Quant timing strategy

[OmriF538]

Hi,

I just finished my first GMAT practice test and (as expected without any timinig strategy at all, besides the "2 minutes per question rule") I had some bad timing problem in my quantitative section.

I just read Stacey Koprince's article about quant section time management and how to set up my scratch paper, and I really think it will be very good for me.

I have just one important question - that method she described is perfect for managing my time for groups of 4 or 5 questions. When i analyzed my first test, i understand that even using this great plan, would not prevent me to spend 4 or 5 minutes on one question of this 4 questions group (I will see it eventually when i will finish this 4 questions and will see that i am 5 minutes behind when i will check the target time in the bottom of the page). Now, after reading the article i have a plan what to do in this situation. But in order to prevent it beforehand, there isn't a good method to notice when you spending more than 2:30 - 2:45 minutes on a specific question? (besides the 1/2 minutes sense that count on hard estimation).

Furthermore, in other article by Stacey is explaining that after 2:30-2:45 minutes of answering a question, it is better to finish your calculations only if you have only a line or 2 more of math, and if not you better guess and move to the next question. That sound reasonable, but how should I know that I already spent 2:30 minutes on this question?

Thank you very very much.

[OmriF538]

Hi,

I would be very thankful if someone can answer my question.

Thank you

[StaceyKoprince]

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Have you read this time management article series yet?
http://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog/ ... rt-1-of-3/

I can't quite tell from what you wrote whether you have. (Note: check the date, too—I rewrote this one over this past summer. You might have read an earlier version of the series.)

Section 4 of that article talks about the "1 minute time sense"—basically training yourself to tell that it's been about 1 minute since you started working on a problem. You can use the 1 minute time sense to make a series of decisions as you work through any problem. For instance, at the ~1 minute mark, you might realize that you still don't really understand the question, so it's probably a good idea to move on right now.

Or, at the ~1 minute mark, you might think you've got a good enough plan to keep going—so you do keep going, but you also reset your 1-min time sense. Once it starts "dinging" again to alert you, check in with yourself again. You're around 2m or so now. Have you made enough progress to warrant continuing? Are things happening the way you thought they would? Or are you stuck or lost?

If, on a quant problem, you start to get a third 1-min time sense moment...then you know that you need to finish ASAP—either because you really are that close to finishing the problem or because you should let go and move on.

Note that all of this is rough. It's okay to think it's been about a minute when it's really been 1:20, or 45s. As you use this further, you'll get used to the typical "progression" of a problem and what it feels like to truly be almost done. (vs. thinking things like, "Hmm, I'm not really sure what to do with this...but if I just spend a little more time, I'm sure I can figure it out..." = you aren't almost done and your brain is lying to you! Let go!)

Also, if you have access to our Interact lessons, take a look at the Prepare to Face the GMAT 2 lesson in session 6. It's a lot of this same strategies, just delivered in a different medium and with some additional direction on all of this timing stuff.

And you might want to look at this, too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ziyp_Xon-UE

It's a webinar I did on how to maximize your ROI on the GMAT and I talk about how to make decisions as you work through a problem.

Try all of that out and let me know what you think!