In It to Win It
This is probably the shortest—and most important—article I’ve written in a year. It’s just a little story, but it’s the story of a crucial epiphany one of my students (and I) just had.
Last night, at the end of a class I was teaching, one of my students began asking questions about timing and guessing on the GMAT. He’s really struggling with the idea that he has to let some questions go and that he’s going to get a decent number of questions wrong. I told him he’s not alone; most students have significant difficulty accepting this idea—and those who can’t accept it almost never reach their goal scores.
As we discussed the boring details of how the GMAT works, he acknowledged that he knew he had to do what I said (because I’m the expert 😊), but he was having a tough time because, normally, he’s in it to win it.
(For those who aren’t familiar with that expression, it means that, if you’re playing a game, you’re always going for it and trying to win.)
When he said that, a light bulb went off in my head, and I then said something to him that made a light bulb go off in his head. I said:
Yes, but are you playing the right game?
You see, he’s been playing the game he was taught to play in school—there, getting things right is more important than the length of time spent. In school, grades are almost always based on percentage correct. The best students expect to get everything right.
But we’re not playing that game anymore. This is a new game with different rules. If you play by school rules, you’re not going to get the best score that you’re capable of getting.
My student got really excited (as did the few other students who’d stuck around after class—it pays off to listen even if you don’t have any questions yourself!). He had what we call an “Aha!” moment: he realized that this was not about making himself give up or be less competitive by accepting that he was going to give up on some questions. He realized that, instead, he needed to learn how to excel at this new game, and that all these things we’ve been telling him are basically the new rules of the game.
In other words, sticking to your timing, learning to make educated guesses, cutting yourself off on too-hard questions and making educated guesses instead—all of these habits ARE the habits of someone who is In It To Win It! You’re not giving up when you do those things. You’re playing the game like an expert.
I’ve been saying the above in various ways in many articles for a long time, but never as clearly and succinctly as this. (At least, I hope it’s clear. Let me know in the comments!)
Here are some additional resources to solidify this new mindset and do what you need to do to win the game.
Scoring: Read the Scoring section of Manhattan Prep’s free e-book The GMAT Uncovered Guide. If you have an account with us (even a free account), the Guide is already sitting in the Downloads section of your Student Center. (Note: it’s in the Downloads section as of the date of publication of this article; it could move over time.)
Timing: Read this article on Time Management and start doing what it says.
Educated Guessing: The above article on Time Management contains links to two other articles on educated guessing (one each for Quant and Verbal).
Key Takeaways for Being In It to Win It
(1) Don’t play the game you were taught to play in school. The GMAT is a different game. Learn how to play it.
(2) Your goal is NOT to get all of the questions right—that was the School game, not the GMAT game. You will be given questions that are too hard for you (I get them, too!). You will most likely get them wrong, of course, because they are too hard. The only choice you have is whether you take too long to get them wrong and thereby hurt yourself on other questions later in the section.
(3) You will get roughly 60% of the questions in a section right and roughly 40% wrong. (This does change at the highest and lowest scoring levels, but the vast majority of scorers will be in this 60/40 range.) You can score a 700 and still get only 60% of the questions right. Expect to get stuff wrong. Tell the computer Nice shot! and move on, mentally and literally. 📝
Can’t get enough of Stacey’s GMAT mastery? Attend the first session of one of her upcoming GMAT courses absolutely free, no strings attached. Seriously.
Stacey Koprince is a Manhattan Prep instructor based in Montreal, Canada and Los Angeles, California. Stacey has been teaching the GMAT, GRE, and LSAT for more than 15 years and is one of the most well-known instructors in the industry. Stacey loves to teach and is absolutely fascinated by standardized tests. Check out Stacey’s upcoming GMAT courses here.
Thanks for your question! This is a fine line and there’s a short and long answer. 🙂
Short answer: If I’m going to have the solution in 20 seconds, then I already know what I’m doing. What you’re describing is being 20 seconds away from realizing what you *could* do to get to the solution…and then that may take another minute or two. And maybe you’ll get it right if your solution path is valid and if you do everything right and if you don’t make a mistake when you’re already stressed about time. That’s a lot of ifs. Here’s another: if you’re already over time when you’re thinking all of this…get out. 🙂 Stop prioritizing being right over appropriate use of time (and, just as important, mental energy). That’s a sure path to a lower GMAT score than you’re capable of getting.
The longer answer: Study when to make this call just like you study everything. First, practice making that call. But then learn from it: When you review the problem, ask yourself whether you were right to make the call when you did. You may discover that, in certain cases, you really were 30 seconds from the solution. Now you can ask yourself: “How will I know that next time? What were the clues that I was almost there? How will I recognize what to do next time?”
