Speed and Endurance

[AndreiB]

Ok,

I have two issues that I consider to be major.

First one is related to speed in the Quant Section. I can basically solve any problem given by the GMAT, but sometimes I find myself lingering over 3 minutes on a complicated problem. I need a strategy that will help tackle the GMAT Quant section faster.

Secondly, I lack endurance. I did some practice test and in my last one I got a 710, but I felt I could do a lot better. I just became so exhausted halfway through the exam that I literally blew some questions in the Verbal Section simply because I wasn't able to concentrate anymore on the question stems.

Help me out guys, please!


P.S: At the moment I am using a highly redundant endurance strategy. I am trying to practice only when I feel tired so that I can train my brain to think faster in stress and fatigue conditions, but this isn't helping. I thought this sort-of military endurance strategy might work, but it has failed me miserably and what I notice is that I get to be tired overall from it. I tend to perform poorer in both quant questions and verbal questions, but on actual tests- there's no improvement.

[Bill@VeritasPrep]

For Quant, one thing that I've found to be extremely useful is to go back to previous problems and see if you could have done them more efficiently. Look for things like number properties (especially odd/even and units digit), rounding/estimating (if the answers are fairly spread out), or solving conceptually instead of mathematically. If you post a couple of the problems that gave you trouble, I'd be happy to take a look and see how I would solve them.

As far as building endurance, I think simply being comfortable is the best way to go. The more familiar and confident you are with the question types, the less energy you have to expend and the less stress you'll feel. Practicing when tired has been fairly counterproductive in my experience; when you're fatigued, you tend to lapse into solving problems the way you always have, which typically isn't as efficient as the new techniques and strategies you've learned. Once the new methods have become second nature, then practicing when tired might be helpful.