Chapter 2

Maximizing Your Score on the GMAT

IN THIS CHAPTER

Checking out guessing strategies

Managing your time like a pro

Knowing how to recognize a wrong answer

Avoiding worthless activities that minimize your score

Quieting your nerves with tried-and-true relaxation techniques

You enter the test center and stare down the computer. For the next three and a half hours, that machine is your adversary. The GMAT loaded on it is your nemesis. All you have to aid you in this showdown is a booklet of noteboards and your intellect. The questions come quickly, and your reward for answering a question correctly is another, usually more difficult question! Why did you give up your precious free time for this torture?

By the time you actually take the GMAT, you’ll have already given up hours and hours of your free time studying for the test, researching business schools, and planning for the future. Those three and a half hours alone with a computer represent a rite of passage that you must complete to accomplish the goals you’ve set for yourself. And because the test is a necessary evil, you may as well get the highest score you’re capable of achieving!

This chapter contains the techniques you need to apply to pull together a winning strategy for the GMAT. You already have the brains, and the test center provides the materials. In this chapter, we share with you the other tools you need to maximize your score.

Discovering Strategies for Successful Guessing

You may be surprised that we start this chapter by discussing guessing strategies. Your ideal GMAT test-day scenario probably involves knowing the answers to most of the questions right away rather than randomly guessing! The reality is that almost no one is absolutely sure of every answer to every question on the GMAT. Think back; did you have to guess at any questions on the ACT or SAT? We bet you did! We provide a few guessing strategies in the following sections to improve your chances of answering more questions correctly, even if you otherwise have no clue of the correct answer.

Forcing yourself to guess so you can move on

Remember that standardized tests aren’t like tests in your undergraduate college courses. If you studied hard in college, you may not have had to do much guessing on your midterms and finals. On the GMAT, however, the computer won’t allow you to skip questions. So if you stumble upon some really difficult questions that you’re not sure how to answer, you have to guess and move on. Don’t fall into thinking that you must know the correct answer for each question to do well on the GMAT. The GMAT is designed to test the potential of a wide range of future MBA students, so some of the questions have to be ridiculously difficult to challenge that one-in-a-million Einstein who takes the GMAT. Almost everyone incorrectly answers a few questions in each section, and almost everyone has to guess on those really difficult questions. Don’t worry if you have to guess; just figure out how to guess effectively!

With the computer-adaptive test (CAT) format, developing a strategy for successful guessing in the quantitative reasoning and verbal reasoning sections is actually more important than ever. In these sections, as you answer questions correctly, the level of difficulty continues to increase. Although the integrated reasoning section isn’t in the CAT format, you can’t skip the questions in this section, either, so be sure to apply the guessing strategies we discuss in this chapter to that section as well. Even if you do really, really well on the test, you’ll probably find yourself guessing on some questions. On the GMAT, almost everyone guesses!

Understanding the importance of completing each section

To get the optimum score for the questions you answer correctly, you must respond to all the questions in each section. If you don’t have time to complete the questions at the end of each section, your score is reduced in proportion to the number of questions you didn’t answer. Therefore, it’s important to move at a pace that allows you to get to all the questions.

One of the ways you can get into real trouble with the CAT format is by spending too much time early on trying to correctly answer questions that are more difficult. If you’re reluctant to guess and, therefore, spend more than a minute or two on several difficult questions, you may not have time to answer the relatively easy questions at the end.

Answer every question in each section! If you notice that you have only three or four minutes remaining in a section and more than five questions left, spend the remaining minutes marking an answer for every question, even if you don’t have time to read them. You always have a 20 percent chance of randomly guessing the correct answer to a verbal reasoning or quantitative reasoning question, which is better than not answering the question at all. If you have to guess randomly at the end of the section, mark the same bubble for each answer. For example, you may choose to mark the second bubble from the bottom. Chances are that at least one in five questions will have a correct answer placed second to the end. Marking the same bubble also saves time because you don’t have to choose which answer to mark for each question; you already have your guessing strategy in mind, so you don’t have to think about it.

Even the GMAT folks warn of a severe penalty for not completing the test. They claim that your score will decrease significantly with each unanswered question, which could make a huge difference in your admissions chances!

Winning the Race against the Clock

Random guessing as the clock runs out serves you better than leaving the remaining questions in a section unanswered, but it’s not a good way to approach the test in general. Instead, adopt a strategy of good time management that combines proper pacing, an active approach to answering questions, and appropriate guessing. We discuss all these time-management strategies in the following sections.

