My GMAT(new version) Prep Strategy - Comments Invited!

[digvijayk]

So I have been beaten by the GMAT before and well at least in practice, now I seem to be beating the GMAT for sure. I plan on taking the GMAT around July-end and have been putting in 30 hours per week. I haven't registered for the test(contrary to what I should have done), because I really want to nail it and a fire is already lit under me and inside me.
Hope to increase the effort from 30 hours a week to 40. I have analysed and used a ton of courses and prep strategies. I have made notes and maintained an effective error log, using which I iteratively solve questions till I get absolutely no questions wrong. Iteration number two is in progress for some sections. So, I worked out my own plan and this is what I understood works best for me (as I am targeting the 99th percentile):

1. The Plan - Stick to official questions till all of them are exhausted and practice solving from OG 10 and 13. What I am doing/progress - I am currently solving 13 which has many repeats from OG 12 but still useful. Started with RC, moving on to weaknesses in Quant and then solving(trying to solve) the various SC OG questions using just meaning and finally my favorite CR from the bible and OG.

2. The Plan - Mastering concepts before working on speed. Solving absolutely no test till concepts are truly mastered. Once OG concepts are mastered, will move on to understanding the MGMAT math guides, so I don't miss anything. If I "KNOW" something and practiced something a billion times, I will be able to solve questions faster as I plan to practice till I drop. What I am doing/Progress - I used this strategy and solved OG 13 sections except IR. This strategy has helped me hover in the 90-95% accuracy levels. That's not really mastery.

3. The Plan - Once OG 10, OG 13 and GMAT Prep old and new are gone through atleast a couple of times and everything extracted, I will be practicing other problems, but will return to OG using my error logs a couple of weeks prior to my T-day, so that have a feel of official questions.

4. The Plan - Take the Diagnostic test of OG 13 (untimed), analyse the accuracy and take a week to fix gaps.

5. The Plan - Start taking CATs. Old GMATPrep, New GMATPrep and MGMAT CATs. Analyse and fix gaps.

6. The Plan - Go back to my error logs and notes, improvise and take the GMATPreps again about a week before T-Day. And then rest till the test.

Please share your ideas, criticisms and suggestions on this strategy that I have brewing.

[meanjonathan]

I have a similar story. I took the GMAT last March and, at the time, I was happy with my score of 700. Suffice it to say, I'm taking it again. I need a higher quant score.

Since March, I've been putting in tons of hours. Something like 20-30 hours per week. But general study isn't enough. As soon as you're ready, it's important to start taking fulls CATS under realistic conditions and examine your ability to withstand the pressure and not get bogged down. Make sure you're averaging 2:00 minuntes per problem and never exceeding 3:00. If you hit the 3:00 minute mark, you really need to guess and move on.

I'm sure you're already familiar with most of this, but the take away here is, become an experienced test taker, not just a good GMAT problem solver. You can be a genius at solving even the hardest problems, but if you can't do it consistently under test conditions, you won't have maximized your score.

Which reminds me, look up Stacy Koprince's article on "In it to win it." That's a good one.

Good luck!!!

-M

[lunarpower]

i received a private message regarding this thread.

some responses:

So I have been beaten by the GMAT before and well at least in practice, now I seem to be beating the GMAT for sure. I plan on taking the GMAT around July-end and have been putting in 30 hours per week.

this is way too many hours; you should cut back on the amount of studying that you're doing.

if you are studying for 30 hours per week, then your brain is going to get worse and worse at making "lateral" connections -- i.e., at thinking in any way other than perfectly linear, "drilled" ways.
as an analogy, think about someone who practices a musical instrument for 30 hours a week. that person will probably get really, really good at the technical aspects of playing that instrument -- and will probably become quite proficient at memorizing and playing particular pieces of music -- but will also be very, very bad at improvisation. in fact, that person will probably be worse at improvisation than he/she would without any formal practice.

the same thing is true on this test: if you are studying for thirty hours per week, then your brain is going to be worse at making lateral connections than if you simply didn't study at all.

