Quantitative Strategy - Need Advice

[shusin2]

Since we do not not the level of difficulty of the questions during the test, what is the best strategy if we face difficult questions (take more than 2 minutes to answers, per se) ? My goal is just want to pass with at least 550 not 700.

1. randomly guess.
2. try to solve the problem
3. if i think it is too hard, i just guess as quickly as possible
4. or what......

Thanks in advance

[JonathanSchneider]

Hi shusin2! Great question. First of all, you do not want to automatically spend more time or less time whenever you see a hard question. Instead, you want to get a sense of: will you be able to solve this question? If you think about the problem for a few seconds but have no idea what it is asking you, or how to solve it, then simply guess and move on. However, this should be very rare. More often it will be the case that you might have some sense of how to proceed, but you are not quite sure. When that is the case, you must decide: do you feel it is worth your time to make an effort to find an actual solution? or should you make an educated guess? Note that an educated guess is NOT a random guess. We can often approximate the right answer for math questions or eliminate wrong answers for verbal questions, to at least improve our chances. Educated guessing is a key component of solid GMAT performance. Even MGMAT instructors make an educated guess at least once or twice per exam section.

Over time as you study, you want to develop a sense of how long it takes you to solve certain problems correctly. If you are facing a problem on the test that you know is in your weak area, you should feel more free to guess and move on, so as to save time. If, however, you are facing a problem of a type that you have historically gotten right, you should probably proceed with your work on that problem. So, you see, it has more to do with the type of question and your ability to solve it than it does with the difficulty level of the problem itself.