Boost Your QR Score by Correctly Using the “Mark” Feature

There are 40 questions in the quantitative reasoning section of the DAT, all with varying difficulty. You will most likely react to each question in one of three ways:

• You will laugh at how easy the question is.
• You will be suspicious that the question seems too easy.
• You will find the question to be exceptionally difficult.

Here’s my advice: don’t get stuck on exceptionally difficult questions.

You should tackle the QR section of the DAT in two waves. For the first wave, answer all of the questions you deem easy. If you don’t know how to do a problem within the first few seconds, guess an answer, mark it, and move to the next question. For the second wave, work through all of the marked questions. But still, manage your time. If you’re taking a long time on a marked problem, move on to the next marked problem.

All of the questions on the DAT are worth the same amount of points, so you have a better chance of answering an easier question than sinking 5 minutes to answer a difficult question. There is no penalty for guessing, so always put an answer down in case you don’t have time to come back.

With this method, you ensure you get all of the easy points. You won’t be scrambling to answer the remaining 5 questions, one or more of which could have been an easy point.

Practice this technique with our DAT quantitative reasoning practice tests. Mark the questions you don’t know how to immediately and make sure you rack up all the easy points you definitely would have got, then tackle the hard problems.