where this is most significant is on the CR and RC sections, on which you CANNOT solve the problems by linear/memorized thinking.
as an example, take a look at problem 109 in the 12th edition OG critical reasoning section. (i believe this is the same as problem 111 in the 13th edition, if you have that one instead.) in that problem, you can't understand the correct answer unless you make a common-sense connection: namely, you have to understand that people who will probably get caught will be less likely to do bad things. in the correct answer choice, the fire department can figure out who is making the prank calls -- upon which your common-sense brain should say, "hey, that means people will be less likely to make the calls in the first place."
note that it's absolutely impossible to make this kind of connection through studying or memorization -- you must preserve your brain's normal, real-world thought processes.
this problem is far from unique in this regard; the need to use common sense / real-world lateral thinking is a nearly universal aspect of the RC and CR sections. by studying so many hours per week, you are going to destroy your brain's ability to make those sorts of connections.

I haven't registered for the test(contrary to what I should have done), because I really want to nail it and a fire is already lit under me and inside me.
Hope to increase the effort from 30 hours a week to 40.

don't do this.
cut back to a maximum of 15 hours a week, and use the extra time to spend with your loved ones and/or to catch up on sleep. and get a better score, too.

I have analysed and used a ton of courses and prep strategies. I have made notes and maintained an effective error log, using which I iteratively solve questions till I get absolutely no questions wrong.

when you make this "error log", you should be sure to note things in a way that will actually apply to future problems that don't superficially resemble the current problems.
the problem with many people's "error logs" is that they work only on those particular practice problems -- i.e., the insights gained from them aren't generalizable in any meaningful way.
remember that the problems on the real test will be based on the same underlying ideas as the practice problems, but will NEVER resemble those problems on the surface.

2. The Plan - Mastering concepts before working on speed. Solving absolutely no test till concepts are truly mastered.

there are both positive and negative aspects here.

on the positive side, it's good to understand that you should separate the ideas of timing and skill-building -- i.e., that you can't really work on more than one of those things at a time.

on the negative side, i think that separating these things so completely is a bad idea. if you just don't think about timing (= the rhythm of the full test) at all while you are working on concepts, then it's possible that you'll become accustomed to taking way too long to solve the problems.

Once OG concepts are mastered, will move on to understanding the MGMAT math guides, so I don't miss anything. If I "KNOW" something and practiced something a billion times, I will be able to solve questions faster as I plan to practice till I drop.

you may get a certain amount of mileage out of this way of thinking on the quant section, but it will destroy you on the RC and CR sections.

4. The Plan - Take the Diagnostic test of OG 13 (untimed), analyse the accuracy and take a week to fix gaps.

don't ever take any tests or assessments untimed. if you do, the results won't mean a whole lot.

there's a time and place for doing things untimed -- specifically, when you review problems that you've already been exposed to. however, when you are solving a problem for the first time -- especially if that problem is part of a larger test or assessment -- you should always do so under timed conditions.

[lunarpower]

meanjonathan --

Make sure you're averaging 2:00 minuntes per problem and never exceeding 3:00. If you hit the 3:00 minute mark, you really need to guess and move on.

well, you have the right spirit here, but it's important not to be too formulaic about timing. specifically, there are some questions on which you should spend more time, and some questions on which you should spend less.
in the end, it's really common sense -- some things are going to take longer than others.

for instance, consider problems 163 and 164 in the OG12 problem-solving section. (i can't reproduce those problems here, per request of GMAC.)
it would be rather foolish to allow exactly 2 minutes for each one of those two problems -- because, well, look at them!
* for #163, it's totally unrealistic to expect to solve the problem in 2 minutes. for a problem that long -- a problem on which you have to (a) swim through a bunch of words, (b) translate the statements, AND (c) do a decently significant amount of algebra once you're through with the words -- you can easily take 3 minutes, maybe even 4 minutes, before you should give up.
* #164 is a one-step problem. EVERYONE -- including people who actually know how to do the problem AND people who are totally clueless about it -- should be done with this problem in thirty seconds or less. if you are spending even 1 full minute on problem 164 -- much less two minutes (!!) -- then that means you're just staring unproductively at it.

more generally, it's important to realize that "two minutes per problem" is an AVERAGE, which must be considered with the same degree of common sense as any other average. it is definitely not a rigid guideline to be applied to every single problem individually.

