GMAT Strategy

Intuitively, , I tend to agree with you because it seems to me to be cruel and unusual punishment to add on top of the penalty for strings of incorrect answers, a sencod one for rushing. So imagine you had 5 questions with one minute left and you guessed them all and got all of them wrong, it seems excessive to add an additional penalty for rushing... after all, you got them all wrong.

I suppose that the takeaway is that whether or not there is an official penalty imposed by GMAC for rushing at the end is really immaterial beacuse if you have 5 questions with a 2 minutes to go -- even with 5 mins to go -- you are in deep trouble.

Try pacing yourself so the "rush factor" is eliminated.

I read something similar, only in this case GMAC was going to add retinal tracking equipment to track your eye movements. They want to determine who is using process of elimination as a test-taking technique and penalize them for not working out each problem using every possible answer.

Hey, with the new palm-vein scanning technology they're using, I wouldn't put this past the GMAC.

VP_Jim wrote:

I read something similar, only in this case GMAC was going to add retinal tracking equipment to track your eye movements. They want to determine who is using process of elimination as a test-taking technique and penalize them for not working out each problem using every possible answer.

Hey, with the new palm-vein scanning technology they're using, I wouldn't put this past the GMAC.

It's got to be in that camera they have above every cubicle... we are watching you...

Wether you hurry at the end or not, does anyone know about the scoring (bonus, malus...) ?

: At the end, if you face some unanswered questions, is it preferable to answer each of them, or to leave the questions as they are ?

Bara wrote:
I've gone to luncheons sponsored by the GMAC folks who tried to convince us test-teaching experts that the algorhythm makes it so each question is equal. But I don't believe this can be true. Not every question is equal.

Why don't you believe each question is equal?

I am pretty scared when I saw this topic. I planned to rush at least 10 verbal questions to increase my accuracy.

I'm with Bara on this one - even if every question has an equal effect on your score, I still believe the first 10 are most important. Think about it from a confidence perspective. Spending a little extra time on those early questions will help you settle in, stay calm, and roll off a few right answers to kick off your test. That can do wonders for the psyche. If that means you have to guess on question #31, so be it.

Still, I would never recommend spending over 3 minutes on any one question. So, take your time early on - but not at the expense of the rest of the test. Also, I often recommend to students with time trouble that THEY choose the questions they guess on, rather than simply guessing on the last few once they run out of time. Wait for tough problems to come along and guess on those - chances are you'll have just ended up guessing anyway, so I don't think this would have a big effect on the score. That way, you can save time for easier problems you might see towards the end and get those right, rather than guessing on them if you had run out of time. Plus, you won't have a long string of guesses at the end of your test.

I think a good way to look at it is as follows:

If you adhere to the 2min rule then your pacing will look like this:

Q11 --> 55mins left
Q21 --> 35mins left
Q31 --> 15 mins left

If you want to spend more time on the first 10 then you pacing might look like this:

Q11 --> 50mins left
Q21 --> 32mins left
Q31 --> 13mins left