Everything You Need to Know About Time Management - Part 3
Are you ready for the third and final installment of our Time Management series?
In the first part of this series, we established some overall principles for time management on the GMAT:
(1) Why is time management so important on the GMAT?
(2) Know (generally) how the scoring works
(3) When solving problems, follow two principles
In the second part, we talked about per-question timing:
(4) First, train per question: Develop your 1 minute time sense
Today, were going to graduate to per-section timing. Lets do this!
(5) Second, manage an entire section using benchmarks
The GMAT doesn't time you per question, of course. Youll need to manage 75 minutes (each) across 37 quant questions and 41 verbal questions.
On most questions, youre going to spend somewhere between 1 minute and 3 minutes.
Youll also likely have a few on which you guess immediately (because the question is a big weakness for you or looks horrible for some other reason).
And youll hopefully prevent yourself from spending much longer than 3 minutes on any one question, since thats usually a big waste of time. (Think about it: there is a faster solution but you arent finding it. Better to let that one go!)
So how do you balance all of that to come out to 2 minutes on average? Were going to use our scratch paper to help us keep track.
GMAT scratch paper is a bound booklet of 5 sheets of legal-sized paper (thats the overly long paper often used for legal documents). This yellow graph paper will be laminated, so youll use a special marker to write on it. (If youre in one of our classes, then you received your very own scratch paper booklet as part of your books and other materials.)
While the booklet technically has 10 faces (front and back of 5 pages), the first page has a bunch of writing and instructions on it, so in practice youll have 9 faces on which to write. You can have only one booklet at a time, but you are allowed to exchange the booklet for a new one during the test. Ask for a new booklet during each break so that you start quant and verbal with a clean slate.
Quant Section Timing
When each new section of the test begins, you will have a 1-minute section that provides instructions for how to take the test (how to select answers and so on). You, of course, wont actually need to read these instructions; youll already be prepared. :)
Instead, youre going to use that 1 minute to set up your scratch paper. (Note: you cannot set up your scratch paper during the break; you are not allowed to write anything or even sit in the testing room during your break.)
Heres what to do:
Flip the booklet over (so that youre on the very last page), and write 0 or draw a smiley face or whatever message you like in the lower-right corner. This is where youll be done with the quant section! Draw two lines to split the page into quadrants.
Then move to the second-to-last page and write 8 in the lower-right corner. Again, split the page into quadrants.
Keep doing this, counting up by multiples of 8 and working from the back of the booklet to the front. On the very first page (the one on which you write 64), split the page into 5 boxes, not 4.
As you take the test, the number in the corner of each page tells you approximately what the clock should read when youre done with that page. If youre within 3 minutes in either direction, youre fine.
If you are more than 3 minutes behind (e.g., you get to the number 40 but you only have 36 minutes left on the clock), then somewhere in the next set of 4, choose a hard question on which to bail immediately. As soon as you see that its testing a topic you dont like, or the wording is confusing, or whatever, guess your favorite letter and move on. Boom! Now youre within 3 minutes again and can continue normally.
(By the way, what is your favorite letter, A, B, C, D, or E? If you dont have an immediate answer, pick one anyway. Congratulations, you now have a favorite letter! Whenever you need to guess randomly, always pick that same one. If you have eliminated that letter via educated guessing, then pick from among the remaining answers.)
If you discover that you are more than 3 minutes ahead (e.g., you get to the number 40 but you still have 45 minutes left on the clock), then work more methodically. Make sure that you are actually writing all of your work down. Dont rush so much that you start making a bunch of careless mistakes!
Practice setting up your scratch paper this way during your practice tests. Youll need to be able to set it all up in 1 minute (its harder than it sounds!) and youll need to practice how to react appropriately if you discover that youre too far ahead or behind.
Verbal Section Timing
The different verbal question types have different average time lengths, so tracking your timing is not going to be as clean as it is on quant.
Heres how to set up the scratch paper for verbal:
Since the verbal questions have different averages, you're going to do more problems before you check the time. This allows you to better balance across the different kinds of questions youll see on the test.
This time, youre going to use only the last 5 pages of your booklet. Youll count up by multiples of 15, and youll do 8 questions on each page (9 on the first page).
We have to account for one more thing: the time it takes to read passages for Reading Comprehension problems. We typically see 4 passages on the test. The timing shown here assumes that you will start one new passage on each of the first 4 pages. In other words, you will start one passage somewhere in the first 9 questions. Youll start the second passage somewhere in the next 8 questions. And so on.
The test could, though, space out the passages differently. So heres what youre going to do. Every time you start a new passage, draw a dot on your hand with your pen. (Yes, your hand, not your scratch paper. As you turn the pages, you lose the ability to see at a glance how many passages youve done so far.)
At the end of the first page, you should have 1 dot and be pretty close to 60 minutes left. At the end of the second page, you should have 2 dots and be pretty close to 45 minutes left. And so on. If your dots are on track and you find yourself more than 3 minutes ahead or behind, take the same kind of action that you would take for quant in that circumstance.
But if the dots are not on track, adjust your expectations accordingly. Lets say that you get to the end of the second page, where youre supposed to have 2 dots and 45 minutes leftbut you have 3 dots already on your hand. You might only have 41 minutes left, but thats okay because you started an extra passage. You dont need to guess immediately on one of the questions in the next set.
If, on the other hand, you have only 1 dot on your hand at the supposed-to-have-45-minutes-and-2-dots mark, then you would want to have more than 45 minutes leftcloser to 48 or so. Youll need more time later on because you still have 3 passages to come. If you actually have only 44 minutes left at that point, time to guess randomly on an upcoming hard question.
One last note for verbal: on the graphic above, we show the ABCDE written out for each question. If you prefer, you can write out the letters just once vertically and then continue tracking your work on subsequent problems to the right (without repeatedly writing the letters). Just continue to use your symbols to eliminate or circle the empty spaces that represent A, B, C, D, and E.
You will definitely need to practice this setup multiple times before you get into the real test. Use this procedure on all of your practice CATs from now on. You can also use this whenever you do problem sets. Make quant problem sets in multiples of 4 from now on and verbal problem sets in multiples of 8.
Then, analyze your timing both globally and per-question. Where did you make good decisions? Where should you have made different decisions? Figure out exactly how you should have known to make that different decision so that you can re-train yourself for next time and master time management on the GMAT.
Good luck and happy studying!