Spending more time with first questions bad idea?

[martin.ulrich88]

Hi, why is spending more time with first, lets say 5-7 questions in each part a bad idea?

In the practice test a I have never had problems with time and I heard that it might be a good strategy to spend more time with the first ones because the computer estimates your score in the time.

[StaceyKoprince]

Myth. All questions are worth the same amount. Further, there are HUGE penalties for having strings of wrong answers in a row or for not answering all of the questions (running out of time before you're actually done with the Qs). Those things are much more likely to happen if you start trying to spend too much time on certain questions.

Also, if you spend extra time on some questions, that time has to come from somewhere else. If you start speeding up too much on questions that you do know how to do, you're going to start making careless mistakes - which means you're going to lose points that you should have been getting on lower-level Qs, which is going to kill your score.

There's no way to game the test, timing-wise. It doesn't work - I've talked to hundreds of students who found this out the very hard way.

If you want more detail about how the scoring works and why I say what I say above, log into your MGMAT account and download your PDF copy of our e-book The GMAT Uncovered (it's already in there - we give it to everyone). Read the Scoring section and you'll know more than you ever wanted to know! :)

[pulsar5843]

The strategy that i use while solving the paper is that start from first quetion and move till end , attempt those first that are easy and in which i am well prepared . Then with successive attempts , solve questions that take more time and so on...
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biomedical engineer

[messi10]

Hi pulsar,

GMAT is a computer adaptive exam and requires each question to be answered in the order in which it is presented.

What exam are you referring to please? These forums are for the GMAT exam only.

Regards

Sunil

[StaceyKoprince]

Old paper tests are a good source of individual questions but, as Sunil notes, they do not at all mimic the real GMAT any longer. It's important to use practice CATs that are like the real thing - there are a LOT of important differences.