions right that you can get right, the rest will take care of itself. https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2012/12/ ... n-the-gmat

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by [email protected] » Mon Feb 03, 2014 2:12 pm

Hi born,

To answer your questions:

1) Getting the first two questions wrong will NOT, on its own, keep you from getting a high score. You can get the first question wrong and still score an 800, so there's no way that getting the first two questions wrong would be that devastating to your score. That having been said, if the first two questions are fairly easy and you get them wrong, then that's a missed opportunity to pick up points.

2) The GMAT prep software does have a limited number of questions, and by extension, a limited number of difficult questions. If your point is to complain about that, then you should keep in mind that the material is the most realistic on the market (since the questions once appeared on actual GMAT exams) and it's free.

3) The difficulty level of the GMAT does NOT go up almost immediately. There might be some questions among the first 3-4 that you find challenging, but that doesn't necessarily make them hard questions. Your approach to solving them might be the problem.

Upon reviewing any CAT that you take, keep a log of the questions that you got wrong and WHY you got them wrong. I'll bet that, in most cases, you're making a silly mistake (as opposed to facing a really hard question).

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

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