As you gain skill, more of the time, you’re actually going to realize that you should have cut yourself off even sooner. 🙂 And as you recognize what to do on more questions, you can more easily just get out when you do hit something unfamiliar because you know you don’t recognize what’s going on (even though in general you recognize a lot of stuff).
-Stacey
I loved the game analogy! I’d say that school tests were like a boxing match, where brute force is a great advantage. But GMAT is like speed chess – brute force has NO advantage – in fact, it’s probably a disadvantage.
Hi, Nez. This overall idea permeates all of our study lessons – all of the strategic material that’s discussed in the Roadmap book, in the Prepare to Face the GMAT lessons spread out through the 9 sessons of both Interact and live class (sessions 1, 6, 7, and 9) and in how we teach problems in those lessons / classes.
If you would like to read more about this idea in one concise place, you can go here (but all of this stuff is incorporated already throughout Interact / class and Roadmap).
https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog/2015/09/14/this-mindset-will-make-you-feel-good-about-skipping-problems-on-the-gmat/
http://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog/2012/07/25/everything-you-need-to-know-about-time-management-part-1/
Lastly, we felt obliged to point out that this article is academic in nature and not an advertisement.
The solution is not this article. Neither is the reading it.
How do I internalize this?
Do I have to get a new set of practice tests for time management practice and GMAT strategy practice?
Well it seems like the deal.
Knowing how to do GMAT.
The rest are whats.
Sometimes the little details I’m getting here are mind boggling.
What the heck have I been doing!
So first, I go n know the basics, the what’s (math rules n stuffs)… Then the real deal– THE GMAT “HOW”.
I expect stuffs like these in my e-mail and student page not sale ads
That was useful to know that i can get good score even if i get some of them wrong. To its the quality of question that you need to get right to score not the quantity. Interesting:)
Thanks Stacey, for this amazing article!! I think this strategy will help me a lot, as I usually don’t give up on problems so easily. But this article made me realize that it’s not personal on GMAT. Best choice is to guess when stuck and move on.
By the way, I am very new to the blog and wanted to know that if I had some doubts, so what will be the correct platform to discuss the same. May I mail the same to you? Sometimes I have trouble with questions and there is nobody to discuss with.
Thanks again for the article!! If I do not get a reply on this post, I would understand! 🙂
It was great one, thank you Stacey!
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Great article! “Yes, but are you playing the right game?†makes the new and more effective paradigm crystal clear to the reader.
A gr8 article Befitting the context 🙂
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great explanation! Tks
On the real test, if you have an answer selected but time runs out before you can confirm it, the test will still accept your answer.
(Note: on our practice tests, you will lose that point. We’re extra-mean about it because we want you to get your timing to the point that you’re not rushing so much at the end!)
Hi, Stacey!
Will a test-taker be penalized if he or she lefts one last question is a section with option chosen but answer not submitted?
There isn’t a standard penalty for getting any one question wrong or for getting a certain number wrong in a row – it depends on many factors, including your scoring level leading into the string of wrong answers.
The general rule is: the more wrong you have in a row, the more steeply your score will go down (think of it as a line curving downward, not just a straight line). The other general rule: the worst possible place to get a long string in a row wrong is at the END of the section… because you don’t have any chance to bring the score back up again. (That’s why it’s so important not to run out of time.)
It’s not great to have a string of 5-6+ wrong in a row anywhere, of course, but if it happens earlier in the section, at least you do still have some room to recover / lift your score back up. 🙂
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Hi Stacy..
A qstn here. If 60% correct answers is what all required then what penalty it has for starting 5-6 rong questions?
Excellent, as always.. And extremely helpful.. Thanks 🙂
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I really like this approach, I think its like playing timed chess with the computer.. will try this in upcoming tests for sure.
I hope so! Good luck!
Stacey, Great article! I’m really glad I read it. I’ve been struggling with Quant (inconsistent between the low and high 30s) and am looking forward to trying this strategy on my next CAT. I’ve been frustrated because I can answer 700-800 level Quant questions under two minutes about half of the time while having no problems with 600-700 questions. After some analysis I noticed that I became ‘decisively engaged’ on about 3-5 questions each CAT, up to 5 minutes in one case, that resulted in quickly guessing on the last 4-5 questions. I also saw that I usually knew how to solve most of those final questions. Furthering my confusion my Verbal scores have steadily increased with each CAT and I usually have extra time at the end of the section. I’m currently scoring in the mid 600s. I hope this is what it takes to hit that 700 mark! Thanks for the advice! This may be the key to breaking out of the 600s.
