Is C the Most Common Answer? We Counted 35,052 Questions
The folklore says pick C when stuck. Across 35,172 four-option questions here, C comes third, and all four positions sit within 1.2 points.
Every exam hall has someone who fills the last ten questions with C because it is supposedly the commonest answer. It is a comforting piece of folklore and there is no evidence behind it. We counted every four-option single-correct question published on this site, 35,172 of them, and C came third.
Correct answer by position, 35,172 questions
| Position | Times correct | Share |
|---|---|---|
| A | 8,962 | 25.5% |
| B | 8,937 | 25.4% |
| C | 8,722 | 24.8% |
| D | 8,551 | 24.3% |
- C is third of four here, not first. The gap between the commonest and rarest position is 411 questions out of 35,172.
- That gap is under a point and a half, which is noise rather than a pattern you could bet on.
- No exam body publishes its answer distribution, so nobody can tell you what your real paper does.
- Eliminating one option beats picking any letter, and the arithmetic says so.
What the numbers say
A is correct 25.5% of the time, B 25.4%, C 24.8% and D 24.3%. The spread between the commonest and the rarest is 411 questions, or 1.2% of the corpus. If you answered every question with the best-performing letter rather than at random, you would gain 0.5% more correct answers, which is one extra mark in roughly two hundred questions. That is not a strategy. It is a rounding error you would have to sit a hundred papers to notice.
That is not a strategy. It is a rounding error you would have to sit a hundred papers to notice.
Why our corpus is balanced, and why that is the point
Being straight about where this number comes from: it is level here partly because we keep it level. Every bank published on this site is checked for answer-position balance before it ships, and a bank whose answers cluster on one letter gets rebuilt. So this is not evidence that real exam papers are balanced. It is evidence that when somebody is deliberately not putting a pattern in, there is no pattern to find. Nobody is deliberately putting one in on your real paper either, and no exam body publishes its distribution, so the folklore has nothing behind it in either direction.
What to do instead
The question the letter myth is really trying to answer is what to do when you do not know. The arithmetic answers it better. A guess breaks even when your accuracy matches the deduction divided by the marks a correct answer earns, and on the commonest scheme here that line sits at 20% while a blind guess between four options returns 25%. You are already past the line before eliminating anything, and ruling out a single option puts you near 33%, clear of every break-even this site publishes. Understanding negative marking has the full working.
The habit worth dropping
Picking a lucky letter feels like doing something, which is why it survives. It also costs you the two or three seconds you could have spent reading the options and ruling one out, and that elimination is worth far more than any letter. If you genuinely cannot eliminate anything and the clock is gone, any letter will do, and it does not matter which one you pick.
The answer-position split for every bank on this site is printed by its own quality check, and the marking scheme behind the break-even sits on each exam's page in the exam directory.
Put the strategy into practice
Choose a checked mock test and apply what you learned while the idea is fresh.
Frequently asked questions
Is C the most common answer in multiple choice exams?
Not on this site's questions. Across 35,172 four-option single-correct questions, C is correct 24.8% of the time, which places it third behind A at 25.5% and B at 25.4%. All four sit within 1.2 percentage points. No exam body publishes its own distribution, so there is no basis for the claim about real papers either.
Should I pick the same letter for all questions I do not know?
It makes no measurable difference which letter you pick. On this corpus the gap between the best and worst position is 1.2% of questions, so choosing the best-performing letter over a random one gains about one extra mark in two hundred questions. Spend the effort on eliminating an option instead, which is worth far more.
Does eliminating one option actually help?
Substantially. Ruling out one of four options takes you from a 25% chance to about 33%. The harshest penalty published on this site is one-third of a correct answer, whose break-even is 25%, so 33% clears every break-even here. On the commonest scheme, +1 with a 0.25 deduction, the break-even is 20% and even a blind guess is already worth taking.
Why are answer positions balanced on this site?
Because it is checked. Every question bank is audited for answer-position spread before it is published, and a bank whose correct answers cluster on one letter is rebuilt rather than shipped. That keeps practice papers from teaching a pattern that would not exist in a real exam.
