How Not To Cheat on the GMAT.

One of our most popular blog posts last year was about cheating on the GMAT. It seems the idea of working around the complexities of the test and ‘outsmarting’ the GMAC and Business Schools is a popular fantasy—though I hope that none of our readers seriously entertained the idea.

But there are plenty of ways to get around the toughest parts of the test. So without further ado, here are some tips that feel like cheating but aren’t!

Non-cheat #1: Skip to the right answer without solving the question.

We’ve covered GMAT shortcuts and we have strategies like backsolving and picking numbers in other places, to I won’t go into too much detail here.  But suffice to say, the fact that you have only five answer choices means that in many cases, problems that appear to require complex algebra or arithmetic are as simple as testing a few answer choices out. Where other test-takers are crunching numbers, you’ve bubbled the right answer and moved on!

Similarly, many Inference questions, both Critical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension, can be answered with a simple rule of thumb: pick the vaguest answer choice. Since these questions are asking you what must be true, answers choices with a lot of wiggle room—“some,” “may,” “could,” —are much more likely to be correct than absolute ones—“all,” “must,” “will.” Unlike the Quantitative strategies outlined above, this shouldn’t be one of your primary problem solving techniques, but it’s a great backdoor approach for challenging problems, or when you’re running short on time.

Non-cheat #2: Working off a crib sheet.

You can’t bring anything with you into the test. On Test Day, you’ll turn your pockets inside-out, and if you get caught sneaking notes in, you’re in trouble. But that doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to use a reference on the test—you just have to make it in the center.

You’re not allowed to write anything before the timer starts. But as soon as the test begins, you can write down anything you want. That includes math formulas. I’ve watched students take tests and struggle with the  same math over and over again—say, trying to remember a special right triangle, or to properly apply the speed formula.  If you’re the type of student who does this, why try to remember an equation or ratio many times during the test when you can recall it once, jot it down, and have it as a reference for the next 74 minutes? If you need the formulas even a single time, you’ll already make up the seconds it took to make your ‘crib sheet,’ and if the same type of problem shows up three or four times, the minutes you save can help ensure you wrap up the Quant section in a timely manner.

Non-cheat #3: Reading the questions you must answer before Test Day.

The Quantitative and Verbal sections have a short shelf life and are regularly cycled to avoid answers being leaked. But this is not the case for the AWA. The prompts for both your argument and issue essays have been drawn from the same pool of topics for years—a pool that is publicly available.

You can download and view every essay prompt that you could possibly see on Test Day from mba.com.  There are hundreds; you won’t be able to plan outlines for all of them, let alone memorize that many fully written essays. But reading the whole list shouldn’t take more than a few hours, guaranteeing that  both essays you see on test day will be on subjects you have already seen. Moreover, when you are taking practice tests, you can use random essay topics from that document in place of the ones written by whoever happened to publish the practice CAT. The chances of getting an assignment you’ve already done is low, but I know first-hand it can happen—the GRE works the same way, and my wife started her GRE test looking at a very familiar issue essay prompt!

None of these backdoor strategies constitutes cheating on the GMAT—but every one of them can give you a leg up on your competition and a significant advantage on your test. So try them out for yourself and let us know how they work for you!