My son and I learn Spanish on the app Duolingo now and then. The other day, we got a simple matching game: five English words on the left, five Spanish on the right.

My son started with the pair he found the easiest first. Then the next, and the next. The fourth one made him pause, but he still figured it out. That left just one Spanish word he had no clue about. But, there was only one English word left too. So he matched them up.Easy!

And he got all 5 correct too.

He celebrated getting all five right.

But in that moment I got to thinking: he used the format of the question to his advantage, but he actually didn’t know the meaning of all 5 Spanish words. Pretty clever, but does it kind of miss the point?

The objective is to learn Spanish, not just to get the quizzes correct.

I’m hoping that the app has devised multiple quizzes in different formats with repetitions to ensure that anyone clearing a certain stage actually knows all the words of that stage.

However, when practicing GMAT questions, we practice questions which are all in the same format – 5 options, one correct (except for some Data Insights questions). And if you’re using this format to your advantage, you’re leaving some key potential learning on the table. 

Apply this to your GMAT prep

Let’s take the Verbal questions as an example. Out of five options, only one is correct. We know that.

But when you’re practicing questions at an early stage in your preparation, don’t use that information as an advantage.

What I mean is: don’t think, “Hmm, I’m not sure if this one is right, but I’m confident the other four are wrong, so this must be it.” Or: “I like this one. Don’t know about the rest, but this feels good enough.”

Now, in a test scenario, that’s absolutely fine. In fact, it’s an efficient and smart test-taking strategy when time is ticking.

But if you do that while learning? You’ve just short changed the most important part of practice: learning.

Treat each answer choice independently

When you tackle a CR or RC question, don’t just compare and eliminate. Evaluate each option independently.

Take each option. Think it through. Decide: is this correct or incorrect? And only then move to the next. Don’t ‘park’ it in your head, waiting to see if another option feels better.

Now, e.g. what about questions that ask us to find an answer that weakens *the most*?

Even in those, no worries. Evaluate each answer choice independently. Decide for each answer whether you think it weakens or not. In the end, you may have a situation such that you feel multiple options weaken. That’s ok. Then you can get into evaluating which one weakens the most. In my experience, that is anyway very rare.

On the flip side, sometimes you might feel all 5 answers are wrong. That’s ok too. You can then try to figure out why you think none of the answers is correct.

Sometimes you might feel like more than one option seems okay. Or none of them does. That’s fine. That’s actually the whole point. You want to surface those confusions now, when you’re in training mode.

Such situations present a new opportunity to learn. You are not targeting accuracy anymore. You are targeting extracting as much juice as you can in order to get better.

Same principle applies to Quant

Let’s say you’re doing a problem and realize the answer must be a multiple of 3. So you eliminate the ones that aren’t.

Or the answer has to be greater than 50. So you cut out the lower ones.

Great. Use the options to your advantage.

Maybe you’re left with two answers, maybe one. Plug-in, back-solve. Whatever works.

But once you’re done solving the question, go one step further.

Ask yourself: what if the options were different? What if all the answers were multiples of 3? What if none of them were below 50?

Would you still have been able to solve it?

If the answer is “no”, then there is room for improvement.

And again, by all means, use the format of the question, the answer choices to your advantage. GMAT is a timed test. Anything that can help you save time is useful. All valid to get to the answer.

But if you’re still trying to improve, your fundamental goal is to learn. in the learning phase, dig deeper.—

Getting it right is not the goal. Getting it is.

I don’t mind my son celebrating the five correct answers. He did do something clever.

But what I’d really want him to do is pause and think: “Wait, what does this word actually mean?”

That small shift — from getting it right to actually getting it — makes all the difference.

Same goes for GMAT prep.

Don’t chase accuracy. Chase clarity. You’re not just solving questions. You’re building skills.

And skills don’t develop when you game the question. They develop when you wrestle with it.