Just to make sure – the 10 figure is approximate, not definite.
The 10 non-operational (experimental) questions are not tied to / included in the scoring calculation for you, nor will they match the difficulty levels you have been “earning” on the test (the non-operational Qs haven’t yet been assigned difficulty levels). They also don’t factor into the 60%-ish correct (60% for most people, a little higher or lower at the higher and lower ends of the scoring scale).
There is one exception: if you do not finish all of the questions, then ALL of the unanswered questions are counted against you, even if some of those would have been experimental had you answered them. In other words, NEVER leave a question blank.
Stacey,
Thanks for the reply.
To add on the matter of 70-80% correct answer, do GMAC consider 10 experimental questions for calculating accuracy percentage? eg. Among 41 Verbal questions, 31 questions are normal, and 10 questions are experimental (though, not explicitly mentioned in the set) ; while counting correct answers, do GMAC also include the response of 10 experimental questions and set the score-percentile mark(70-80%) accordingly? However, I read somewhere that these 10 exp. questions are not contributed to the score calculation. Can you please throw some light on this discrepancy of my understanding?
At nearly all scoring levels, people will answer only about 60% of the questions correctly. When you get above about the 80th percentile or so in ONE section, then you start to answer a somewhat higher percentage of questions correctly, perhaps 70% or 80% (if you’re scoring 90th+ percentile). But you will ALWAYS get many more questions wrong than you would normally expect for a regular “school” test (that is, a test where the score is based on percentage correct). The score on the GMAT is NOT based on percentage correct. Expect to miss a lot of questions.
Hi Stacey,
Can you please explain what do you mean by –
(3) You will get roughly 60% of the questions in a section right and roughly 40% wrong. (This does change at the highest and lowest scoring levels, but the vast majority of scorers will be in this 60/40 range.) You can score a 700 and still get only 60% of the questions right.
Hi, guys
Just wanted to say thanks for all of the kind words. I’m glad that you found this article so helpful. Good luck with your studies!
this is one of the greatest articles about gmat that i’ve ever read! 🙂 Thank you Stacey!
An extremely helpful article! Thank you Stacey 🙂
That’s great, Tahir, congratulations! I’m sure you also studied / learned more, but if you were losing points at the end of your earlier tests because you were running out of time / having to guess on multiple Qs in a row, then guessing as you went along instead would have saved you that score drop at the end of each section – essentially, a score increase!
So right before I took a mock test, I read this article and was VERY intrigued with this new information I have never heard before. So going through the test, I guessed maybe 5 Quant and 6 Verbal questions and moved on quickly. My old mindset would have me trying to figure the problem out. I actually scored 70 points higher than my 3 earlier mock tests. Don’t know if this was the reason but clearly something helped.
Thank for this info!!!
Wonderful article!
Thanks Stacey for that wonderful guidance. I am one of the 60/40 scorer and after reading your article I am feeling a lot confident that there is still hope for me to achieve that 700+ score in my GMAT which is in 2 weeks. I will try this in my MOCK test tomorrow.
Cheers!
My exam is in 3 weeks..And this piece definitely brought a smile on my face,and a new sense of confidence!Thanks and Cheers!!
Really its amazing and exciting !
Really its amazing and exciting ! Helpful for prepration
Thanks for the article. very Helpful
I’m ready to take another practice test after reading this 🙂 thanks!!
Fantastic article. I really needed to read the 3rd key takeaway. Thank you so much.
Wow…this article, and your site, is totally eye popping. I took a competitor’s course and blew $1,200. Embarrassingly, I still haven’t broken 500 on any of the 8 practice tests I have taken even though my % right has increased on say the first 25 to 28 questions…its mind boggling, but the fact is that I always rush thru the last 12 to 15 questions and get 90% of those wrong! No one really explained the “in it to win it philosophy, and while not a quick fix, i’m excited to try those tests again w/this mindset in mind. Thanks for dropping that knowledge.
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Lovely article 🙂
Stacey, Thanks for recommending! Great article! It helps me relax and feel more confident about the problems I can’t solve! I like the 3 tips to win at this game and the “nice shot” mindset when you are looking at a too hard question.
I completely agree that this is a different game. This game is against time*Questions and not just agianst questions. As soon as you realize that the question is pretty complicated, make an educated guess of the last two options and move on.
The idea is to get those easy & moderate questions right, and educated guess on those few difficult questions.
Wow! Good One….That one will perhaps motivate me to compromise on Probability
Great article…very motivating… Too inspiring for a person like me who is about to play this game in 2 weeks time… But I don know how will it work…