Everything You Need to Know About Time Management - Part 1
Well, everything you need to know on the GMAT, anyway. :D
First, a note: this three-part series is long; theres a lot going on. You arent going to be able to incorporate all of this from day one. Rather, expect to return to this article as you get further into your studies. Make a note right now that you want to review this before every practice test (and probably after, too!).
In this first part, were going to get oriented on some overall principles for time management on the GMAT. Lets dive in!
(1) Why is time management so important on the GMAT?
The GMAT is ultimately a test of your decision-making, aka your executive reasoning skills. In school, when you got really good at something, the test felt easier and you were able to answer questions faster. On the GMAT, the test adapts to your level (for the Quant and Verbal sections). As a result, no matter how good you get, the test is going to feel hard and youre going to feel pressed for time.
If you run out of time with a bunch of questions to go, then your score is going to nose-dive right at the end of the section. The GMAT is essentially a where you end is what you get test, so a score drop at the end is deadly. You have no time to recover and lift your score back up.
At the same time, it can be problematic to go really fast. Speed often translates into careless mistakes, and if you miss too many questions that you really did know how to do, your score is going to be lower than it could have been.
So, generally speaking, your goal is to be roughly on time throughout the section. You dont have to stick super-rigidly to the exact timing. On certain questions, you will be somewhat faster or slower than the average.
So were going to use this rubric: if youre within about 3 minutes of where youre supposed to be, then everything is fine. Keep doing what youre doing. If youre more than 3 minutes fast or slow, take action.
That begs several questions:
(1) How do I know where Im supposed to be?
(2) What action do I take if Im too slow? Too fast?
(3) How do I mostly stay on time throughout the test in the first place?
Read on to learn the answers.
(2) Know (generally) how the scoring works
The Quant and Verbal sections of the GMAT are weird. The scoring is totally different than what you were used to in school. If you try to take the GMAT the way you took schools tests, youre probably going to mess up the timing and thats probably going to prevent you from maximizing your score.
You dont have to really learn how the GMAT algorithm works, but there are certain things you need to know.
(A) Everyone gets a lot of questions wrong, no matter the scoring level. Pretend youre playing tennis. You dont expect to win every point, right? Thatd be silly. You just want to win more points than your opponent! On the GMAT, most people answer about 60% of the questions correctly in each section, regardless of scoring level.
(B) Getting an easier question wrong hurts your score more than getting a harder question wrong. It's important not to put yourself in the position of rushing and making tons of careless mistakes. (Note: it is still very possible to get the score you want even if you make mistakes on just a few of the easier questions.)
(C) Missing 4 or more questions in a row hurts your score more than getting 4 spread-out questions wrong. This, of course, is exactly what happens to someone who runs out of time towards the end of the section.
(D) If you dont even answer the last 4, the score drop will be greater than if you answer the last 4 but get them all wrong. Its okay if you dont get to the very last question in the section; just one question cant kill your score. However, your score will drop a lot if you dont answer a bunch of questions at the end.
The overall message? Its crucial to learn how to balance your time well on the GMAT.
(3) When solving problems, follow two principles
These two principles apply when you are solving Official Guide or other GMAT-format problems.
Principle #1: Practice the behavior you want to exhibit on the GMAT.
Do not let yourself spend 5 minutes on this question because youre just practicing and you want to see whether you can figure it out. If you do this, youre training yourself to spend 5 minutes on the real test, too. Make the decision: Right now, on the real test, I would pick answer (D) and move on. Write down answer (D). Then, go to the next principle.
Principle #2: After youve made your GMAT decision, spend all the time you like trying to figure stuff out.
After youve told yourself that youd pick (D) right now, feel free to move into figure it out mode. If you want to spend half an hour working on that problem before you look at the answer, do so! Whatever you figure out on your own now, youll be much more likely to remember when you need that move again later.
If you follow these two principles, youll get the best of both worlds. Youll be training yourself to make GMAT-appropriate decisions while also giving yourself the opportunity to figure out as much as you can on your own.
Mull over this information; re-read it as needed. If youre in one of our classes, Id recommend waiting another week until you read the second part of this series.
In part 2, well dive deep into the details about how to train yourself to manage time on a per-question basis.