The paradox of choices

by DJNY 21:59 0 comments

As already mentioned in a previous post, one of the most important Tactics to keep the mind fresh during the Gmat is to LIMIT your choices. As you know, the paradox of choices says that the more choices you have the less likely you are to focus on the important things and less likely you are to achieve your goals. The same applies on the Gmat. Although the process of elimination is one of the best and most widely used techniques, there are a few other methods that one should know.

The first method consists of a process of elimination that begins with the last option for a question. This is done, because a lot of times the test makers deliberately provide seemingly correct answer choices within the first three options. For example, on a quantitative question, you may have to provide an answer in 'meters' while every quantity given in the question is in 'feet'. The test makers will deliberately put an answer choice in 'meters' because they know that people tend to make those sorts of mistakes. Although this is a simplistic example but it conveys the point.

The second method consists of guessing when you don't know how to solve a question. It is better to "guess" and move on during the first few sections so as to keep your mind fresh during the verbal section, which just happens to have two kinds of questions that you can't really prepare for-reading comprehension and critical reasoning. You need a fresh mind to solve these, which is a hard thing to accomplish in the last hour of the test. So remember to guess/quit wherever necessary in order to be able to apply your mental faculties questions that deserve your attention.

Reduce the number of choices to ensure you can focus on a few worthy options.

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