Read all answer choices?

hl2270dw

If you think you've found the right answer choice, do you feel it is still wise to read through the other answer choices carefully? And how much time would you spend reading through those other answer choices? This is assuming a real-life testing scenario.

Matt1234567

If I'm 100% positive with my answer choice, and ready to pull the trigger, I quickly glance over the other answers just in case. But I don't spend more than a few secs glancing over each one.

If you're not sure about the argument, nor are you confident, yes, read all the answer choices and use the process of elimination to confidently choose the right answer.

So, yes. Either way, I tend to look over all the answer choices.

nicole.hopkins

@hl2270dw said:
If you think you've found the right answer choice, do you feel it is still wise to read through the other answer choices carefully?

Yes, with the exception of LG questions in which you find the irrefutably right answer and can move on.

For LR and RC, DO read every answer choice and eliminate with confidence. Assume that you're always liable to make assumptions, and mitigate the risk inherent in this tendency by eliminating wrong choices with certainty. In other words, don't rely on your certainty that an AC is correct: bolster that certainty with certainty that the other AC's are wrong.

hl2270dw

I also want to add that I am asking this primarily because some answer choices seem very intentionally complex and weird. Like, I am unable to figure out its relation to the argument. And that might be because it is indeed irrelevant, but that sort of lack of clarity and lack of confidence tends to drag me down in terms of timing.

nicole.hopkins

@hl2270dw said:
Like, I am unable to figure out its relation to the argument. And that might be because it is indeed irrelevant, but that sort of lack of clarity and lack of confidence tends to drag me down in terms of timing

You'll get better at seeing these time sink AC's for what they are It comes with practice and exposure to a lot of material.

Dr. Yamata

I'm probably going to get flamed but I say read all the answer choices all the time. EXCEPT under the "5 minute buzzer trying to get the section complete" scenario. The writers can and will put attractive "shell game" answers up top for just this reason.

Test taker: "A... nah.. B... eh... C... yup. Move on." Oh but C used the word "many" and the correct answer needed the word "most." As it turns out, E was almost identical to C except for this difference. They got ya.

It doesn't take much time to just quickly peek. If your answer is really correct then it shouldn't phase you to see a few more wrong answers.

BUT this can also be used against you. On those big huge long parallel reasoning questions at the end with formal logic and slightly different modifiers, test takers have statistically been shown to make A the correct answer a lot of the time, simply because they know people won't trust their judgment on A without checking the rest, and thus it becomes a time-sink.