How to use the scratchpad

[rkafc81]

Hi all

Quick question, whats an optimal way to use the scratchpad? Ive been dividing my page into two halves with a line down the middle. I am not sure thats a great approach though.

Also i notice my scratcheork is disorganised and messy, how can i fix that? I have good intentions to br neat and tidy but then when the clock is ticking that goes out the window... Thanks

[StaceyKoprince]

Good questions. I'm going to take the second one first.

When you finish something and realize your work is messy, make yourself re-write it in the optimal way. Doing this will have two benefits:
(1) you'll be teaching yourself good ways to write cleanly, neatly, in an organized manner, etc.
(2) the pain of having to re-write afterwards will help remind you, when the clock is ticking, that you still want to be careful and neat because otherwise you're going to make yourself re-write it all later - and that's a waste of study time when you could be writing neatly from the start! :)

Next, organization overall. I personally like different things for quant and verbal, but you should play around with various options and figure out what you think would work best for you.

For quant, we have 37 questions and 9 faces of paper, so I divide each sheet into 4 quadrants. This gives me 36 quadrants total, but at some point I know I'll have at least one question that doesn't need that much work, and when that happens, I'll use that quadrant again for the next question. Now I know I won't run out of space and I'll also be keeping the work for one problem in one area. (And that's a big help for me - I tend to be messy too!)

For verbal, I know that I need to write down ABCDE for each problem but I really don't want to write it 41 times. So instead, I write it once per page, but kind of spaced apart, and then I just move one row down for each new problem (so I'm writing my Xs and ?s and ~maybe symbols underneath ABCDE rather than on them). For this, I then have to take my notes off to the side or below somewhere, so my notes won't be right next to my ABCDE row for that problem, but I've practiced with it enough that I can handle that.

If you don't like that, then you are going to need to write ABCDE 41 times, but you'll have the benefit of having any notes right next to the letters. Figure out what you like better.

You can't quite use the 4-quadrant thing here, as we do for quant, but you can do something similar. You can use quarter-quadrants for SC or CR. Use half a page for all notes and questions from one RC passage (which will cover 3-4 questions). 4 passages will then take 2 pages, leaving 7 pages for the remaining 27-29 questions, which does work out to 1 quadrant each (7*4 = 28). So quarter page for SC / CR and half for RC.

Alternatively, you can also just draw a line or box whenever you're done with a problem and then start the next one below or to the right, again so that you're keeping all of the work for one problem together.

So practice with this stuff even when you're just doing practice problems and see what you think makes the most sense for you!

[rkafc81]

awesome thanks Stacey - I'll try that

[StaceyKoprince]

you're welcome!