Giving each question equal treatment

You may have heard that you should spend a lot of time on the first ten questions because your performance on them determines your ultimate score. Although your performance on the first ten questions does give the computer an initial estimate of your ability, in the end, these first questions don’t carry greater significance than any other questions. You’ll still encounter all the questions in the section eventually, so you really have no reason to spend an unreasonable length of time on the first ten.

If you spend too much time on the first ten questions and answer them all correctly, you’ll have a limited amount of time in which to answer the 21 remaining quantitative or 26 remaining verbal questions. The computer program would give you a high estimated score after those first ten questions, but that initial estimate would then most likely fall steadily throughout the session as you would hurry through questions and guess at those you didn’t have time to answer at the end. The worst outcome of all would be if you were unable to finish the section and had your score reduced in proportion to the questions you couldn’t answer. You can’t cheat the system by focusing on the first few questions. If you could, the very intelligent, highly paid test designers would find a way to adjust the format to thwart you.

Making time for the last ten questions

A much better approach than lavishing time on the first ten questions is allowing ample time to answer the last ten questions in both the verbal and quantitative sections. Because the best way to score well is to give adequate time to each question, guess when necessary, and complete the entire test, you shouldn’t spend a disproportionate amount of time answering the early questions.

Here are the steps to follow for this approach:

1. Work through the first 45 minutes of the quantitative and verbal sections at a good pace.

   Plan to spend around two minutes per quantitative question and a little more than a minute and a half per verbal question.

2. Don’t spend more than three minutes on any question during the first 75 percent of the quantitative and verbal sections.

3. When you have ten questions remaining in the section, check the time remaining and adjust your pace accordingly.

   Ten questions remain when you hit Question 21 of the quantitative section or Question 26 of the verbal section.

   For example, if you’ve answered the first 21 quantitative questions in only 35 minutes, you have a total of 27 minutes to work on the last ten questions. That means you can spend about two and a half minutes on each of the last ten questions. That extra 30 seconds per question may be what you need to answer a high percentage of those final ten questions correctly. Avoid random guesses on the last unanswered questions of either section.

We’re not suggesting that you rush through the first 35 minutes of each section so you can spend lots of time on the last ten questions. Instead, you should stick to a pace that allows you to give equal time to all the questions in a section. You can’t spend five or six minutes on a single question without sacrificing your performance on the rest of the test, so stick to your pace.

If you happen to have additional time when you get to the last ten questions, by all means, use it. There’s a severe penalty for not finishing a section but no prize for getting done early.

When you work steadily and carefully through the first 75 percent of each section, you’re rewarded with a score that stabilizes toward the higher end of the percentile and that may rise to an even higher level at the end of the section as you spend any extra time you have getting the last questions right. Talk about ending on a high note!

Keeping track of your pace

You may think that keeping an even pace throughout the test means a lot of clock watching, but this isn’t the case if you go into the test site with a plan. You can conceal the clock on the computer to keep from becoming obsessed with time, but you should periodically reveal the clock to check your progress. For example, you may plan to check your computer clock after every eight questions you answer. This means revealing the feature about four or five times during the verbal and quantitative sections. You’ll spend a second or two clicking on the clock and glancing at it, but knowing that you’re on pace will be worth it.

If you time yourself during practice tests you take at home, you’ll probably begin to know intuitively whether you’re falling behind. During the actual exam, you may not have to look at your clock as frequently. However, if you suspect that you’re using too much time on a question (more than three minutes), you should check the clock. If you’ve spent more than three minutes, mark your best guess from the choices you haven’t already eliminated and move on.

Getting Rid of Wrong Answers

We’ve stressed that the key to success is to move through the test steadily so you can answer every question and maximize your score. Keeping this steady pace will probably require you to make some intelligent guesses, and intelligent guesses hang on your ability to eliminate incorrect answers.

Eliminating answer choices is crucial on the verbal and quantitative sections of the GMAT. Most questions come with five answer choices, and usually one or two of the options are obviously wrong (especially in the verbal section). As soon as you know an answer choice is wrong, eliminate it. After you’ve eliminated that answer, don’t waste time reading it again. By quickly getting rid of choices that you know are wrong, you’ll be well on your way to finding the right answer! In the following sections, we show you a few elimination strategies that help you cross off wrong answers so you can narrow in on the right ones.

Keeping track of eliminated answer choices for the computer test format

You may be thinking that eliminating answer choices on a computerized test won’t work. In truth, doing so is more difficult than on a paper test where you can actually cross off the entire answer in your test booklet. However, you can achieve the same results on the computerized test with a little practice. You must train your mind to look only at the remaining choices and not read every word that your eyes fall upon. You can’t afford to waste time rereading a choice after you’ve eliminated it. That’s why you need a system.

