Which Questions Should I Skip on the GRE?
One of my guilty TV pleasures is a British quiz show called “The Chase.” I like to watch it on the spin bike—there’s something about seeing people with British accents stammer, panic, and forget the names of their own children that makes a hard workout seem a little shorter. And as a trivia show, it feels vaguely more educational than, say, “Keeping Up With the Kardashians”.
Plus, believe it or not, it illustrates one of the most important things you’ll learn while studying for the GRE: knowing yourself is more important than knowing the math.
See, every round of The Chase starts with a “cash builder”: one minute of rapid-fire trivia questions. Each right answer adds £1,000 to the amount on the table. Wrong answers and passes don’t count at all: it’s only about the number you get right. (Sort of like the GRE.)
Here’s what the cash builder round normally looks like. But here’s what it looks like when you don’t know what you don’t know.
Neither of these two contestants knew every answer. In fact, the first contestant passed on multiple questions. Yet, when he decided to pass, he did so quickly and fluently. When he did take a few extra seconds to think, it generally paid off with a right answer. In other words, he could quickly and correctly predict whether he’d get something right.
The second contestant, on the other hand, was sure that he knew the answer to the first question—so sure that it took him twelve entire seconds to admit that he didn’t know it after all. And his run was all downhill from there.
What does that have to do with the GRE?
The GRE operates under basically the same set of rules. Only right answers count. Your time is limited. And your goal is to get as many points as you can, although the reward is a gold star on your grad school applications, not a thousand bucks for each right answer!
(There’s also one other difference that you’ll see throughout this article: when I talk about “skipping” a question on the GRE, I don’t mean literally skipping it! You should never leave a question blank on the GRE. Instead, I’m using the term “skip” to refer to making a quick, mostly random guess and then moving calmly to the next problem. This makes skipping different from educated guessing or estimation.)
So, the behaviors that lead to better cash builder rounds will probably, for most of us, also lead to better GRE performances. In other words, all else being equal, somebody who can accurately predict whether they’ll get an answer wrong—and who isn’t shy about bailing out—will get a better overall score. The person who can do that will get to seriously attempt more of the questions, and will be more likely to have enough time to get the easy ones right.
When I showed you those two clips of game show contestants, I also chose not to show you a clip like this one. It’s an amazing performance, but it’s the exception that proves the rule. When you’re sure you’ll quickly know the answer to every single question, there’s no point in skipping problems. But the overwhelming majority of us don’t have the time and wherewithal to get to that point, nor do we need to. Unless you’re aiming for a 170, you can get away with missing a certain number of questions. You only need to avoid missing more than that number.
How many questions can I miss anyway?
Nobody has a truly definitive answer to that question, since ETS, for good reason, doesn’t release the official data. But, various folks have done research using the PowerPrep practice tests and official GRE score reports, and the results are heartening. You can score over 160 in Quant, and into the 165 range in Verbal, with 3-4 wrong answers on each section. If your goal score is closer to the high 150s, you can get away with five or more misses per section in Quant, and seven or more in Verbal. \
This is an oversimplification, since your GRE score is adjusted to account for which second section you saw. The GRE is section-adaptive, and a right answer on the hardest second section is worth more than a right answer on the easiest one. But, the overall point stands: there’s a certain number of questions that you can safely miss and still hit your goal score, as long as you don’t miss anything else. And that number, depending on your exact goal score, may be higher than you thought. I encourage you to read the research for yourself!
Which questions should I skip on the GRE?
Think about the questions that you missed on your last practice GRE. They should fall into two broad categories. First, there are the questions that you just can’t realistically answer in the time you have. Either you just don’t know (or remember) the material, you can’t figure out where to start, or your strategy seemed okay at first but isn’t yielding any results, and you aren’t sure why. Second, there are the questions that you could have gotten right, but didn’t. These are the ones where you misread something (or misread your own handwriting!), made a calculation error, or assumed something you shouldn’t have.
The big difference between these two types of problems is that having a little more time and mental energy will help you with the second type of mistake on test day, but won’t help you (usually) with the first type. In fact, that’s exactly how I want you to conceptualize the two types of missed problems:
- Type 1: Problems you still would have gotten wrong with an extra 30 seconds of calm reflection.
