ESADE Admission Test Negative Marking: How to Handle It

On most school exams, a wild guess is free. On the ESADE Admission Test it isn't: points are deducted for wrong answers. That single rule should change how you approach every question you're unsure about. Here's how to think about it.

What "negative marking" means here

ESADE states that on its admission test, points are deducted for incorrect answers, while the separate English level test does not deduct points. ESADE doesn't publish the exact penalty per wrong answer, so the safe approach is to treat the deduction as meaningful and let it shape your decisions.

The core idea: a question you leave blank is worth zero. A question you answer is worth something positive if you're likely right — and something negative if you're likely wrong. So the question on every item you're unsure about is simply: is answering better than leaving it blank?

The eliminate-then-answer rule

You almost never face a truly blind guess if you actually read the question. Eliminating options changes the maths dramatically:

• Read nothing, guess at random → with a wrong-answer penalty, this is the worst-expected-value move. Avoid pure blind guesses.
• Eliminate one or two options → your odds of being right jump, and answering becomes clearly worth it.
• Confident on the answer → always answer.

So the rule is: eliminate first, then decide. If you can rule out even one or two options, answering is usually the right call. If you genuinely can't narrow it down at all and the clock is tight, leaving it blank is defensible.

ESADE doesn't publish the exact penalty, so don't over-engineer this. The reliable habit is: never blind-guess unread questions, but do answer once you've eliminated options.

Skip ≠ leave blank

There's an important distinction. Skipping means moving past a hard question to protect your time, then coming back. Leaving blank is a final decision to score zero on it. The smart workflow uses both:

1. First pass: answer everything you know quickly; flag the hard ones and move on. Don't burn three minutes on one item in a 3-hour, multi-section test.
2. Second pass: return to flagged questions, eliminate what you can, and answer the ones you've narrowed down.
3. Leave blank only the handful where you truly can't eliminate anything and time has run out.

Why practice matters here

You can't build this judgement by reading about it — you build it by doing timed mocks that score the way the real test does. After enough scored practice, "eliminate, then decide" becomes automatic, and you stop leaving easy points on the table (or giving them away on bad guesses).

Source: ESADE Business School official admissions information (the ESADE Admission Test). ESADE does not publish the exact per-question penalty. EsadePrep is independent and not affiliated with or endorsed by ESADE.