You can use the booklet of noteboards you’re given at the test site to help you eliminate answers. The test administrators will replenish your noteboard supply if you fill them up, so don’t be afraid to write all over your noteboards.

Here are some simple steps to help you keep track of which answers you’ve eliminated:

1. At the beginning of the section (especially the verbal one, where eliminating answer choices is easier), quickly write down “A, B, C, D, and E” (or 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 if you prefer numbers) in a vertical row on your noteboard.

   A stands for the first answer choice, B for the second, C for the third, and so on, even though these letters don’t appear on your computer screen.

2. When you eliminate an answer choice, cross out the corresponding letter on your noteboard.

   For example, if you’re sure that the second and fifth answers are wrong, mark a line through B and E on your noteboard.

3. If you look at your noteboard and see only one remaining answer letter, you’ve zeroed in on the right answer.

   You don’t need to reread the answer choices to remember which one was correct. It’s listed right there on the noteboard.

4. If you can’t narrow down your choices to just one answer, eliminating three incorrect choices gives you a good chance of guessing correctly between the two options that remain.
5. Quickly rewrite the five letters (or numbers) for the next question and repeat the process.

Practice this technique when you’re taking your practice tests. The hard part isn’t crossing out the letters on your noteboard; it’s training your eyes to skip the wrong answers on the computer screen. Your brain will want to read through each choice every time you look at the answers. With the paper test booklet, you’d simply cross out the entire answer choice and then skip that choice every time you came to it. With the computerized test, you have to mentally cross out wrong answers. Developing this skill takes time. Mastering it is especially important for the verbal section, which has some long answer choices.

Recognizing wrong answers

So maybe you’ve mastered the art of the noteboard answer-elimination system, but you may be wondering how you know which answers to eliminate. Most of the verbal questions are best answered by process of elimination because answers aren’t as clearly right or wrong as they may be for the math questions. For many math questions, the correct answer is obvious after you’ve performed the necessary calculations, but you may be able to answer some math questions without performing complex calculations if you look through the answers first and eliminate choices that don’t make sense. So by using your common sense and analyzing all the information you have to work with (we show you how to do both in the next sections), you can reach a correct answer without knowing everything there is to know about a question.

Using common sense

Reading carefully reveals a surprising number of answer choices that are obviously wrong. In the quantitative and integrated reasoning sections, you may know before you even do a math calculation that one or two of the answers are simply illogical. In the verbal section, critical reasoning questions may have answer choices that don’t deal with the topic of the argument, or some sentence-correction answer choices may obviously display poor grammar or faulty sentence construction. You can immediately eliminate these eyesores from contention. If an answer is outside the realm of possibility, you don’t ever have to read through it again. For example, consider the following sample critical reasoning question.

Most New Year’s resolutions are quickly forgotten. Americans commonly make resolutions to exercise, lose weight, quit smoking, or spend less money. In January, many people take some action, such as joining a gym, but by February, they are back to their old habits again.

Which of the following, if true, most strengthens the preceding argument?

(A) Some Americans do not make New Year’s resolutions.

(B) Americans who do not keep their resolutions feel guilty the rest of the year.

(C) Attempts to quit smoking begun at times other than the first of the year are less successful than those begun in January.

(D) Increased sports programming in January motivates people to exercise more.

(E) People who are serious about lifestyle changes usually make those changes immediately and do not wait for New Year’s Day.

Chapter 9 gives you a whole slew of tips on how to answer critical reasoning questions, but without even looking closely at this one, you can eliminate at least two choices immediately. The argument states that people usually don’t live up to New Year’s resolutions and the question asks you to strengthen that argument. Two of the answer choices have nothing to do with keeping resolutions, so you can discard them right away: Choice (A) provides irrelevant information — the argument is about people who make resolutions, not those who don’t — and Choice (D) brings up a completely different topic (sports programming) and doesn’t mention resolutions.

Without even taxing your brain, you’ve gone from five choices down to three. Psychologically, dealing with three answer choices is much easier than dealing with all five. Plus, if you were short on time and had to quickly guess at this question, narrowing your choices to only three would give you a much better chance of answering it correctly.

Relying on what you know

Before you attempt to solve a quantitative problem or begin to answer a sentence correction question, you can use what you know to eliminate answer choices.

For example, if a quantitative question asks for a solution that’s an absolute value, you can immediately eliminate any negative answer choices, because absolute value is always positive. (For more about absolute value, see Chapter 15.) Even if you don’t remember how to solve the problem, you can at least narrow down the choices and increase your chances of guessing correctly. If you eliminate one or two choices and if you have the time, you may be able to plug the remaining answer choices back into the problem and find the correct answer that way. So if you approach questions with a stash of knowledge, you can correctly answer more questions than you realize.

