How many times have you guessed an answer of lack of time? Many times we know. With school exams it was common, but it can cost you an ample score in case of a wrong answer in GMAT. GMAT is a very significant exam for getting admission in top B-schools across the world. Losing even a single score may impact the overall GMAT score of the candidate in a huge manner. The good news is, after scrolling through plentiful GMAT records, an answer-guessing strategy has come up.

Should you Skip or Guess the GMAT?

The makers of GMAT exam pattern and test understood the guessing strategy way back. As a result, to neutralize guessing, GMAT makers came up with ‘formula scoring’. This way candidates will be severely penalized for wrong answers. If they leave the space blank they will be in a more balanced position since there will either be no deduction or addition. But if candidates guess, and get a wrong answer they will be losing a quarter of a point for five-option multiple-choice questions and 1/3rd of a point for four-option questions. During the times when you are unable to answer a question, the best approach to adopt is the elimination method. You can eliminate the wrong answer choices and guess from the remaining ones.

Is your GMAT Score Affected by Guessing?

GMAT is a computer-adaptive test. You may feel when nearing the end of the exam that a question here or there will not make a huge difference as the algorithm by then has already understood the answering type of the candidate. On other hand, you may keep on guessing at the end of the test and incorrectly answer an easy question. This will make the algorithm confused as to what exactly happened. It will again mark you based on the wrong answer to a seemingly easy question. The best way to handle an unknown question is to strategically guess as stated below.

What is Strategic Guessing in GMAT?

It is generally hard for test-takers to guess during such a crucial exam like GMAT. You try every bit to not guess and keep on trying to find accurate answers to all questions. This not only takes a lot of time but also disables you to attempt other questions. This is where strategic guessing comes into use. Strategic guessing helps you to know when is the time to let go of certain questions that will not serve any purpose. There can be times in the GMAT score when you have to guess in order to improve the score. If there is limited time, and you are tensed about not being able to answer correctly, just make an educated guess. This means, narrow down your answer choices by eliminating the ones which are absolutely wrong. This will result in limited answer choices to choose from. Most of the time, the middle portion of the GMAT questions doesn’t affect your score as it does in the beginning or end. After making the guess, always try to calm down considering it to be a correct answer. You can make use of some of the strategic guessing skills to boost up your GMAT score:

• Remember to always answer the initial and concluding questions accurately
• Make use of strategic guessing to answers you are completely unaware of
• Strategically guess only when you have already spent 1 and half minutes on a specific question and need the same time to answer
• Those questions have always taken most of your time during preparation. Those questions have low chances to be correctly answered. Therefore, candidates are advised to keep a tab of questions they generally get wrong while preparing.
• Those questions which you are unable to answer because of lack of time. As the end of the exam is very important, spending more time to answer those questions accurately is important.

Experts always suggest to not give yourself the chance to strategically guess. They ask candidates to thoroughly practice to not miss any concept. You are supposed to learn those concepts that you find more complex. Proper preparation also helps you to make an educated guess in case of questions you find difficult while answering.