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Leaving questions unanswered..
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I have been practicing timing on my practice tests for quite sometime.. there has really only been a few occasions in which I leave the last 1 or 2 questions unanswered. My goal is to obviously answer all questions every single time, but I was wondering if anyone knew the consequences of leaving the last questions open and how much it fluctuates your final score. Many test prep are against it, while some say it is better to get a question right then to merely guess as this may lower your score. Anyone have any experience with this on test day? Thanks
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Frankenstein
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True. Of course, getting correct is better than getting wrong. But,leaving unanswered is not equivalent to getting correct.. I am sure guessing(even if it is incorrect) is better than leaving question unanswered.Many test prep are against it, while some say it is better to get a question right then to merely guess as this may lower your score.
Cheers!
Things are not what they appear to be... nor are they otherwise
Things are not what they appear to be... nor are they otherwise
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Brian@VeritasPrep
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Good question - conventional wisdom says to guess rather than leave an item blank. Even some of the folks at GMAC have mentioned that they're often surprised when they model the CAT scoring about how steep the penalty can be for omitting multiple answers. Plus there's always that chance that you guess correctly, in which case you're that much better off.
For further analysis, check out this blog post from the Official GMAT Blog:
https://www.mba.com/mbacommunity/MBA_com ... ssing.aspx
Ultimately, their advice is that you should probably guess if you're planning on getting a higher score, which hopefully corresponds to most of you here!
____________________________________________________________________________
One other theory, which I've borrowed from my colleague David Newland and which I think has some real merit...
-We all know that the GMAT includes a healthy number of unscored, experimental questions (maybe something like 5-7 per section).
-We also know that the GMAT is a timed test and that the pacing tends to give people some difficulty AND that the timed component is something that is important to those behind the test; they want to see how well you make efficient decisions under pressure.
-THEREFORE, it's highly unlikely that the test would "bail you out" by making your last question or two unscored and experimental; in that event, you'd be given a "mulligan" for poor pacing.
-SO...if you know that you'll need to guess at some point - say you have 7 minutes left for the last 6 questions or something like that - that logic above dictates that you'll probably want to use your guess earlier than later, particularly if you see a problem that would take you plenty of time to solve. There's not much likelihood that question #37 on the quant will be unscored, but there's a reasonable likelihood that #32 will be unscored, so at least in terms of probability you're probably better off guessing on 32 or 33 than on 37, especially because you have the choice on 32 or 33 to say "this is too time-consuming...I wouldn't be able to solve this in 5 minutes" and therefore more-strategically use your "guess". By #37, you're just guessing because you're out of options and out of time, and you may end up missing a question that you could/should have gotten right.
Now, overall your goal should be to avoid this situation! But if you do realize earlier-than-later that you'll need to guess, the logic above seems reasonable enough that I'd recommend using your guess on a difficult-looking question that you don't think you'll be able to solve efficiently, before you get all the way to the end.
For further analysis, check out this blog post from the Official GMAT Blog:
https://www.mba.com/mbacommunity/MBA_com ... ssing.aspx
Ultimately, their advice is that you should probably guess if you're planning on getting a higher score, which hopefully corresponds to most of you here!
____________________________________________________________________________
One other theory, which I've borrowed from my colleague David Newland and which I think has some real merit...
-We all know that the GMAT includes a healthy number of unscored, experimental questions (maybe something like 5-7 per section).
-We also know that the GMAT is a timed test and that the pacing tends to give people some difficulty AND that the timed component is something that is important to those behind the test; they want to see how well you make efficient decisions under pressure.
-THEREFORE, it's highly unlikely that the test would "bail you out" by making your last question or two unscored and experimental; in that event, you'd be given a "mulligan" for poor pacing.
-SO...if you know that you'll need to guess at some point - say you have 7 minutes left for the last 6 questions or something like that - that logic above dictates that you'll probably want to use your guess earlier than later, particularly if you see a problem that would take you plenty of time to solve. There's not much likelihood that question #37 on the quant will be unscored, but there's a reasonable likelihood that #32 will be unscored, so at least in terms of probability you're probably better off guessing on 32 or 33 than on 37, especially because you have the choice on 32 or 33 to say "this is too time-consuming...I wouldn't be able to solve this in 5 minutes" and therefore more-strategically use your "guess". By #37, you're just guessing because you're out of options and out of time, and you may end up missing a question that you could/should have gotten right.
