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pacing

by resilient » Fri Jul 27, 2007 3:48 pm
OK so by mimicing the gmat schedule as close as possible and taking a blow to my ego yesterday with a low practice exam. I went and bought a small stop watch and am forcing myself to think and solve in 120 second intervals. At first it was still hard to think this way because its the first time i have timed myself. I noticed that panicking disapears with practice. BUt what do i need to do when i know i can answer the question in 7-8 minutes and i know i should only be taking 2 minutes. How do I approach the very lengthy harder problems?
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by beatthegmat » Fri Jul 27, 2007 4:12 pm
Moved this post--please do not pose strategy-related questions in the 'I just Beat The GMAT' section. :)
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Re: pacing

by beatthegmat » Fri Jul 27, 2007 4:14 pm
Enginpasa1 wrote:OK so by mimicing the gmat schedule as close as possible and taking a blow to my ego yesterday with a low practice exam. I went and bought a small stop watch and am forcing myself to think and solve in 120 second intervals. At first it was still hard to think this way because its the first time i have timed myself. I noticed that panicking disapears with practice. BUt what do i need to do when i know i can answer the question in 7-8 minutes and i know i should only be taking 2 minutes. How do I approach the very lengthy harder problems?
You should not need to take 7 minutes to answer a question. In your practice, you take ONLY 2 minutes per question. If you reach the end of your time limit, you must guess and move on.

It's hard to accept, but trust me, this is what's needed!
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by givemeanid » Fri Jul 27, 2007 5:19 pm
I agree with what Eric said. To add, some experts (I think Stacey but it could have been somebody else) also made a good point that these questions are designed to be done in a 2-min time frame for a particular level of difficulty. If you need more time, then its above your difficulty level. Also, according to research, the more time over 2 min it takes for you to answer the question, the higher the probability of getting the question wrong. So, you are better off taking an educated guess and moving on to the next question.

Also remember that penalty for missing on a question that is higher than your level is lesser compared to the penalty for missing an easier question. So, by moving on to the next question after 2 min or so, you have more time for easier questions that may come up later in the test.
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by Neo2000 » Fri Jul 27, 2007 7:50 pm
As for the stop-watch

https://www.online-stopwatch.com/download-stopwatch/
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by Stacey Koprince » Sat Jul 28, 2007 5:47 pm
It is indeed true - the more time you spend over about 2min 40sec, the more likely you are to get it wrong. If you tell yourself you "know" you can get it in 7-8 minutes, first, you are most likely wrong - you'll probably get it incorrect anyway. Second, you will have sacrificed the chance to get lots of other questions right for this one question (that you are likely going to get wrong anyway). Either you will run out of time at the end and not be able to get to all of the questions, or you will speed up and then start making careless mistakes on problems you do know how to do.

Don't do it! Resist the urge! (We should start an anti-going-way-over-time campaign slogan, like the old anti-drug slogans :D )
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