Setting up the Yellow PAD

[EmanueleB476]

Hi everyone,
I have a question about setting up the yellow pad for the verbal section.

I do not know if everywhere is the same, but here in Germany, when you walk back in the testing room, the operator inserts his password and then a countdown of 30 seconds starts... when you sit down and open your pad you have 10 seconds left and no time to set it up.
When are we supposed to do that?

Also, the operator said that we can start writing after the timer starts... also for quant. That ruins everything!
Any suggestion?

Thank you very much in advance!
Best,

Emanuele

[StaceyKoprince]

Yes, it's true that you are not supposed to write on the yellow pad until the timer starts counting down to start the section. However, generally, they have you sit down immediately after they start the timer—so that should only take about 5 of your 30 seconds, not 20 seconds. What were they doing in front of the screen or your chair for 20 seconds after they put the password in? Next time, I would say that you need to read the instructions and ask them to let you sit down immediately after they put the password in.

But then, yes, you've got to have a strategy for getting yourself ready to go very quickly.

Do you use our Yellow Pad set-ups? Here's what I do (using our strategy):
For the quant section, I write down the time limits in the bottom corner of the page, but I do not draw the crosses on the page (to separate the page into quadrants). I do that as I turn to each new page—it only takes a second to draw the cross for that page. I've practiced writing the time limits down so now I can do them all in about 10-15 seconds.

For the verbal section, I again write just the time limits and the R to start (and there are only 4 pages to do for verbal, so this doesn't take long). When I turn to each new page, I set up my ABCDE. I actually don't write out ABCDE 9 times. I write just the letter A 9 times and then I write BCDE under the first letter A, like this:
A A A A A A A A A
B
C
D
E

I leave some horizontal space between each A. Then I use my symbols (eg, an X to eliminate an answer) in the appropriate "spaces" that represent the letters for each problem. So it takes me maybe 5-8 seconds to set up the letters on each page. If you want to do this, too, just practice this way whenever you do problem sets so that you get used to using your symbols in the letter "grid" and not on top of the letters ABCDE themselves.