[meanjonathan]

Ron, wow! Tremendous revelations here. I'm riveted.

Yes, I, too, have become much too formulaic and inflexible in my thinking. You're absolutely right in your assessment. So what's the best way to implement the paradigm shift and stay sharp? Do you find that it's much more valuable to study the entire spectrum of GMAT problems (i.e., PS, DS, CR, RC, SC) in tandem?

--Do you think trading some study time for social time might improve my results by keeping me grounded?

--Perhaps I should make it a priority to read from a wider breadth of sources (e.g., science, politics, economics, philosophy, etc), making sure I'm getting different perspectives and staying open to new ideas?

--What about rest and exercise? From the little bit I've read about semantic memory, exercise has been shown to bath the brain with oxygen, thus enhancing neural plasticity; and sleep, specifically REM, provides the brain time to defragment and reconfigure new notions into permanent connections. If you know more about this, I'd love to hear your perspective.

--Playing guitar? Yoga? Meditation? Avoiding routine in general?

What further insights can you share?

--mj.

[thulsy]

Hi Ron, I have a question regarding the balance between immediate pattern recognition and the flexibility in thinking.

Your advice of "preserve your brain's normal, real-world thought processes" is so valuable! That reminds me of a question that I got wrong: (OG13 CR #94)

As a construction material, bamboo is as strong as steel and sturdier than concrete. Moreover, in tropical areas bamboo is a much less expensive construction material than either steel or concrete and is always readily available. In tropical areas, therefore, building with bamboo makes better economic sense than building with steel or concrete, except where land values are high.

Which of the following, if true, most helps to explain the exception noted above?

(A) Buildingconstructed of bamboo are less likely to suffer earthquake damage than aresteel and concrete buildings.
(B) Bamboois unsuitable as a building material for multistory buildings.
(C) Inorder to protect it from being damaged by termites and beetles, bamboo must besoaked, at some expanse, in a preservative.
(D) In sometropical areas, bamboo is used to make the scaffolding that is used duringlarge construction projects.
(E) Bamboogrowing in an area where land values are increasing is often cleared to makeway for construction.

The correct answer B hinges on common sense that multistory buildings are common where land values are high. When I review this question, I was like - aha i really should not have got this question wrong. But when I was actually doing the problem with timing stress, I couldn't help adopting a "robot-like" thinking:
"except where land values are high", this is a geological constraint, so I need to find an answer that explains why bamboo is not suitable in this particular geological situation ("land values are high"). look at the choices.... (B) nothing related to land or geological stuff, so I killed (B) immediately (perhaps in less than 2 sec, at first glance).

It seems to me that there's a trade-off: When we take time analyzing a lot of past questions we can recognize some patterns, and adopting these patterns will tremendously increase the speed and accuracy (for most of the time). For example, in CR if I see the argument addresses the short-term profit while the answer choice addresses the environmental impact (at my first glance), I will automatically recognize the choice is out-of-scope, without wasting my time reading through the choice and thinking about the new scenario. However, sometimes I made mistakes (which, in retrospective, would be avoid if I had read more carefully and truly engaged in thinking the new scenarios) due to this kind of "robot-like thinking".

