Strive For Excellence, Not Perfection in the Quantitative Reasoning Section
In reality, you do not need to correctly answer all 21 questions to get a high score in the Quantitative Reasoning section, and you can correctly answer far fewer and still do well.
In general, it’s been my experience that when people take the test with the mentality that they must correctly answer every quant question, they tend to score significantly lower than their skills suggest they will.
You already know that the GMAT Focus is an adaptive test. As you answer questions correctly, you’ll be presented with more challenging questions that are, in general, worth more points. Because the questions, on average, grow more difficult with each correct response, at some point the questions may become too difficult for you to correctly answer in the time allotted. In other words, you’ll reach your ability ceiling. If you waste your limited time and energy trying to solve questions that you have a very low chance of answering correctly—those that are above your current ability level—you’ll put yourself at a big disadvantage.
Why? First, you’ll spend your valuable time attempting to solve a question that statistically you have a low probability of getting correct. Second, and perhaps even more worrisome, because of the time you invest (or, perhaps, over-invest) in such a question, you may not have time to answer the questions that you do have the ability to correctly answer. Think about it: if you invest 3:30 each on a number of questions that are well above your ability level (and that you probably answer incorrectly anyway), what will happen at the end of the quant section?
Likely you’ll be left with 2:00 or some other insufficient amount of time to solve, for example, six questions. Even if those questions are well within your ability level, and they may very well be, how well can you answer them with 2:00 on the clock? You may end up getting all six of those questions incorrect. You know that such a string of wrong answers will be detrimental to your score.
Thus, if you strive for perfection, you could end up NOT getting the questions above your ability level correct and NOT getting the questions within your ability correct, a lose-lose proposition. On a test as competitive as the GMAT Focus, you can’t afford to adopt such a bankrupt strategy.
Instead, you must be comfortable letting go of questions that you cannot solve. To that end, a big part of testing well is knowing your strengths and weaknesses. In fact, it is valuable to have a clear understanding of those strengths and weaknesses right down to the level of specific problems.
Imagine that you’ve solved a large number of realistic practice GMAT Focus quant questions and carefully logged and tracked the questions with which you struggle. Then, let’s say that a week before your GMAT Focus you spend time carefully reviewing these types of questions.
Warmest regards,
Scott Woodbury-Stewart
Founder & CEO, Target Test Prep
