Timing issue on Verbal section

[Willy]

Hello Stacey!

I just finished MGMAT 'Quest for 750: Sentence Correction Slam Homework Bank' and out of 30 questions I got 27 correct! Out of 3 questions, which I got wrong, two were careless mistakes and answer to the last one I didn't know. Yes, I'm quite happy with my performance :) but my happiness was short lived when I checked out the timing per question. On average, I took around 2.10 minute per question.

Should I be worried about my timing per questions issue? Or should I take it bit easy as these questions were definitely hard and designed for 'Quest for 750!' and it is okay to take around 2 minute on these questions?

By the way, can you please suggest me a general strategy to improve speed/timing especially on Verbal section?

Thank you.

[StaceyKoprince]

Good question. First, yes, expect these questions to take longer because you're only doing the hardest of the hard. Still, there may be opportunities to learn to be more efficient. Here are a few ideas.

1st pass through answers: place answers into 1 of 2 categories, definitely wrong or maybe. DO NOT decide whether something is right at this stage (common source of wasted time)

2nd pass through: look only at the "maybe" answers, compare, choose one

When you are down to two answers on verbal, look at each answer ONCE more, then pick one and move on. (VERY common source of wasted time - if you are going back and forth between 2 answers, you are completely wasting that time! If you do this now on every other SC for only 10-15 seconds, that adds up big time.)

When you're reviewing, review everything. Identify ALL of the questions on which you narrowed to two and guessed, even when you guessed right. And answer these questions for ALL problems, whether you answered correctly or incorrectly:

1) why was the wrong answer so tempting? why did it look like it might be right? (be as explicit as possible; also, now you know this is not a good reason to pick an answer)
2) why was it actually wrong? what specific words indicate that it is wrong and how did I overlook those clues the first time?
3) why did the right answer seem wrong? what made it so tempting to cross off the right answer? why were those things actually okay; what was my error in thinking that they were wrong? (also, now you know that this is not a good reason to eliminate an answer)
4) why was it actually right?

Few people do #1 and #3 - but if you do study this, that will help you to be more efficient AND more effective once you've narrowed your answers down to the last 2... which is where people lose a lot of time. :)

Try those things out and see if they help. (And nice job on the problem set! :)

[Willy]

Thank you Stacey! I will surely follow your guidelines.

[StaceyKoprince]

good luck!