So Ron, how can we balance this trade-off to preserve flexibility in human thinking while enjoying the speed of the "robot-like" pattern recognition? Also, I have experience that studying intensively on a topic within a short time (e.g. studying the assumption type questions for 5 hours in total within a day) helps to form the GMAT thinking pattern, but the potential pitfall is losing the flexibility to react to unexpectedness. Your insights are greatly appreciated.

this is way too many hours; you should cut back on the amount of studying that you're doing.

if you are studying for 30 hours per week, then your brain is going to get worse and worse at making "lateral" connections -- i.e., at thinking in any way other than perfectly linear, "drilled" ways.
as an analogy, think about someone who practices a musical instrument for 30 hours a week. that person will probably get really, really good at the technical aspects of playing that instrument -- and will probably become quite proficient at memorizing and playing particular pieces of music -- but will also be very, very bad at improvisation. in fact, that person will probably be worse at improvisation than he/she would without any formal practice.

the same thing is true on this test: if you are studying for thirty hours per week, then your brain is going to be worse at making lateral connections than if you simply didn't study at all.

where this is most significant is on the CR and RC sections, on which you CANNOT solve the problems by linear/memorized thinking.
as an example, take a look at problem 109 in the 12th edition OG critical reasoning section. (i believe this is the same as problem 111 in the 13th edition, if you have that one instead.) in that problem, you can't understand the correct answer unless you make a common-sense connection: namely, you have to understand that people who will probably get caught will be less likely to do bad things. in the correct answer choice, the fire department can figure out who is making the prank calls -- upon which your common-sense brain should say, "hey, that means people will be less likely to make the calls in the first place."
note that it's absolutely impossible to make this kind of connection through studying or memorization -- you must preserve your brain's normal, real-world thought processes.
this problem is far from unique in this regard; the need to use common sense / real-world lateral thinking is a nearly universal aspect of the RC and CR sections. by studying so many hours per week, you are going to destroy your brain's ability to make those sorts of connections.

[thulsy]

Great questions! I'll join you in anticipating Ron's responses.

btw. I am also interested in the topic that you brought about how exercise improves cognitive functions. Here is an article from the energy aspect (https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/2 ... the-brain/).
Also, studies have shown [citation needed] that learning motion techniques (e.g. swimming, dancing, ...) excites the same neurological pathway that we use for cognitive function (e.g. learn the pattern in a particular type of quant/verbal questions). This data, together with the notion of neuroplasticity, indicates that learning some physical techniques can make us smarter (and thus better in GMAT ).

Ron, wow! Tremendous revelations here. I'm riveted.

--What about rest and exercise? From the little bit I've read about semantic memory, exercise has been shown to bath the brain with oxygen, thus enhancing neural plasticity; and sleep, specifically REM, provides the brain time to defragment and reconfigure new notions into permanent connections. If you know more about this, I'd love to hear your perspective.


--mj.

[meanjonathan]

thulsy

Bravo. Well done indeed. I read your New York Times article and then I looked into the several PubMed abstracts (I'd love to get my hands on the full article) referenced therein. As those whet my appetite for science, I found a few more on my own. I've listed the most interesting ones here.

1. Brain glycogen decreases during prolonged exercise. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21521757

The main takeaway here, I think, is that brain glycogen (stored complex carbohydrate that is quickly broken down into glucose for use as energy) is depleted considerably after 120 minutes of exercise but remains unchanged after 60 minutes of exercise; therefore, it looks like the window of efficacy for brain-energic adaptations occurs somewhere between 60-120 minutes of endurance exercise. In order to deplete brain glycogen, you really have to wear yourself out, so to speak. Muscle fatigue indicates brain fatigue.

2. Brain glycogen supercompensation. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22063629.1

This study picks up where the last one leaves off. Exhaustive exercise results in supercompensation of brain glycogen--your brain adapts and stores more energy, presumably to stave off fatigue the next time. And while, after just 24 hours, the beneficial adaptive effects diminish in subjects that do not continue an exercise regimen, after four weeks of daily exercise, 60 minutes a day, baseline glycogen is increased. The study also reports that all areas of the brain are affected, including the cortex and hippocampus, both strongly connected with memory.

