How and When to Guess on the GRE

Your performance on the GRE is an indicator of your ability to handle a post-graduation course. So, well-planned preparation is the method you should opt to ace the GRE. But having a ‘Plan B’ is a mature way to handle an unpredictable situation. Everyone, from The President of the United States to a humble plumber, needs to have a ‘Plan B’ for unforeseen circumstances. Your GRE preparation should do too.

The GRE is a timed test and hence the speed of answering questions is an important factor that determines your success on the GRE. So you can skip hard questions about which you don’t have any clue. But skipping a question does not mean that you do not answer the question. This is one situation where you should go for guess work. Now, even guess work can be done with a certain amount of smartness. Your chances of guessing correctly can be significantly increased if you follow the techniques taught at Manya.

For example, in reading comprehension questions, instead of spending time reading a complex/long passage – you can go to the question directly, find the relevant information in the passage and quickly start working the answers. At Manya, we not only teach you quick and effective techniques but we also train you to recognize wrong answers. Based on extensive analysis of the actual GRE tests, we know that wrong answers on the GRE have certain recognizable characteristics.

Another situation when you should guess is when you run out of time. There may come a situation where you do not have time to even go through the question. The only thing to do is to shoot in the dark. Never leave questions unattempted, because there are no negative marks in GRE.

Rigorous and systematic preparation for your GRE will greatly reduce the need to guess on the GRE. One way to prepare effectively is to take help from experts in the GRE prep. The strategies and techniques learned will enable you to take the GRE test successfully. At Manya-The Princeton Review we have GRE courses designed to meet every need and every budget.

Blog By: Sadiq Ali

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*The views expressed in this blog are not necessarily those of Manya – The Princeton Review Private Limited.