Letting the question guide you

If you’ve ever watched a certain popular TV game show, you know that the clue to the answer can sometimes be found in the question. Although the answers to most GMAT questions aren’t as obvious as the answer to “in 1959, the U.S. said ‘aloha’ to this 50th state,” you can still use clues from the GMAT questions themselves to answer them.

In the earlier critical reasoning example on New Year’s resolutions, you were left with three answer choices. Paying attention to the wording of the question can help you eliminate two more.

The question asks you to strengthen the argument that Americans quickly forget their New Year’s resolutions. Choice (B) seriously weakens the argument by indicating that instead of forgetting their resolutions, Americans are haunted by failed resolutions for the rest of the year. Likewise, Choice (C) indicates that a resolution to quit smoking at the beginning of the new year may be more successful than the same resolution at other times. Because these answers weaken the argument rather than strengthen it as the question asks, you can eliminate them, too. By process of elimination, you know that Choice (E) is the correct answer to the question, and you haven’t yet seriously considered the logic of the argument!

Quickly recognizing and eliminating wrong answers after only a few seconds puts you on the path to choosing a right answer. This strategy works in the quantitative section as well. Consider this problem solving question example.

If of the air in a balloon is removed every 10 seconds, what fraction of the air has been removed from the balloon after 30 seconds?

(A)

(B)

(C)

(D)

(E)

You can immediately eliminate any choices with fractions smaller than one-half because the problem tells you that half the air departs within the first ten seconds. So you can discard Choices (A), (B), and (C). Without performing any calculations at all, you’ve narrowed down your choices to just two!

Another benefit of eliminating obviously wrong answer choices is that you save yourself from inadvertently making costly errors. The GMAT offers Choices (A), (B), and (C) to trap unsuspecting test-takers. If you mistakenly tried to solve the problem by multiplying , you’d come up with . But if you’ve already eliminated that answer, you know you’ve done something wrong. By immediately getting rid of the answer choices that can’t be right, you may avoid choosing a clever distractor. By the way, is the amount of air remaining in the balloon after 30 seconds. After the first 10 seconds, of the air remains. After 20 seconds, of that, or , remains. After 30 seconds, the balloon still has of of its air, which is .

So the amount of air removed in 30 seconds is Choice (E), , because .

Dealing with questions that contain Roman numerals

The GMAT presents a special type of question that pops up from time to time. This question gives you three statements marked with the Roman numerals I, II, and III and asks you to evaluate their validity. You’ll find these questions in the quantitative and verbal reasoning sections. You’re supposed to select the answer choice that presents the correct list of either valid or invalid statements, depending on what the question is looking for.

To approach questions that contain statements with Roman numerals, follow these steps:

1. Evaluate the validity of the first statement or the statement that seems easiest to evaluate.
2. If the first statement meets the qualifications stated by the question, eliminate any answer choices that don’t contain Roman numeral I; if it doesn’t, eliminate any choices that have Roman numeral I in them.
3. Examine the remaining answer choices to see which of the two remaining statements is best to evaluate next.

4. Evaluate another statement and eliminate answer choices based on your findings.

   You may find that you don’t have to spend time evaluating the third statement.

Here’s an example to show how the approach works.

If x and y are different integers, each greater than 1, which of the following must be true?

1. 
2. 
3. results in an integer

(A) II only

(B) I and II

(C) I, II, and III

(D) I and III

(E) III only

Consider the statements one by one. Start with Statement I and determine whether the expression is true. Because x and y are greater than 1, they must be positive. The smaller of the two integers must be at least 2, and the other number can’t be less than 3. So because , , so their sum has to be greater than 4.

Don’t read Statement II yet. Instead, run through the answer choices and eliminate any that don’t include Statement I. Choice (A) and Choice (E) don’t include Statement I, so cross out those letters on your noteboard. The remaining choices don’t give you any indication which statement is best to evaluate next, so proceed with your evaluation of Statement II, which states that . This statement can’t be correct because x and y have different values. The only way one number subtracted from another number can result in 0 is when the two numbers are the same. The difference of two different integers will always be at least 1.

Because Statement II isn’t correct, eliminate choices that include Statement II. You can cross out Choice (B) and Choice (C), which leaves you with Choice (D). By process of elimination, Choice (D) has to be right. You don’t even need to read Statement III, because you know the correct answer. Not all Roman numeral questions are so helpful, but many are, and in those cases, the strategy is a real timesaver!

