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Leaving questions unanswered - Definitive answer??

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Leaving questions unanswered - Definitive answer??

by eddyh » Thu May 14, 2009 11:42 am
Apologies in advance if this is answered elsewhere, but I haven't seen certain answers to this.

I have been scoring in the 650-750 range on practice tests, in general leaving 3-10 questions blank at the end of the quant section due to running out of time. If I have say 5 questions left with 3 minutes left, is it always better to guess randomly on all 5 vs. answering 1 more and leaving 4 completely blank? I understand that there's a "severe penalty" for leaving questions blank, but has this been tested with GMATPrep or otherwise analyzed? I want to be sure that it's ALWAYS better to guess vs leave any question blank. I would hate to take the test and have 4 questions left towards the end that I end up guessing on, and then get penalized more than I would if I had left them blank.

Also, is it a better strategy to guess on earlier questions that are taking several minutes to answer, as opposed to doing the best I can on the first ~30 questions and then just guessing/leaving blank the remaining last 5-10 in the last few minutes?

Seems like the strategy should be to spend extra time (say average 3 minutes) on the first 5-6 questions, then for the rest of the test average 1'45" - 2', and if time is running short towards the end guess if needbe so that all questions are answered. Agree? Disagree?
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by DanaJ » Thu May 14, 2009 12:18 pm
One thing to remember is that the first few questions are usually intermediate, so they're really not that hard. I personally wouldn't waste more than 3 minutes on any question, particularly if "my track record" points to the fact that I tend to end the test without answering all the questions.

So, since the first few questions are of medium difficulty, I would honestly just answer them and then get on with it. I wouldn't waste time checking and re-checking my calculations, especially if my answer corresponds to one of the answer choices.

Let me just describe my GMAT quant experience: the first 5-6 questions were pretty decent, really solvable. They got increasingly difficult, but I still managed to maintain a 10-minute advantage by the 15th question. And then they got difficult! Fortunately, I was able to tap into my time reserve of 10 minutes, so to speak, and finish the test just in time without guessing.

As for leaving blanks vs. guessing: when you guess, you have a 20% chance of hitting the right answer. However, when you leave a blank, you're 100% sure you're not picking the correct choice. This is why it's better to just guess if you're really out of time!

As for that 4 blank and 1 solved - 5 guessed: I'd say go for the second case. I'm sure that leaving 4 questions unanswered is a bad idea - it'll seriously impact your score. I can't say how much though, maybe someone else can help. Besides, you need to take into consideration the stress factor. Since you're stressed, chances are you won't be able to concentrate on solving that 1 question and you get that wrong as well.
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by eddyh » Thu May 14, 2009 12:32 pm
thanks, very thoughtful response...

I think you're right, I'm overstating the time that the first 5-6 questions should take... what I should have said is more carefully through the first 5-6 to make sure they're right, but spend no more than say 3-3.5 minutes on any one of them.

To your point on the 4-5 unaswered vs. 4-5 guessed, does anyone know that guessing is always worse? ie it counts as a wrong answer, + an additional penalty, or is this unclear?

I'm hoping someone somewhere has tested this with GMATPrep or has actual test results to indicate the answer...
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by wgrau » Thu May 14, 2009 12:37 pm
Short answer - NEVER leave questions unanswered. They will always count against you more than a wrong answer. ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS answer every question.

The test is not only testing if you can answer the questions correctly, but also if you can answer them in the allotted time. Failure to do so is heavily penalized.
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Re: Leaving questions unanswered - Definitive answer??

by doclkk » Thu May 14, 2009 12:43 pm
eddyh wrote:Apologies in advance if this is answered elsewhere, but I haven't seen certain answers to this.

I have been scoring in the 650-750 range on practice tests, in general leaving 3-10 questions blank at the end of the quant section due to running out of time. If I have say 5 questions left with 3 minutes left, is it always better to guess randomly on all 5 vs. answering 1 more and leaving 4 completely blank? I understand that there's a "severe penalty" for leaving questions blank, but has this been tested with GMATPrep or otherwise analyzed? I want to be sure that it's ALWAYS better to guess vs leave any question blank. I would hate to take the test and have 4 questions left towards the end that I end up guessing on, and then get penalized more than I would if I had left them blank.

Also, is it a better strategy to guess on earlier questions that are taking several minutes to answer, as opposed to doing the best I can on the first ~30 questions and then just guessing/leaving blank the remaining last 5-10 in the last few minutes?

Seems like the strategy should be to spend extra time (say average 3 minutes) on the first 5-6 questions, then for the rest of the test average 1'45" - 2', and if time is running short towards the end guess if needbe so that all questions are answered. Agree? Disagree?
Every prep class and book says that random guessing is better than blank. All the test prep have their people read a 150 page dossier regarding gmat scoring. They don't know how much they lose but GMAC / ETS replied that "it is significant." I've heard from friends (probably unstantiated) that it can be as many as 50 points. I don't know - but if GMAC says significant, it probably is significant.
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by canada_sms » Thu May 14, 2009 1:11 pm
My belief is that leaving questions unanswered is foolish. That being said, I fully admit I don't have any hard evidence for this.

There is an experiment that you can run to get your question answered though. If you have some virtualization software like VMWare and ran GMAT Prep in a virtual machine, you could save system snapshots at different points during a test.

Let's say you took snapshots before the last 5 questions of quant and before the last 5 questions on verbal during a test. You could then resume from the snapshots and play out different end-game scenarios to see how your score would change.

This is probably 4-6 hours of work but if it gives you piece of mind in terms of your strategy then it might be worth it.

In theory, if a person was completely insane, they could use this technique to completely disassemble the GMAT Prep scoring algorithm from beginning to end. At the end of the day, it just isn't worth it for a person or even a test prep company to go through this exercise. Instead people tend to just find a timing strategy that works for them.
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by zuleron » Fri May 15, 2009 4:38 am
This is one of those untested myths of the GMAT but it's hard to argue with the logic that even if there is no additional penalty, leaving a question blank = 100% wrong is worse than guessing = 80% wrong.

Also, my guess is if by question 33 you are seeing 750 level questions, then getting Q34 wrong does not necessarily reduce your score, it just prevents you from getting level 760 question. So if there is a penalty for not finishing, no matter how small, you are better off guessing.
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by skang357 » Sat May 16, 2009 4:47 pm
Since it takes about 5 seconds to randomly guess a question including the tedious task of dragging the pointer from the answer choices to the "next" tab on the bottom right of the screen, I would say spend your time answering the 1 question that you think you can answer, leave 20 seconds to guess your last four, and click away.

I would go with 4 D's, 4 B's, 4 C', 4 E's and 4 A's in that order.

I would answer them all the same rather than go A,B,C,D.

This way you have 100% chance of getting the question you answered if you're totally confident and 80% chance of getting one right question right of the 4 you guessed. 1.8 questions out of 5 is better than 1 (what you would get with either of your two prior options).
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