Hi Shakum,

The amount of time spent answering a question has NO impact on how your score is calculated. The only impact would occur if you left questions unanswered (meaning that you ran out of time and did not answer every question in a section).

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

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The algorithm does contain a feature that attempts to assess the likelihood that you've guessed correctly, but as Rich noted, it's not based on how much time you spent on a question. (If, for example, you received a total of 5 questions at a certain level, and you missed 4 of them, there's a reasonable likelihood that you may have guessed correctly on the one you got right.)

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In addition to what David & Rich have said about the scoring algorithm, I want to point out that your above logic is flawed.

On a paper-based (i.e. non-adaptive) test, you might attempt to finish all of the easier questions quickly, and spend more time on the more difficult ones. This is a bad strategy on an adaptive test, though. If you speed through the easy questions, you increase the likelihood that you'll make careless mistakes and get them wrong. If that happens, you'll never get to the harder questions!

Instead, do this:

Easy questions:
1. Ask yourself - am I sure that this is really easy? Am I missing something / falling for an obvious trap?
2. Quickly redo the problem / double-check your logic to make CERTAIN that you got it right.

Hard questions:
1. Look at the clock - are you ahead or behind?
2. If behind, take 15 seconds to form a decent guess, then move on.
3. If ahead, take 1:00min to think through the problem and start to work on it. If it still feels hard - if you're not getting anywhere - guess and move on. Save that time for a more getable problem!
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Ceilidh Erickson
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EdM in Mind, Brain, and Education
Harvard Graduate School of Education


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