Now, overall your goal should be to avoid this situation! But if you do realize earlier-than-later that you'll need to guess, the logic above seems reasonable enough that I'd recommend using your guess on a difficult-looking question that you don't think you'll be able to solve efficiently, before you get all the way to the end.
Brian Galvin
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Veritas Prep
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Veritas Prep
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As best as I could determine from the GMAC reports on scoring, the penalty for unanswered questions is proportional - that is, for each unanswered question your score estimate is reduced by a factor of 1/37. However, their reports aren't completely clear on just how this proportional penalty works, so I'm not entirely sure my interpretation is correct. In any case, because the penalty is taken as a proportion of your score, the penalty is more severe the higher your score.
According to GMAC's own research, there is no clear-cut answer as to whether it helps to guess at the end or to leave questions blank. This is in part because they can't predict just what questions you'll be guessing at - if those questions are low-level, guessing incorrectly will probably hurt you more than would leaving the question unattempted. Still, on balance, it seems that most of the time completing the test is better than leaving the test unfinished, even if that means you need to guess. This is particularly true for high level test takers.
As for whether your last questions might be experimental, I don't agree with the theory in the posts above. There's an extensive GMAC research report which describes precisely how experimental questions are used on your test - when each test taker sits down to start his or her test, before answering any questions, the test determines purely at random which question numbers will be experimental questions (so before you start your Quant section, the test will have decided that, for example, questions 5, 9, 14, 16, 17, 23, 25, 31, and 36 will be experimental, and nothing you do during the test will change that). The report makes no mention that the last question in a section is ineligible to be experimental, and if that were the case, then test takers informed of that technicality would have an advantage over other test takers, so I very much doubt the theory to be true; it makes much more sense, in order for the test to be fair, for the selection of experimental questions to be purely random.
According to GMAC's own research, there is no clear-cut answer as to whether it helps to guess at the end or to leave questions blank. This is in part because they can't predict just what questions you'll be guessing at - if those questions are low-level, guessing incorrectly will probably hurt you more than would leaving the question unattempted. Still, on balance, it seems that most of the time completing the test is better than leaving the test unfinished, even if that means you need to guess. This is particularly true for high level test takers.
As for whether your last questions might be experimental, I don't agree with the theory in the posts above. There's an extensive GMAC research report which describes precisely how experimental questions are used on your test - when each test taker sits down to start his or her test, before answering any questions, the test determines purely at random which question numbers will be experimental questions (so before you start your Quant section, the test will have decided that, for example, questions 5, 9, 14, 16, 17, 23, 25, 31, and 36 will be experimental, and nothing you do during the test will change that). The report makes no mention that the last question in a section is ineligible to be experimental, and if that were the case, then test takers informed of that technicality would have an advantage over other test takers, so I very much doubt the theory to be true; it makes much more sense, in order for the test to be fair, for the selection of experimental questions to be purely random.
For online GMAT math tutoring, or to buy my higher-level Quant books and problem sets, contact me at ianstewartgmat at gmail.com
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(so before you start your Quant section, the test will have decided that, for example, questions 5, 9, 14, 16, 17, 23, 25, 31, and 36 will be experimental, and nothing you do during the test will change that).
Ian,
Thanks for your point of view, also extremely helpful. I do agree that if the last question or two were to be chosen at random each time it would promote an advantage to every test-taker... something in which the beautiful GMAT rarely ever does. On the above quote, does this mean that there are 9 random questions in the quant section each time? Also how many do you predict to be in the verbal section?
Thank you for your insight!
-Morlene
Ian,
Thanks for your point of view, also extremely helpful. I do agree that if the last question or two were to be chosen at random each time it would promote an advantage to every test-taker... something in which the beautiful GMAT rarely ever does. On the above quote, does this mean that there are 9 random questions in the quant section each time? Also how many do you predict to be in the verbal section?
Thank you for your insight!
-Morlene
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Ian Stewart
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The only official data I've seen about the number of experimental questions on the test said that there will be between 7 and 14 experimental questions in each section. I'm guessing the number is higher in the Verbal section than in the Quant, if only because that section is longer, but I don't know the precise number.morlene wrote: On the above quote, does this mean that there are 9 random questions in the quant section each time? Also how many do you predict to be in the verbal section?
I'd add that during your test, you should not even think about which questions might be experimental and which might count - there is just no way to know. Try to answer every question to the best of your ability.
For online GMAT math tutoring, or to buy my higher-level Quant books and problem sets, contact me at ianstewartgmat at gmail.com
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