Bocconi Graduate Test common mistakes
Bocconi Graduate Test · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Spending a fixed amount of time on every quantitative item instead of letting easy algebra and arithmetic items pay for the harder ones, so the last third of the section is answered in a rush or left blank.
Candidates treat the section as a school test where all questions deserve equal effort, and they fear that skipping an item means losing guaranteed marks. The exam is scored on correct answers within a hard time limit, so opportunity cost is the real constraint, and most people never practise under a clock long enough to feel that.
What to do instead
Adopt a two-pass strategy in every practice set: first pass, answer only items you can finish in about 60-75 seconds; second pass, return to the rest with the remaining time. Log the time per item for ten sessions and compute your personal cutoff, then rehearse abandoning an item at that cutoff without finishing the calculation.
Reading a data-interpretation table or chart and immediately computing with raw counts, ignoring that the question asks for a percentage, a per-capita rate, or a change relative to a stated base year.
The numbers are visually salient and the units are easy to skim, so the first plausible operation gets executed. Under time pressure candidates anchor on the largest or first number they see rather than restating what quantity the question actually requests.
What to do instead
Before any arithmetic, write a one-line formula in symbols naming the numerator and denominator, e.g. 'share = segment / total for that year'. Then check the axis labels, units (thousands vs millions), and whether the base is the previous year or a fixed reference year. Train this on ten chart items a day until the formula line becomes automatic.
Treating a reading-comprehension passage as a memory test, reading it once quickly and then answering from a vague impression, so inference and 'the author would most likely agree' items are decided by personal opinion rather than the text.
Candidates transfer habits from school reading where the gist suffices, and they underestimate how precisely the options are worded. Distractors are built from true-sounding statements that the passage never commits to, and a vague memory cannot discriminate between them.
What to do instead
Read the passage once for structure, marking the thesis, each paragraph's function, and any concession or contrast word. For every option, return to the exact sentence that supports or refutes it and reject options that are true in general but unsupported here. Practise by writing, for each wrong option, the single word that makes it wrong (scope, degree, cause, time).
Solving syllogisms and conditional-reasoning items by intuition about what sounds plausible, rather than by formalising the quantifiers and checking whether the conclusion is forced.
Everyday reasoning tolerates conversational implicature, so 'some A are B' is silently read as 'some A are not B' and 'if P then Q' is read as 'if Q then P'. These converses feel natural in speech but are invalid, and the exam deliberately uses familiar content that triggers them.
What to do instead
Rewrite each premise in stripped symbols (All A are B; Some A are C) and test the conclusion by constructing a counterexample diagram or a case where premises hold and conclusion fails. Drill the invalid forms explicitly: converse, inverse, affirming the consequent, and 'some' versus 'some not'.
Making an arithmetic slip inside a multi-step problem and carrying the wrong number forward, because the intermediate result is never sanity-checked against the size or sign expected.
The exam rewards speed, and mental arithmetic on percentages, ratios, and fractions is where errors accumulate silently. Candidates also mis-handle percentage change (adding percentages of different bases) and unit conversions under pressure.
What to do instead
After each intermediate step, do a five-second magnitude check: is the answer roughly what the numbers imply, and is the sign sensible? Convert percentages to fractions and back to confirm, and use approximation (e.g. 19.6% of 480 is about one-fifth of 480) to bracket the exact result before computing it.
Answering a 'which of the following weakens/strengthens the argument' item by choosing the option that is most interesting or most strongly worded, instead of the one that attacks or supports the stated link between evidence and conclusion.
Candidates evaluate the topic rather than the argument's structure. They never isolate the conclusion and the assumption, so an option about a related but irrelevant factor, or one that restates the premise, feels responsive.
What to do instead
For every argument item, write the conclusion in one sentence and the gap as 'the argument assumes that ___'. Then classify each option as attacking the gap, supporting it, or off-topic. Reject options that merely repeat evidence, address a different claim, or use absolute language the argument never needed.
Misreading the question stem's quantifier or negation, for example answering 'which is NOT true' as if it said 'which is true', or missing 'except', 'least', or 'cannot be determined'.
The stem is read once at speed and the brain fills in the more common positive phrasing. Because the options often contain one clearly true statement, the misread produces a confident wrong answer that feels correct.
What to do instead
Underline or mentally capitalise the operative word in every stem before looking at options, and restate the task silently: 'I am looking for the false one'. On review, re-read the stem of any item you answered in under twenty seconds, since speed is where the negation gets lost.
Guessing on quantitative items with no elimination step, treating a blank and a random guess as equivalent, even though wrong answers carry no penalty beyond the lost opportunity.
Candidates carry over the folklore that guessing is risky, or they run out of time before reaching the final items and never return. They also avoid elimination because it feels slower than a clean calculation.
What to do instead
Confirm the scoring rule for the sitting you are taking, then in practice always leave the last two minutes to fill every unanswered item. Before guessing, eliminate on order of magnitude, parity, units, or sign, which typically removes two options in numerical items and raises the expected score.
Building a personal schedule that ignores the section mix, over-preparing quantitative techniques while never timing full mixed sets, so stamina and switching cost between verbal and numerical reasoning are untested.
Quantitative topics feel learnable and give visible progress, whereas timed mixed practice is uncomfortable and reveals weaknesses. Candidates therefore optimise for the feeling of studying rather than for exam-day performance.
What to do instead
Allocate at least half of study time to full-length timed mixed sets under exam conditions, and review errors by domain to direct the remaining time. Track accuracy and time per domain weekly so improvement is measured on the skill the exam actually tests: switching and sustaining focus.
Reviewing a wrong answer by reading the solution and agreeing with it, without reproducing the correct reasoning unaided, so the same error type recurs on the next set.
Recognition feels like mastery: the solution is fluent and plausible, so the candidate assumes the knowledge is now in place. Nothing is encoded about how to avoid the specific trap, and the error returns under time pressure.
What to do instead
Keep an error log with three fields: the trap, the cue that should have signalled it, and the corrected step. Re-solve each logged item from scratch two days later and again after a week, and only retire an entry when you solve a fresh item of the same type correctly under time.