Playing It Smart: A Few Things You Shouldn’t Do When Taking the Test

Most of this chapter focuses on what you should do to maximize your score on the GMAT. However, there are also a few things you shouldn’t do, which we discuss in the following sections. Avoid these mistakes, and you’ll have an advantage over many other test-takers!

Don’t lose your focus

You may be used to the fast-paced world of business or the cooperative world of group presentations that is popular in many business classes. Don’t be surprised if 180 minutes of multiple-choice questions peppered with 30 minutes of essay writing gets a little boring. We know the prospect is shocking!

Don’t allow yourself to lose focus. Keep your brain on a tight leash, and don’t let your mind wander. This test is too important. Just remind yourself how important these three and a half hours are to your future. Teach yourself to concentrate and rely on the relaxation tips we give you later in this chapter to avoid incessant mind wandering. You’ll need those powers of concentration in that MBA program you’ll soon be starting!

Don’t read questions at lightning speed

We hate to break it to you, but you probably aren’t a superhero named “Speedy Reader.” You’ll be anxious when the test begins, and you may want to blow through the questions at record speed. Big mistake! You don’t get bonus points for finishing early, and you have plenty of time to answer every question if you read at a reasonable pace. You may take pride in your ability to speed-read novels, and that skill may help you with the reading comprehension passages, but don’t use it to read the questions. You need to read questions carefully to capture the nuances the GMAT offers and understand exactly what it asks of you.

Many people who get bogged down on a few questions and fail to complete a section do so because of poor test-taking techniques, not because of slow reading. Do yourself a favor: Relax, read at a reasonable pace, and maximize your score!

Don’t waste all your time on the hardest questions

Although you shouldn’t try to work at lightning speed, remember not to get held back by a few hard questions, either. The difficulty of a question depends on the person taking the test. For everyone, even the high scorers, a few questions on a test are just harder than others. When you confront a difficult question on the GMAT, do your best, eliminate as many wrong answers as you can, and then make an intelligent guess. Even if you had all day, you might not be able to answer that particular question. If you allow yourself to guess and move on, you can work on plenty of other questions that you’ll answer correctly.

Don’t cheat

We aren’t sure how you’d cheat on the computerized GMAT, and we won’t be wasting our time thinking of ways! Spend your time practicing for the test and do your best. Cheating is futile.

Tackling a Case of Nerves with Relaxation Techniques

All this talk about time management, distracting answer choices, blind guessing, and losing focus may be making you nervous. Relax. After you’ve read this book, you’ll have plenty of techniques for turning your quick intellect and that packet of noteboards into a high GMAT score. You may feel a little nervous on the day of the test, but don’t worry about it, because a little nervous adrenaline can actually keep you alert. Just don’t let anxiety ruin your performance.

You may be working along steadily when suddenly, from out of the blue, a question appears that you don’t understand at all. Instead of trying to eliminate answer choices and solve the problem, you may stare at the question as if it were written in a foreign language. You may start to second-guess your performance on the test as a whole. You panic and think that maybe you’re just not cut out for a graduate business degree. You’re on the verge of freaking out — help!

Because much of the GMAT is in CAT format, encountering a super-hard quantitative or verbal question probably means you’re doing pretty well. Besides, if you do miss a question, you’ll just get an easier question next — unless you’re on the last question, in which case you needn’t freak out at all. Heck, you’re nearly done!

If you do find yourself seizing up with anxiety partway through the test, and if these facts about the CAT format don’t ease your tension, try these techniques to get back on track:

• Inhale deeply. When you stress out, you take shallow breaths and don’t get the oxygen you need to think straight. Breathing deeply can calm you and supply the air you need to get back to doing your best.
• Stretch a little. Anxiety causes tension, and so does working at a computer. Do a few simple stretches to relax and get the blood flowing. Try shrugging your shoulders toward your ears and rolling your head from side to side. You can put your hands together and stretch your arms above your head or stretch your legs out and move your ankles up and down (or both!). Last, shake your hands as though you’ve just washed them and don’t have a towel.
• Give yourself a mini massage. If you’re really tense, give yourself a little rubdown. The shoulders and neck usually hold the most tension in your body, so rub your right shoulder with your left hand and vice versa. Rub the back of your neck. It’s not as great as getting a full rubdown from a professional, but you can book that appointment for after the test!
• Think positive thoughts. Give yourself a quick break. The GMAT is tough, but don’t get discouraged. Focus on the positive; think about the questions you’ve done well on. If you’re facing a tough question, realize that it will get better.
• Take a little vacation. If nothing else is working and you’re still anxious, picture a place in your mind that makes you feel comfortable and confident. Visit that place for a few moments and come back ready to take charge!