3. Differential cognitive effects of cycling versus stretching/coordination training in middle-aged adults. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21895371

From what I can tell, adults' cognitive functions benefit similarly from endurance exercise as from stretching and coordination training. Based on the excerpt, I liken "stretching/coordination training" to yoga. Particularly, the yoga-esque training is good for episodic memory, which corresponds to time and place, as compared with procedural memory (muscle memory, repetition memory) or semantic memory (higher memory associated with cognitive reasoning, etc).

4. Daily running promotes spatial learning and memory in rats. https://jssm.org/vol6/n4/7/v6n4-7pdf.pdf

The study indicates that four weeks of daily exercise improves ability to perform tasks involving spatial memory, yet whether or not semantic memory (cognitive reasoning) is improved through such exercise is not discussed.

The Takeaway:
1) Studies indicate that an initial 120-minute exercise session enhances your brain's mechanism for storing energy and that this adaptation is maintained through daily sessions of 60 minute duration.

2) While procedural and episodic memory are improved through exercise, whether the same can be said for semantic memory (cognitive reasoning, quant ability, critical reasoning, etc) is not explicitly articulated. However, since it is known that the same brain structures (hippocampus and cortex) whose actions produce procedural and episodic memory also play a role in semantic memory, if procedural and episodic memory are enhanced with exercise, conceivably, so too does semantic memory through the same physiologic adaptations.

My Plan:
My exam is 25 days away, still enough time to fully experience the positive effects of regular exercise, I think. As someone who was a workout junky prior to my obsession with beating the GMAT, I believe I can get back into a routine seamlessly and without risk of injury. Therefore, I plan to implement the above and I will report back with how it works. My regimen will start with an endurance running session 120 minutes in duration followed by daily 60-minute maintenance sessions. Particularly, I'm looking for any perceived effect on my problem solving performance, speed, organization, and mental stamina.

I will continue to study and practice all areas tested, though at a reduced intensity, as advised by Ron earlier in this post.

--mj.

[meanjonathan]

Hi again guys,

I reposted the above scientific info on the following fresh message board so it can be easily referenced and added to: https://www.beatthegmat.com/leveraging-n ... tml#481569

If you have more to add about exercise, sleep, or other factors that affect performance, please post them there so they can be easily found by other inquisitive minds.

Thanks!

mj.

[digvijayk]

I am thrilled and honoured to have Ron reply to my post
Thanks for the advice Ron. I did cut back on hours after reading your reply. In fact, I had started to burn out, before reading your reply. Its brutal to put that many hours in any case. I am following your advice to the T now. And I'll be posting my scores soon.

[meanjonathan]

Hi Ron,

You explained previously that:

"more generally, it's important to realize that 'two minutes per problem' is an AVERAGE, which must be considered with the same degree of common sense as any other average. it is definitely not a rigid guideline to be applied to every single problem individually."

It follows that one might adopt a more robust, adaptable approach to timekeeping & benchmarking. What are your recommendations and what's your take on random guesses as a means of improving one's time position?

Finally, in an effort to stay centered and mentally flexible on exam day, do you have relaxation tips for the exam and days prior? (Since timing is significant source of stress, I imagine your answer here might tie into the above).

--mj.

[lunarpower]

Ron, wow! Tremendous revelations here. I'm riveted.

Yes, I, too, have become much too formulaic and inflexible in my thinking. You're absolutely right in your assessment. So what's the best way to implement the paradigm shift and stay sharp? Do you find that it's much more valuable to study the entire spectrum of GMAT problems (i.e., PS, DS, CR, RC, SC) in tandem?

what exactly do you mean by "in tandem"?

if you mean bouncing around essentially at random between problem types, then that's probably not the best idea in the world -- most people usually need some sort of continuity / concentration to improve at things. (this is, incidentally, also the reason why practice tests aren't a good tool for improvement: they bounce around from problem type to problem type, rather than offering any sort of concentrated treatment of particular problem types.)

on the other hand, if you mean doing problems in groups but doing a couple of different types of groups (e.g., 5 strengthen/weaken problems, then 5 rc inference problems, then etc.), then that could be a good thing.

by the way, you shouldn't generally use the word "tandem" if you are talking about more than 2 things; it's sort of like "couple" or "pair".

