I just Beat The GMAT!

maihuna wrote:Let me ask another clarification, did u picked all the RC options after being sure, not something like 90% sure or so, how did u managed that, under time pressure I am seeing that as a great issue.

maihuna, I am sorry, I don't get the questions, could you rephrase it? You are asking if I were 100% sure about my answers to RC questions? ....

Yes, in most of the RC questions, when I am in time pressure, I am not 100% sure about the correct option, it is taking lot of time and yet the same result, so wanted to know, is it a good idea to pace or to wait and give more time per Q ,

maihuna wrote:Yes, in most of the RC questions, when I am in time pressure, I am not 100% sure about the correct option, it is taking lot of time and yet the same result, so wanted to know, is it a good idea to pace or to wait and give more time per Q ,

Well, I personally sticked to the strategy that I don't spend more than the time alloted per question - if I felt I was over time I just guessed and moved. And you know during the test u cant be 100% sure about the question, so u have to select the option that seems to u most correct and move on. I really do not recommend over-spending time per question, I know sometimes it seems if you spend more time you might be 100%, but I do not recommend that strategy. The timing gets on your nerves a lot during the test, and u better have a good strategy for pacing, you might screw up even easier questions if you spend more time than u have to on RC questions.

Cheers,
Ket

Ok thats great, thanks. So you gave around 1min40s per question. Is it better to have little variation across groups, mostly around a minute per question in SC and use remaining time in pushing up RC.
Anyway, what was your break up in tackling RC's: If I assume 4 RC's with 3,3,4,4 questions so it will be a total of 14*1.45 around 25 minutes, or around 6 minutes per RC, how did you divided the 6 minutes in passage and questions.

Actually I am screwing up a lot in RC, even missing the easiest one, reason, all the time I am trying to read and re-read the passage and buckling under time pressure while tackling questions. I want to have some strategy that works. I have collected some 100 passages from different official sources and trying to experiment with them with strategies. Currently RC has become a bigger enemy in a great and a mediocre score in verbal for me.

maihuna wrote:Ok thats great, thanks. So you gave around 1min40s per question. Is it better to have little variation across groups, mostly around a minute per question in SC and use remaining time in pushing up RC.
Anyway, what was your break up in tackling RC's: If I assume 4 RC's with 3,3,4,4 questions so it will be a total of 14*1.45 around 25 minutes, or around 6 minutes per RC, how did you divided the 6 minutes in passage and questions.

Actually I am screwing up a lot in RC, even missing the easiest one, reason, all the time I am trying to read and re-read the passage and buckling under time pressure while tackling questions. I want to have some strategy that works. I have collected some 100 passages from different official sources and trying to experiment with them with strategies. Currently RC has become a bigger enemy in a great and a mediocre score in verbal for me.

Well in Verbal I would give myself no more than 1.5 per SC question...no more than 2 min for SC and RC... If I was spending more than that time per question I knew I need to just guess.
You said you are rereading it all the time... Do you read the text carefully when u read it the first time? If you do so u will need re-reading less. I myself tried to understand the subject with one reading, so I can't really tell the time I spent on the text but I definitely spend quite a lot of time reading the text...and even formulating the main points to myself then I would move on to the questions and come back to the text quite rarely. It will really get you down if u try to switch from questions to text back and forward, try to spend more time than u do now on reading the passage and it might economize the time u spend per question.

beatthegmat wrote:Congrats! What a great improvement, thanks for sharing your story!

Thanks eric for congratulation. and BIG THANKS for creating this forum