You must get all, or at least most, of the early questions right in order to score well?
As you will see with most of the myths/facts in this series, there is some truth and some fiction in the statement above. So let’s start with what definitely is true…
Doing “well” early in the test does tend to lead to a better score. As a test taker, you are essentially trying to demonstrate that you are capable of answering hard or very hard questions correctly, and the sooner you get to those hard questions the better. Ideally you’ll have a strong start (prompting the test to give you harder questions), elevate to a level that is just at the edge of your abilities, and then hang on for dear life, getting some of the subsequent questions wrong but enough right to maintain that level for the rest of the test. If you do so poorly in the first 5 or 10 questions that the test starts pitching you easy questions, you can still right the ship, do well, and eventually start seeing harder questions. But if that shift doesn’t happen until midway through the test or later, the outcome will not be as good. Effectively, you’ll be punished for missing the easy and medium questions that you missed, and you’ll have less of an opportunity to show what you are capable on harder questions.
I have personally looked at many thousands of official GMAT Prep practice tests and nearly as many ESRs (Enhanced Score Reports) from official administrations of the GMAT to know that the above is true. But if you are interested in a more scientific study of the above phenomenon, there is a great post on GMAT Club that looks at different scenarios on the official practice tests and demonstrates convincingly the importance of the early questions.
All of that said, there are many sources of confusions related to the above that lead to misinformation and myths about the importance of the early questions. So let’s discuss these…
First, it is NOT necessary to get all or even most of the first 5 or 10 questions right to get a top score. All other things being equal, doing well at the beginning is more important than doing well at the end. So, it DOES make sense to frontload your time a little and spend a bit more time on the early questions, even at the expense of having a bit less time towards the end of the section. But one can still get a top score without getting all or even nearly all of the early questions right. The level of difficulty of the questions is a factor here: if 3 of the first 4 or 5 questions are 750 to 800 level questions, you may not get them right no matter how much time you spend on them. Unless you are aiming for a perfect score, that is no big deal anyway.
And even if you did get them right, well guess what? Now you will continue to see mostly very hard questions and unless you think you can hang in there and continue to mostly get those questions right, you are likely to falter and drop down into an easier bracket anyway, effectively nullifying the hard work you did to try to prove that you are at an 800 level. What’s worse is that if you spent an undue amount of time on those early, impossible questions, you might then not have sufficient time to deal with easier questions that come later in the test, ones that you definitely could have gotten right if you’d had the time. And if that happens, you’ll end up with a score that is lower than what your real ability would indicate.
Another slight point of confusion for people that leads to misinformation and misunderstanding is the idea that it’s the first 10 questions specifically that matter most. It’s as if the questions matter tremendously right up to question 10 and then it just drops off completely after that. I have an entire blog post devoted to this confusion, but there is nothing magical about the first 10 questions. I mean, why not the first 9 or first 11? A better way to think about it as that if the early questions matter slightly more, that emphasis declines gradually as you move away from question number 1. And by the time you are at question 6 or 7 or 8 or so, it probably doesn’t make sense to prioritize the early questions anymore. Crucially, if you HAVE spent more time on those early questions, then by the time you get to 7 or 8 or 9 you probably need to shift gears and speed up to make up for the extra time you spent the earlier questions. If you continue at the slightly slower pace that you started at, you’ll end up way behind and won’t be able to catch up.
Really the main danger with not having a nuanced understanding of the importance of the early questions and in believing that one needs to get all or virtually all of them right is that it often leads people to foolishly spend WAY too much time on questions that they are unlikely to get right. I have seen this over and over again with students I have tutored. Usually I catch the mistake in the practice tests and disavow students of their misunderstanding so that it doesn’t happen on the actual GMAT. But I have had students fail to heed my advice and just get killed on the exam when they spent 6 or 7 minutes on one of the first few questions because they just felt like they MUST get it right and then basically realized it was all over before the test had really begun because they were so far behind they couldn’t possibly catch up.
So yes, the early questions do have a SLIGHTLY increased importance and IF you see a question early on that you think you can get right, then it makes sense to frontload your time on the section and spend A LITTLE more time to ensure you get it right. But you cannot afford to throw excessive amounts of time at questions that you are likely to get wrong just because you think that you “have to” get the question right. Such thinking is incorrect and will cause you to end up with a score that is far below what you are truly capable of achieving.