Everything You Need to Know about GMAT Time Management, Part 2
Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GMAT courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.
Welcome to the second installment of our GMAT time management series! In the first part, we addressed the following:
- Why is time management so important on the GMAT?
- Know (generally) how the scoring works on the GMAT
- When solving problems, follow two principles: first Exam Mode, then Study Mode
Today’s installment is all about per-problem timing.
Read more
Everything You Need to Know about GMAT Time Management, Part 1
Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GMAT courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.
You have a lot to learn in this series! And it won’t happen overnight; you’ll need to build these skills over time. Bookmark this article and return to it frequently throughout your studies. At the least, revisit these articles before and after every practice test you take.
One more note: We’ll address per-question and per-section time management. We’ll also address how you keep track of your time for the test-center based GMAT. For the GMAT Online, the test sections themselves are the same, but the scratch paper situation is different, and that affects how you’ll keep track of your time during the exam. Read this series first; at the end, we’ll link to another post that addresses how to use your whiteboard to keep track of your time on the GMAT Online, specifically.
Today, we’re going to discuss the overarching principles for managing your time on the GMAT. Ready? Let’s dive in!
How to Study for the GMAT
The GMAT isn’t a college exam! Instead of ramping up the difficulty by testing harder material, the GMAT gets harder by making tougher demands on your executive reasoning skills. The way you study for the GMAT can’t just be based on learning math and grammar. It also has to improve your executive reasoning skills and prepare you to take the test effectively. Read more
Two More Official Practice GMAT Exams Released!
GMAC® has released two new official practice CATs for your studying pleasure. In addition to the 2 free tests and the 2 previously-released paid tests, this brings to 6 the total number of official practice GMATs you can take as you get ready for the real test.
The GMATPrep® Exam Pack 2 contains 2 full-length practice tests for $49.99 and, as with the Exam Pack 1 product, you’ll receive an enhanced score report providing you with your overall scores and some detailed performance data by question-type.
GMATPrep Exam Tips
We do recommend that you time yourself per question while taking the GMATPrep® exams. Almost everyone has at least minor timing issues in at least one of the sections, so this is useful data to gather. Grab your smartphone and disable the screen saver (or make it so long that it won’t go dark on you between questions).
Pull up a timer or stopwatch app and play with it until you figure out how the lap timing function works. The lap timer allows you run a timer continuously as you hit the lap button periodically. Every time you hit the lap button, the timer will record how long it has been since you last hit the lap button, but the timer won’t stop. It’ll continue running.
Every time you finish a problem and click Next and Confirm, train yourself to hit a third button: Lap. Your sequence is always Next-Confirm-Lap and on to the new problem. When you’re done, you’ll have your per-question timing data.
Breaking Down Two Minutes: Time Management Within a GMAT Problem
This article, written by Abby Pelcyger and Stacey Koprince, was adapted from our upcoming book, The GMAT Roadmap: Expert Advice Through Test Day. The full book will be available mid-November.
You won’t correctly answer every Quant problem on the GMAT in the allotted time. Even 99th per-centile performers typically don’t do this. Through a 700, GMAT-takers are getting about 60% of the problems correct: that’s only three out of five! Even individuals who score a 750 are only getting about four out of five questions correct. That’s why time management is essential on the GMAT. Why spend time on a problem that you won’t get correct anyway, when you could invest that time on a problem where the time will make a difference?
As you are working through a GMAT problem, you also need to evaluate whether you are using your time efficiently. For instance, if you are attempting to solve a problem that you know you wouldn’t get right in ten minutes, let alone two, you are not using your time effectively. Likewise, if you are working on a problem and you know that you can get right, but that it will take five minutes, you are also not using your time effectively. Any time that you spend on a problem over two minutes is time that you are tak¬ing away from a problem that you have not even seen yet.
So how should you use your time? While no two problems will take you exactly the same amount of time to work through each step, using this timeline to structure your time working on GMAT practice problems will help you to make wise (but difficult) decisions on test day.
Note: While having a plan for a problem may mean an algebraic method to solve, it doesn’t have to. Back-up strategies such as plugging in numbers and picking smart numbers are just as valid approaches” and sometimes quicker!
Once you have used this strategy to work through a practice GMAT question, write down (or better yet, input into the GMAT Navigator) your best guess. Then, draw a line under your scrap paper notes and continue to work on the problem until you have exhausted every potential line of your thinking. Providing your brain with the opportunity to think through new material most often takes more than two minutes. The trick is to do the heavy thinking now, during practice, so that on test day there’s very little new: all you will have to do is recognize, remember, adapt, and solve!