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Verbal pacing

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Verbal pacing

by bkw » Mon Feb 07, 2011 2:54 am
Can anyone please give hints about how pacing milestones in verbal are best set up?
I know different kind of questions differ in how long they should take.

E.g. approximately how much time should there be left after
-10 Qs
-20
-30
...

If I roughly say 2minutes/Q, it would be:
-10 55:00
-20 35:00
-30 15:00
But is this a false estimate that should not be followed?

grateful for any recommendations!
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by David@VeritasPrep » Mon Feb 07, 2011 2:22 pm
bkw -

The 2 minute standard is for the Quantitative not for the Verbal. Because the verbal has 4 more questions the amount of time per question is reduced from 2 minutes per question to less than 1:50 per question.

This changes your time standards significantly as you look to groups of 10 questions or more.

As you say some take less time specifically SC, but assuming that you get an even mix of questions then you should take 18:00 per 10 questions. This means


10 questions completed 18:00 used = 57:00 minutes left
20 questions completed 36:00 used = 39:00 minutes left
30 questions completed 54:00 used = 21:00 minutes left.

Of course these guidelines do not take into account the fact that SC should only take about 1:15 per problem and that this is the most category of questions that is most numerous on test day. If you are good at sentence correction and can do about 1:15 per then you can have 2 minutes for all CR and RC.

One more thing - don't waste too much time on test day staring at the clock!
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by bkw » Mon Feb 07, 2011 2:46 pm
David@VeritasPrep wrote:bkw -

The 2 minute standard is for the Quantitative not for the Verbal. Because the verbal has 4 more questions the amount of time per question is reduced from 2 minutes per question to less than 1:50 per question.

This changes your time standards significantly as you look to groups of 10 questions or more.

As you say some take less time specifically SC, but assuming that you get an even mix of questions then you should take 18:00 per 10 questions. This means


10 questions completed 18:00 used = 57:00 minutes left
20 questions completed 36:00 used = 39:00 minutes left
30 questions completed 54:00 used = 21:00 minutes left.

Of course these guidelines do not take into account the fact that SC should only take about 1:15 per problem and that this is the most category of questions that is most numerous on test day. If you are good at sentence correction and can do about 1:15 per then you can have 2 minutes for all CR and RC.

One more thing - don't waste too much time on test day staring at the clock!
Thanks David!

I think it is good to have some kind of rough guideline, to at least check the time after every 5 or 10 Q and have estimate of that it should be around 57 left after 10Qs etc...

Sometimes my brain/eyes switch to go idle-mode or something, I just stare at the problem without actually thinking. I must figure out a method to never get in those comas since it can hurt the timing badly.
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