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Pacing, Skipping, and Guessing

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Summary
Mastering time management is crucial for success on the GMAT, as it directly tests your ability to make timely decisions, mirroring the fast-paced decision-making required in the modern business world.
  • Start practicing GMAT problems against a time clock from the beginning of your studies to build up instincts for working under time pressure.
  • Allocate specific time limits for different sections: about two minutes per page on the IR section, two minutes per problem on the Quantitative section (or 90 seconds for a more conservative strategy), and varying times for the Verbal section based on question type.
  • Understand the two types of guessing: blind guessing and solution behavior, with the latter being mathematically advantageous if you can eliminate one or more incorrect answers.
  • Adopt different strategies for the end of the section rush on the Quantitative and Verbal sections, emphasizing not leaving anything blank on Quantitative, while on the Verbal section, an omitted question is no worse than a wrong answer.
Chapters
00:00
The Importance of Time Management
01:43
Strategic Time Allocation
00:00
Approaches to Guessing
04:31
End of Section Strategies

NOTE:  The time targets in this lesson apply to the current GMAT. Please see the lesson "New GMAT Focus Edition Can be Taken Starting November 7, 2023" for more details about the GMAT Focus edition.

Q: I don't understand why you've giving different advice for guessing on verbal versus quant. Can you explain that to me?

Sure! This is a great question, and the answer is based on our experts' experiences and some actual research done by GMAC. (If you're curious for more, check out this article on Bloomberg by Mike or the MBA.com explanation of it!)

The advice boils down to a few distinct things:

  • If you can narrow down the answers to a few choices, the odds are much more likely in your favor and guessing could be right.
  • Never skip a question in quant and try to answer every single problem for the best score.
  • It doesn't seem to make a significant difference in verbal whether one answers everything or leaves some blank, so spend your time trying to accurately answer what you can, but don't worry about not getting to everything.

Again, even if it seems odd, this is based on research done by GMAC where they analyzed thousands of actual GMAT records!

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Intro to the GMAT