If you’re thinking about taking the GMAT and going to business school, chances are you’ve already taken hundreds of written tests throughout your career. Some of them were probably standardized tests like the SAT or ACT, and others might have been in your high school and college classes. Most likely, those tests involved sitting down and answering a set list of questions that your teacher or professor created beforehand; everyone in the class got the same set of questions, and scores were determined based on the share of questions each student answered correctly.
The GMAT is different. Not only is it on a computer, but also it’s adaptive, meaning it adapts the questions you receive based on how it perceives your ability. If you are answering easy questions correctly, for example, the computer will start feeding you harder questions to see if you can handle them. Conversely, if you’re answering very hard questions incorrectly, you may start to see easier questions come up.
Beating the adaptive system requires building a strategy that fits your strengths and weaknesses. It also means figuring out when to guess.
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