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GMAT Quant Score/Timing Issues

Problem Solving — algebra and arithmetic (GMAT Focus Edition)
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GMAT Quant Score/Timing Issues

by sgraves » Sun Jan 31, 2016 7:08 am
After doing some small quant problem sets (6-8 Q) I figured out that the reason I was running out of time on CAT's was because I was spending too much time on hard questions which caused me to rush at the end, thus bringing my score way down due to consecutive wrong answers. I was getting a good number of the easy/medium questions right during these sets.

As a response to this on my next CAT I told myself I was going to triage 6 questions that I deemed hard in order to help with my timing issues. Also I have been practicing my 1 min sense and on questions where I have no clue how to answer so I take a guess and move on. I took at CAT yesterday and after the test I ended up triaging/guessing on 8 questions. (Score: 490 Q29 V29)

Is the right methodology? Should I have a set number of questions to dump going into a CAT? I understand by my CAT score that their are gaps in my knowledge that I need to work on so I don't feel a need to dump that many questions. I just wanted to see if there are any other ways I can work on this. I ended up finishing the quant section with 8 mins left which is drastically different than rushing to finish the last 7 questions on the previous two CAT's I have taken.

My quant score has been hovering around 30 and I need to get it into the 40's.
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by DavidG@VeritasPrep » Sun Jan 31, 2016 9:03 am
sgraves wrote:After doing some small quant problem sets (6-8 Q) I figured out that the reason I was running out of time on CAT's was because I was spending too much time on hard questions which caused me to rush at the end, thus bringing my score way down due to consecutive wrong answers. I was getting a good number of the easy/medium questions right during these sets.

As a response to this on my next CAT I told myself I was going to triage 6 questions that I deemed hard in order to help with my timing issues. Also I have been practicing my 1 min sense and on questions where I have no clue how to answer so I take a guess and move on. I took at CAT yesterday and after the test I ended up triaging/guessing on 8 questions. (Score: 490 Q29 V29)

Is the right methodology? Should I have a set number of questions to dump going into a CAT? I understand by my CAT score that their are gaps in my knowledge that I need to work on so I don't feel a need to dump that many questions. I just wanted to see if there are any other ways I can work on this. I ended up finishing the quant section with 8 mins left which is drastically different than rushing to finish the last 7 questions on the previous two CAT's I have taken.

My quant score has been hovering around 30 and I need to get it into the 40's.
There's no magic number for how many questions it's best to guess on. Though your strategy isn't unreasonable, I think you could tweak your philosophy a bit. First, the algorithm isn't designed to impose a greater penalty for getting several consecutive questions wrong. This scenario is only problematic if within those questions, there are problems that wouldn't be terribly difficult for you - the penalty for missing easier questions is larger than the penalty for missing harder questions. This is all to say that you're better off missing three tough questions in a row than you'd be missing three easier questions that are spread out.

So the goal isn't to avoid missing consecutive questions, per se. It's to avoid squandering too much time on questions that you might miss anyway. Put another way, most GMAT questions, if you have a decent approach, will not take more than 1-1.5 minutes to do. The odds that you would spend 3 minutes on a question and then figure out how to do it between minutes 3 and 4 are not high. So if you spend 4 minutes on a question, you're likely to get it wrong anyway, and then that's 4 minutes that you won't have to unlock later questions you'd know how to do. You seem to see this. But the issue with having a preset number of questions that you'll guess on is that there's no way to know, beforehand, how many questions you'll get stuck on. Imagine one scenario in which you perform very well on the early questions and vault into more difficult terrain. Because you'll see a greater number of hard questions in this scenario, you'll likely need to guess more often. If you've committed to guessing, say, 6 times, and you encounter 8 questions you can't do, you run the risk of making a poor time investment on a couple of questions. Now imagine another scenario in which you get off to a rocky start, and the questions are in the easier-moderate range. Now you'll be guessing less often. If there are, say, 4 questions you need to guess on, but you're committed to 6 guess, suddenly you'll find yourself guessing on questions you'd know how to do, and suffering an unnecessary penalty as a result. (And I wonder if this is what happened when you had 8 minutes to spare.)

This is all to say that the gist of your approach is right, but you want to try to remain flexible. Practice tests will help you develop an intuitive sense of when it's time to get away from a question, and when you might want to take a step back and consider that a given question might be easier with a different approach. The most important thing is to be rigorous when dissecting your CATS. Take note of times you sunk 5 minutes into a question you realized would be brutal 30 seconds in. Take note of when you guessed within 20 seconds, but actually, on second thought, you knew how to do the question. Make lists of conceptual areas that could be improved. Distill the lessons from each analysis onto a single sheet and absorb these lessons before the next practice exam. Wash/rinse/repeat.
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by [email protected] » Sun Jan 31, 2016 10:06 am
Hi sgraves,

Dumping questions is really about making 'trades' - instead of spending 3+ minutes on a question that's too hard (and that you'll probably get wrong anyway), you quickly dump that question AND THEN use the 2+ minutes that you saved to work on other, 'gettable' questions. Since you finished 8 minutes early on the Quant section of this CAT, that extra time COULD have been put towards answering those gettable questions.

Remember that some of those gettable questions will require some serious work on your part - your goal should NOT be to answer a question in 1 minute. Your goal should be to spend the necessary time to correctly answer all of the questions that you reasonably can. With this CAT, as well as all of the other CATs that you will take, you should do a thorough review of your work. How many of the questions COULD you have gotten correct, but didn't? Physically redo ALL of those questions, step-by-step (on the pad) and build up all of your skills in the process.

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by Brent@GMATPrepNow » Sun Jan 31, 2016 1:50 pm
Regarding time management: I suggest that you manage your time in batches of 5 questions. To that end, you can use the following Milestone Charts to keep you on track:
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These times are easily remembered so you can quickly jot them on your noteboard on test day.

This (and more) is covered in our free GMAT time management video at https://www.gmatprepnow.com/module/gener ... es?id=1244

Also, early in one's studies, it's a good idea to use a stopwatch to help get an idea of what 2 minutes feels like. This tip and others can be found in these articles on "making friends with time on the GMAT"
https://www.gmatprepnow.com/articles/mak ... %93-part-i
https://www.gmatprepnow.com/articles/mak ... 93-part-ii

Cheers,
Brent
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