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Week away from dday - IR section strategy

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Week away from dday - IR section strategy

by topspin360 » Sun May 11, 2014 9:14 am
Hi All,

I'm about a week away from my test. So preparing for last minute stuff.

What's the overall best strategy for IR? Is it better to just concentrate on 8-9 of the 12 questions and get them right or is it better to solve them all with the possibility of getting a few wrong?

I've heard that on IR section, there are randomly 2 questions chosen that are just experimental. In other words, their score doesn't count. So, if I were to just focus on 8-9 questions and skip 3-4 and those 2 experimental questions happen to be in those 8-9 questions I chose, I could be looking at a 3-4 score instead of 6-7..

I understand that IR score doesn't matter as much in terms of admissions but I've heard that consulting / banking firms will start looking at the score as the skills tested in that section are more relevant to the type of work that those firms entail.

Any other general strategies that anyone has would be helpful!

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by [email protected] » Sun May 11, 2014 1:41 pm
Hi topspin360,

Based on what you're asking, is it safe to assume that you have a pacing problem with the IR section?

Assuming that's the case, it's important to note that any multi-part IR question is an "all or nothing" situation. If you get any part of the multi-part question wrong, then you get NO points for that question. Knowing that, sacrificing a couple of tough IR prompts so that you can nail the others makes a great deal of sense.

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by topspin360 » Sun May 11, 2014 2:11 pm
[email protected] wrote:Hi topspin360,

Based on what you're asking, is it safe to assume that you have a pacing problem with the IR section?

Assuming that's the case, it's important to note that any multi-part IR question is an "all or nothing" situation. If you get any part of the multi-part question wrong, then you get NO points for that question. Knowing that, sacrificing a couple of tough IR prompts so that you can nail the others makes a great deal of sense.

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

Yep, certainly a pacing problem. What you suggested makes perfect sense - if I skip a question, just skip it entirely and try to make sure its not a multi-part question as 2-3 of those seem to be based off of the same content. But is it true that 2 questions are usually experimental? So if i end up skipping non-experimental questions, that could hurt me?

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by [email protected] » Sun May 11, 2014 11:03 pm
Hi topspin360,

By the very nature of how the GMAT is designed and administered, it's reasonable to expect that some of your IR questions are experimental. However, there's no way to know which ones and there's no point in expending energy on the idea. Your pacing problem is not likely to get better in 1 week, so the better plan is to dump 2-3 of your IR questions (anything that seems too hard or too weird).

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