It is a pretty well-accepted fact that within each section on the GMAT the early questions are slightly more important than the late ones (everything I have seen in all my years as a GMAT tutor has confirmed this and there have been some good experiments done by others on the GMATPrep tests that seem to confirm the theory pretty conclusively). In this post I hope to help clear up some of the often misunderstood implications of this idea and help you understand how to manage your time given the slightly disproportionate importance of the early questions.
The first thing to clear up is that there is nothing particularly special about the number 10 that makes it the clear demarcation point. Whenever I think about this concept it makes me think of a conversation I had with my wife about getting pregnant. She was nearing 35 and remarked that she needed to get pregnant before she turned 35 (she was 33 or 34 at the time) because she read that you have a greater risk of having a baby with birth defects when you are over 35. But like the first 10 question concept on the GMAT, it is best to think of it on a spectrum. It’s not like you are not at risk when you are 34 and then all of a sudden you are at a huge risk when you are 35. You are at a slightly greater risk at 35 than at 34 but at 34 you are at a greater risk than at 33 and so on. Why do experts use the number 35 then? The same reason that people say the first 10 questions on the GMAT – it’s a nice round number. So again, the best way to think about it is as a spectrum. The first question is probably a little more important than the second one and the second a little more important than the third and so on. Once you get to AROUND questions 6 to 10 it probably ceases to be as important, but it is a spectrum – I would be a little more willing to go for it on question 4 than on question 8, for example. But certainly by the question 10 mark if not well before that, it ceases to be important.
The second thing to clear up is that this is all a question of degree…again it is a spectrum and is not black and white. It is NOT true that you have to get the first 10 questions right to get a really high score (in fact most people who get really high scores do not get the first 10 right). And no single question really matters that much – not even question 1. I actually just tutored someone last week who got question 1 wrong and then got the next 12 or so right and then proceeded to get a lot more wrong throughout the rest of the test (probably about 13 wrong total) and still managed a near perfect Quant score. And I have tutored many, many people who have gotten 3 or 4 wrong in the first 10 and gotten top scores. The early questions do seem to matter more and certainly if you dominate on the first 10 questions or so you are extremely likely to have a very high score, but again it is a matter of degree – those questions matter a little more and doing well on them will help, but it is not necessary to absolutely dominate on the early questions to get a high score.
Again the way I like to think of it is as a spectrum where the questions go from slightly greater importance to slightly less importance as you move from question 1 forward. People tend to overcompensate and spend WAY too much time on the early questions and then find themselves completely out of time later on the test and are then forced to guess on 10 or more questions. That generally will not lead to a high score. So what should you do? Well it depends a little on the level that you are at…
If you are not at a very high level on a particular section then spending loads of extra time on the early questions is particularly ineffective. Here’s why: Assuming that you do get some of those really early questions right (like maybe 1 through 3 or 1 through 4) you are then going to be seeing very hard questions. If you are really not capable of answering those questions correctly then spending extra time on them is a foolish waste of time. There is no sense in getting yourself in front of 800 level questions and spending a lot of time on those questions if you are really at a 600 level. Even if you get some of those questions right you will probably be way behind on time and then you will eventually find yourself getting 600 level questions wrong later on in the test. At that point not only will you not get the equivalent of 800 on but you probably won’t even get 600 because the algorithm knows that even if you were able to get some 800 level questions right, anyone who is really at an 800 level would also get nearly all 600 level questions right.
If on the other hand you are at a pretty high level on a particular section, then it probably does make sense to spend some extra time on those early questions. But only to a point!!! First of all, if the question is one that you just don’t think you can answer in a reasonable amount of time then it just isn’t worth it – guess and move on. Spending 5 minutes and then getting a question wrong is just about the worst thing you can possibly do on the GMAT. What I recommend is being A LITTLE more willing to spend time on those early questions and that extra willingness should progressively diminish as you approach the 10 question mark, or perhaps earlier than that.
So for example, let’s say on the Quant section, question 3 looks really hard but you think that you can probably answer it in 3 or 4 minutes. On question 3 I would probably go for it. If that same question appeared at question 18 and if I was already 5 minutes behind I would probably choose to guess and move on. That is how the particular placement of a question on the test may affect whether you try to answer it – at question 3 maybe you would go for it and at question 18 maybe you would not.
To take another example, however, if I was at question 7 and was thrown a really difficult question that I wasn’t sure I could answer I might choose to just guess and move on. It would depend on how likely I thought I was to get the question right, how long I thought it would take, and how far ahead or behind I was at that point. If I was 50/50 and thought it was going to take 4 minutes I probably wouldn’t do it (at question 7). If that same calculus presented itself on question 1, however, I might go for it. I might even go for it at question 7 if by some chance I was ahead a little on time, but if I was already behind I probably wouldn’t go for it.
So what we are talking about here is a SLIGHT willingness to spend more time on the early questions. You should NOT feel as though you need to get those first 5 or 10 right – that probably won’t happen anyway and trying to make it happen is likely to screw up the entire section. And again this strategy of spending a little more time on the early questions makes more sense for someone who is at a higher level. In either case remember that it never makes sense to spend a lot of time on questions that you are unlikely to get right. Instead find a way to guess cleverly – even if it is question 1.
One more thing I would like to add to round out this discussion. The strategy of spending a little extra time on the early questions depends on counterbalancing that by spending less time on the questions that follow. Especially in the Quant section, you should probably not spend more than about 5 extra minutes on those first 10 questions. It’s not that hard to make back those 5 minutes across the course of the rest of the section, but again you have to be aware of the need to do so and plan accordingly. If you “strategically dump” a few questions scattered through the rest of the section (say, for example, questions 12, 15, and 19, just for argument sake) you should be totally fine. And if you were able to do it on what you knew to be very hard questions, questions that you would have been unlikely to get right anyway, all the better!
All of this takes some practice. Some people are able to perfect it pretty easily. Others need to take 4 or 5 practice tests before they understand how to strike the right balance. So be patient and give yourself some time to implement it properly. The key is to be aware that it is a balancing act and that you can’t go too far in spending extra time on those early questions!