- Type 2: Problems you would have gotten right with an extra 30 seconds of calm reflection.
You aren’t going to get the Type 1 problems right on test day. The only thing you can do about them is to practice before test day, and improve your skills to the point where fewer problems will be Type 1 for you. But, even on test day, you can still “win” those Type 1 problems, even though you can’t get them right without wasting your own time. The way to win a Type 1 problem is to recognize it calmly and bail out quickly, without letting it throw you off your game and without falling for the sunk cost fallacy (“I already spent so much time on this one, I have to keep going”).
So:
- Before test day, study and develop your content knowledge, so that fewer problems on your test will be unrealistically hard/long.
- On test day, acknowledge that unless you’re aiming for a 170, and unless you’ve studied accordingly, you will miss problems. You have control over the Type 2 problems, but not the Type 1 problems.
- So, when you see a Type 1 problem, tell the GRE “nice shot,” and keep moving. When you see a Type 2 problem, take the extra time to be 100% sure you’re not going to make a mistake.
How do I know that a problem is Type 1?
Some of that is learning that happens before test day. As you study, you’ll get better and better at predicting whether you’ll get a question right, or whether it’s one of the three (or five, or seven, etc.) “skippable” questions on your test.
In fact, you can practice identifying skippable questions. Here’s how. Flip to a problem you’ve never seen before, take 30 seconds to read it completely, then make a prediction: will you get it right? If so, how long will it take?
Then, try the problem as normal. Was your prediction correct? Why or why not?
This is a challenging exercise to do for more than one reason. Outside of the GRE, your life experiences have taught you that saying “I won’t get this one right” is the equivalent of admitting defeat, and that admitting defeat is bad. But on the GRE, predicting that you’ll miss a problem isn’t the same as letting the test win. Failing to predict that you’ll miss a problem—now that’s letting the test win. And predicting what you’ll miss is a skill, one that takes practice to develop.
You’ll also naturally develop a sense of what’s skippable and what isn’t by keeping a GRE problem log. Periodically review your problem log. If you see a pattern in the problems that bog you down and waste your time, and it’s getting close to test day, be more aggressive about guessing on them.
For many of my students, this means being more aggressive about skipping one or two particular types of problems, and spending a little more time on others. If test day is coming up, and you know you’re still struggling with Quantitative Comparisons, don’t do them first. Skip to the Discrete Quant or Data Interpretation questions when you get to a Quant section. Then, return to the Quantitative Comparison questions with the time you have left, prioritizing the easy ones. Don’t attempt a hard problem in a weak area unless there’s nothing easier left to work on.
On test day, there are a few rules of thumb to use when determining whether to skip a problem. If you read the problem completely one time and you truly don’t understand it (especially if you can’t figure out what the question is asking), it’s quite likely to be a Type 1 problem. Guess and move on, unless you’re well ahead on time and the problem is in a content area you’re strong in. Also, if you’ve spent more than about 90 seconds on any problem and you don’t understand exactly how you’re going to solve it, it’s probably time to bail out and move on. Don’t be tempted to spend “just a few more seconds”! Finally, never spend more than an extra minute or so on any problem, no matter how certain you are that you’ll get it right eventually. If too much time has passed, bail out, regardless of how well it’s going.
Quick advice: skipping GRE problems
Here’s the short version. You should try to get as many problems right on each section as possible, but you don’t need to get all of them right. Some wrong answers (type 1) are unavoidable, while others (type 2) can easily be avoided if you take a little more time and care. Before test day, your goal is to learn enough that you can answer most problems quickly. But, there will still be problems you can’t answer quickly: the right strategic move with those is to identify, bail quickly, and spend the extra time to avoid type 2 mistakes. That’s the best way to win big money in a game show lightning round, and it’s the best way to get a strong score on the GRE painlessly.
[NEXT: Everything You Need to Know About GRE Time Management]
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Chelsey Cooley
is a Manhattan Prep instructor based in Seattle, Washington. Chelsey always followed her heart when it came to her education. Luckily, her heart led her straight to the perfect background for GMAT and GRE teaching: she has undergraduate degrees in mathematics and history, a master’s degree in linguistics, a 790 on the GMAT, and a perfect 170Q/170V on the GRE. Check out Chelsey’s upcoming GRE prep offerings here.