Articles tagged "Guessing on the GMAT"

Un-Educated Guessing on the GMAT: Problem Solving Edition

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Manhattan Prep GMAT Blog - Un-Educated Guessing on the GMAT: Problem Solving Edition by James Brock

Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GMAT courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.


Do you remember that feeling of being in math class and the teacher asks a question that you really should know, but you don’t, and then you hear your name called to answer the question? Maybe your heart starts racing, your mind blanks even more, and in an attempt to avoid embarrassment, you just start talking, desperately hoping you land somewhere close to the answer.

As a high school teacher, I saw this all the time from the teacher side. And I would smile and thank the student for trying, but usually while thinking “just go ahead and admit that you don’t know!” Read more

Un-Educated Guessing on the GMAT

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Manhattan Prep GMAT Blog - Un-Educated Guessing on the GMAT by James Brock

Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GMAT courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.


As any good GMAT student knows, you can’t possibly answer every question correctly. In fact, if you get the first couple questions right, you will rapidly get into territory where most people can hardly figure out what the questions mean. And if you take extra time to dig into those questions and try to figure them out, it bites you in a big way when you run out of time toward the end. So we quickly learn that if you can’t figure out a good plan to solve a problem, you need to go ahead and take an educated guess.

Sounds great, but it’s not actually that simple, is it? Read more

Which GMAT Problems Should I Guess On? – Part 3: Making Great Guesses on Quant Problems

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Manhattan Prep GMAT Blog - Which GMAT Problems Should I Guess on? - Part 3: Making Great Guesses on Quant Problems by Chelsey CooleyDid you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GMAT courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.


You’ve read a Quant problem, and you’ve realized that you don’t have a plan. How do you make the smartest, fastest guess possible, and increase your odds of salvaging the problem?

Let’s start with Quant Problem Solving problems. Let’s also assume that you’re actually guessing, not using an alternative strategy, such as Backsolving or Choosing Smart Numbers! The following three methods are good ways to make a decent guess even if you don’t have a strategy at all. Read more

Which GMAT Problems Should I Guess On? – Part 2: When to Guess

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Manhattan Prep GMAT Blog - Which GMAT Problems Should I Guess On? - Part 2: When to Guess by Chelsey CooleyDid you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GMAT courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.


If you read the previous article in this series, we hope you’re ready to start using guessing as a first resort! Guessing is a critical and necessary part of getting the GMAT score you deserve. But how do you know that a problem is ‘guessable’? After all, the tough problems aren’t labeled on the test. They look exactly the same as every other problem…or do they? Read more