Never Randomly Throw Away Quant Questions to Catch Up on Time

There is an idea that you can “jettison” random questions if you find yourself behind on the clock. For example, assume you were on question 15 of the Quant section and you had 10 minutes remaining. The idea is that you’d sacrifice question 15 (and maybe question 16) to catch up on time. I don’t recommend this strategy.

It doesn’t seem prudent to throw away questions that you may be able to quickly answer. Furthermore, it’s possible that in blindly throwing away a question, you might throw away an easy question, one that the test expects you to get right, and therefore the test will penalize you heavily for missing it. So, don’t use such a strategy in an attempt to catch up on time.

Instead, if you’re running behind, try to catch up by making an educated guess on a question(s) that you would have a hard time correctly answering anyway. Don’t just randomly guess on a question because you are behind on time.

You don’t want luck entering into your GMAT Quant score. After all, with five answers choices, the probability of randomly choosing the correct answer is not high.

Warmest regards,

Scott Woodbury-Stewart
Founder & CEO, Target Test Prep