What is the unit of currency in Sweden?
the dollar
the franc
the pound sterling
the yen
the krona
This chapter provides an introduction to one of the key Princeton Review techniques: Process of Elimination.
Imagine for a moment that you are a contestant on Jeopardy. You are hoping to stumble upon a coveted Daily Double, but first you’ve got to answer every question that gets thrown your way.
As you answer assorted questions about myriad topics (including “Potent Potables,” no doubt), you wish that there were some way that you could know where the Daily Doubles are placed on the board and jump to those. But you can’t—you can’t opt to skip any of the questions and continue to dominate that game.
Normally when you don’t know the correct answer on a test, you skip the question and come back to it later. But on the computer-adaptive sections of the GMAT, as in Jeopardy, you can never skip the question.
Because of the way the computer-adaptive sections of the GMAT’s scoring algorithm works, the question you see on your computer screen at any particular moment depends on your response to the previous question. This creates an odd situation for the test designers: If they allowed you to skip a question, they wouldn’t know which question to give you next.
It’s clear from articles that GMAT test designers have published that they know test takers are at a real disadvantage when they can’t skip a problem and come back to it later. Still, the idea of using a computer to administer tests was too tempting to give up. In the end, GMAC decided that you should generously be willing to make the sacrifice in the name of progress.
So whether you know the answer to a problem or not, you have to answer it in order to move on.
This means that, like it or not, you may have to do some guessing on the GMAT. Ah, but there’s guessing, and then there’s guessing.
This may sound a little loony, but it turns out that you don’t always have to know the correct answer to get a question correct.
Try answering the following question:
What is the unit of currency in Sweden?
What? You don’t know?
Unless you work for an international bank or have traveled in Scandinavia, there is no reason why you should know what the unit of currency in Sweden is. (By the way, the GMAT doesn’t ask such factual questions. We’re using this one to make a point.) As it stands now, because you don’t know the answer, you would have to answer this question at random, right?
Not necessarily. GMAT questions are written in multiple-choice format. One of the five choices has to be the answer. You just have to find it.
Let’s put this question into multiple-choice format—the only format you’ll find on the GMAT—and see if you still want to answer at random.
What is the unit of currency in Sweden?
Suddenly this question isn’t difficult anymore. You may not have known the correct answer, but you certainly knew enough to eliminate the wrong answers. Wrong answers are often easier to spot than correct answers. Sometimes they just sound weird. Other times they’re logically impossible. While it is rare to be able to eliminate all four of the incorrect answer choices on the GMAT, you will almost always be able to eliminate at least one of them—and frequently two or more—by using Process of Elimination. Process of Elimination (POE for short) will enable you to answer questions that you don’t have the time to figure out exactly. We will refer to POE in every single chapter of this book. It is one of the most important and fundamental tools you will use to increase your score.
Try another example:
Which of the following countries uses the peso as its unit of currency?
This time you can probably get rid of only three of the five answer choices using POE. The answer is clearly not Russia, Canada, or England, but most people probably don’t know for sure whether the answer is Venezuela or Chile.
You’ve got the question down to two possibilities. What should you do?
A Chilean might flip a peso. You have a fifty-fifty chance of getting this question correct, which is much better than if you had guessed at random. And because the GMAT forces you to guess anyway, it makes sense to guess intelligently.
In the chapters that follow, we’ll show you specific ways to make use of POE to increase your score. You may feel uncomfortable about using these techniques at first, but the sooner you make them your own, the sooner you’ll start to improve your score.
If you took any math courses in college, you probably remember that the correct answer to a problem, while important, wasn’t the only thing you were graded on. Your professor was probably more interested in how you got the answer, whether you wrote an elegant equation, or if you used the right formula.
If your equation was correct but you messed up your addition at the end, did you get the entire question wrong? Most college professors give partial credit for an answer like that. After all, what’s most important is the mental process that goes into getting the answer, not the answer alone.
On the GMAT, if you don’t click the correct circle with your mouse, you’re wrong. It doesn’t matter that you knew how to do the problem or that you clicked the wrong answer by mistake. GMAC doesn’t care: You’re just wrong. And a wrong answer means that the running score GMAC is keeping on you will go down by 10 or 20 points, and you’ll be forced to answer several easier questions correctly before you get back to the level at which you were.
This really isn’t fair. It seems only fitting that you should also be able to benefit from the flip side of this situation: If you click on the correct circle, GMAC doesn’t care how you got that answer either.
Process of Elimination is a powerful tool, but it’s powerful only if you keep track of the answer choices you’ve eliminated. On a computer-adaptive test, you obviously can’t cross off choices on the screen—but you can cross them off on your scratch paper. Don’t be afraid to use it!
You only have so many tools at your disposal, and the scratch paper the testing center provides is one of them. Many test-takers often ignore the scratch paper—especially on the Verbal side of the test. Don’t be one of them! Use the scratch paper to keep track of eliminated answer choices, jot down notes about questions and passages, and keep yourself organized.
The bottom line about scratch paper:
Make the test easier on your brain by writing things down instead of keeping them in your head.
Because of the way the GMAT is designed, you will be forced to answer questions whether or not you know the correct answer.
However, not knowing the exact answer to a question does not mean that you have to get it wrong.
When you don’t know the correct answer to a question, look for wrong answers instead. This is called POE, or Process of Elimination.