Pick Numbers. Stop SUFFERING.
It's 9:40 on a Tuesday night. You shut your work laptop an hour ago, opened your prep, and the first Quant question has a d and an n in every single answer choice. You groan. You start shoving letters around the page. Four minutes later you have something that LOOKS like one of the choices, if you squint. You pick it. It's wrong.
I watch people do this every week. Smart people. People who run budgets and lead teams. Their problem isn't that they can't do algebra. Their problem is that they CHOSE algebra when the question never asked for it.
So here's the verdict. When the answer choices are full of variables, stop doing algebra. Pick numbers. Stop suffering.
What "picking numbers" actually means
A variable is just a letter standing in for a number you don't know. Picking numbers (we call it TESTing VALUES) means YOU decide what that number is. You choose something small and friendly, run the story with real numbers, get a real answer, then plug those same numbers into each answer choice. The choice that gives you the same result is your answer.
Why does this work? If a formula is true for EVERY value, it has to be true for the value you picked. The test isn't checking whether you can rearrange letters. It's checking whether you can reach the right answer under time pressure without a silly mistake. Arithmetic is where people make FEWER silly mistakes.
And the clock is real. The Quantitative Reasoning section of the Executive Assessment gives you 30 minutes for 14 questions, a mix of Problem Solving and Data Sufficiency, as laid out on GMAC's assessment structure page. That's a little over 2 minutes per question on average. Problem Solving is the familiar kind: a question and five answer choices. Data Sufficiency is the odd one, and we'll get to it below.
If you haven't touched math since college, good news: this tactic needs less math, not more. If that's you, read why being rusty at math is a starting point, not a sentence.
Do the work, don't just read about it
Stop here. Grab a pen and a sheet of paper. Don't read the solution until you've tried it.
Notice what happened. No factoring. No common denominators. No wondering whether you dropped a term. Just division and subtraction you could check in your sleep. That's the whole idea: you trade a skill you have to trust for a skill you can SEE.
6 mistakes people make when they pick numbers
- Picking 0 or 1. These are special numbers. Anything times 0 is 0. One squared is still 1. They make different answer choices spit out the same result, and you end up with three "matches." INSTEAD: Pick small, plain numbers like 2, 3 or 5 unless the prompt forces something else.
- Giving two variables the same number. If n and d are both 4, choices that differ only by swapping the letters will look identical. INSTEAD: Use DIFFERENT numbers for different variables.
- Breaking the rules in the prompt. If the question says x is a positive integer (a whole number above zero), then 1/2 and −3 are off the table. INSTEAD: Write the rules on your pad before you pick anything.
- Stopping at the first match. You just saw how that goes. INSTEAD: Check all five choices. It takes 20 seconds. If two match, pick new numbers and recheck only the survivors.
- Doing it all in your head. "I'll just remember that the target was 2." No, you won't, not under the clock. INSTEAD: Write your picked numbers, circle your target, and write the result next to each letter. Every time.
- Picking numbers that make the story ugly. A bill of 7 dollars split among 3 people is a fraction mess. INSTEAD: Pick numbers that make the story clean, like a total that divides evenly by every group size in the problem.
It works on Data Sufficiency too
In Data Sufficiency, you get a question and two statements. You don't have to find the answer. You decide whether the statements give you ENOUGH information to answer it. The five answer choices are always the same, so learn them once.
When the question is a yes or no question, picking numbers becomes a hunt. Your goal is to find one set of numbers that gives YES and another that gives NO. If you can find both, that statement is not sufficient. Done.
When NOT to pick numbers
If the answer choices are plain numbers, not letters, there's often an even cheaper move: plug the answer choices back into the question. That's its own tactic, and it's covered in TEST THE ANSWERS before you touch the algebra. Picking numbers is for when the letters are IN the answers, or when a Data Sufficiency question is asking about a whole category of numbers.
You have to decide what you want MORE: to prove you can still do algebra, or to get the point. The Executive Assessment doesn't give partial credit for elegance. It gives you the score you EARN.
Your challenge for tonight
Go back through your practice and pull 5 Quant questions that had variables in the answer choices, ones you got wrong or got right the long way. Redo each one by picking numbers, on paper, with a timer running. Then compare those times to your first attempt.
I'll bet picking numbers was faster on at least four of the five. And I'll bet you trusted your answer MORE. Go find out.
