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Quant Timing Strategy

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Quant Timing Strategy

by vineetbatra » Tue May 11, 2010 11:05 am
Hello friends,

I have 2 questions about timing strategy in Quant

1. If i have been solving a question (PS) for 2 minutes and the answer does not match with any choice and I realise that I have done some calculation error or picked the wrong approach, then what should I do should I try to find the calc error or guess and move on (I have already put 2 minutes and if I spend another minute I might be able to find the error). Any thoughts

2. Argument sake, I have really messed my timing and left with 7 questions and seven minutes (OMG), should I try to solve 3 questions in 6 minutes and random guess on 4 or should I try to give 1 minute to each question and provide an educated guess to each question.

Your advice will be much appreciated.

Vineet
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by Toph@GMAT_REBOOT » Tue May 11, 2010 11:31 am
Opinions will differ, but in my opinion:

1. You don't automatically abandon the question. Say you have 10 questions left... you accept that fact that you have 10 questions left with however much time is now remaining. If you realized you made a calc error, the only way this differs from a new question is you don't have to figure out if you know how to solve it. If you know how to solve the problem, and you know you just made a calc error, go back and fix it, or even just do the calc process from the beginning again. It shouldn't take as long the second time through. If you think the problem is you don't know how to actually solve the problems, perhaps your best option is to eliminate any answers choices you can and guess.

2. It's going to be different every time. You don't know what questions you are going to get. You might be lucky and several problems that you can solve very quickly. You'll honestly probalby just reassess after each question.

In general though, I think you should take 10-15 seconds to assess each problem. And then decide whether to guess. And also during this time, you might be able to eliminate 2-3 of the choices.

And to directly answer your question if boxed into those two choices, you're probably better of making sure you can three of them right and taking educated guess on the last four than putting forth a half-hearted effort on all seven.
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by vineetbatra » Tue May 11, 2010 11:42 am
Thanks Riprop,

Appreciate the response, do you have any more suggestions for quant timing?

Vineet
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by Toph@GMAT_REBOOT » Tue May 11, 2010 11:54 am
This is my favorite strategy for pacing.

Take the OG questions, and get a digital timer (stopwatch/whatever). Do 10, 15, 20, 25, etc. questions at a time. And just write down the time after each question. So if you finish q1 1:15 into the practice session, you'll write write 1:15 next to your answer choice, and then if you finish q2 2:45 into the practice session, you'll write 2:45. This saves you time instead of trying to figure out how long each question took you while your trying to work on pace. Then after you're done with the set of questions, you can go back and figure out how long each question took you. I think it can be easy for us to ignore question that we answer correctly. But if a question takes you 2 minutes and 30 seconds, even if you answered it correctly, you could probably learn how to do it more efficiently. I think this is a great strategy for identifying your types of problems that tend to take you a while to answer. Once you do that, you can just focus on learning how to solve these types of problems more efficiently.

Best of luck!
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by vineetbatra » Tue May 11, 2010 1:10 pm
Thanks Riprop,

Let me elaborate a little about the kind of careless mistakes I do.

Formula for an hypotenuse = A^2 + B^2 = H^2. A = root(200), B = 5,

So what I do Root(200) + 5^2 = Root(200) + 25, now I am stuck because none of the answer match this one, I forgot to square root(200).

Now this question has 3 steps and this is last step, I don't know where I committed the mistake, step 1, 2 or 3rd, and I have already put 2+ minutes in this question. Now I know that I should put a formula before solving (a common careless mistake I make), but I tend to commit 3-4 careless mistakes in each test. So not sure whether I should go to step 1 or start back solving from 3.

I know it is such a stupid mistake, but such mistakes are killing my score (I am too close to 700+)

Any suggestion will be very helpful.

Vineet
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by Toph@GMAT_REBOOT » Tue May 11, 2010 9:52 pm
Honestly (and this is more easily said than done)... you should get yourself to the point where you don't make the careless mistakes. But barring that, what you should do probably varies with each question. How easily you can navigate your written work will also play a role.
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