--Do you think trading some study time for social time might improve my results by keeping me grounded?

the point is just that you shouldn't overwork yourself. it's largely irrelevant what you do with the time that you free up -- basically, do whatever you want with it! socialize ... clean your room ... cook food for the week ... go on a day trip ... take a two-hour hot shower ... SLEEP ... yeah. basically do whatever puts your mind at ease.

--Perhaps I should make it a priority to read from a wider breadth of sources (e.g., science, politics, economics, philosophy, etc), making sure I'm getting different perspectives and staying open to new ideas?

this seems a bit distant from the objectives of the gmat.

more to the point, just going out and reading a bunch of stuff won't necessarily help; it depends on how you read that stuff.

for instance, science articles are often full of lots and lots and lots of facts. so, if you have a gmat student whose issue is that he/she tends to memorize facts, rather than absorbing concepts, while reading RC passages, then that problem could actually be made worse if this student goes and reads a bunch of fact-filled science articles.

it's really an issue of changing the mentality with which you approach the test -- it's not an issue of the concrete stuff that you do.
if you currently have a maladaptive mentality, and you go out and do X with the same mentality, then, regardless of what X is, that's not going to help you.

--What about rest and exercise? From the little bit I've read about semantic memory, exercise has been shown to bath the brain with oxygen, thus enhancing neural plasticity; and sleep, specifically REM, provides the brain time to defragment and reconfigure new notions into permanent connections. If you know more about this, I'd love to hear your perspective.

exercise -- again, in moderation. if you are sedentary and BOOM you start training really hard, then your whole body -- including your brain -- is going to become exhausted.
on the other hand, moderate exercise generally helps with that sort of thing, yes. it's not a huge effect, but it may not be negligible, either.

sleep -- this is not a simple issue.
there is evidence that deep sleep helps to form the sort of neural connections you're talking about here -- but, interestingly, there's also evidence that sleep deprivation (of the moderate kind, not extreme sleep deprivation) aids creativity and lateral thinking.
so, you really have to play around with this, and see how your thought processes work under different conditions of sleep, caffeine intake, etc. you should probably keep a journal.

--Playing guitar? Yoga? Meditation? Avoiding routine in general?

i am not a yoga kind of guy, and i've simply fallen asleep in any attempt i've made at meditation. so i have little to say about those, other than "if it works for you, go for it."

really, the answer here is that you should play around with these things and see how (or whether) they affect your thought processes. the most important thing, though, is that you not studystudystudystudystudystudystudystudy until you become mentally exhausted.

[lunarpower]

It seems to me that there's a trade-off: When we take time analyzing a lot of past questions we can recognize some patterns, and adopting these patterns will tremendously increase the speed and accuracy (for most of the time). For example, in CR if I see the argument addresses the short-term profit while the answer choice addresses the environmental impact (at my first glance), I will automatically recognize the choice is out-of-scope, without wasting my time reading through the choice and thinking about the new scenario. However, sometimes I made mistakes (which, in retrospective, would be avoid if I had read more carefully and truly engaged in thinking the new scenarios) due to this kind of "robot-like thinking".

So Ron, how can we balance this trade-off to preserve flexibility in human thinking while enjoying the speed of the "robot-like" pattern recognition?

the speed should be a non-issue. even in the unlikely event that you "recognize patterns" (which is generally not something that will happen very often in cr), that shouldn't be any faster than just intuitively understanding that something is irrelevant. in fact, it's probably slower.

for instance, if i say
if kirk loses weight, he'll have a better social life
and someone says
well, kirk probably won't lose weight in the first place
you should immediately know, pretty much by pure intuition, that this is irrelevant -- i only care about what happens if kirk does lose weight, not about whether he actually will.

if you actually went through the whole "pattern recognition" rigmarole -- well, hmm, if the conclusion contains "If X" then anything about whether X will happen in the first place is irrelevant -- then that would be much more difficult, AND much slower.

in general, i'm really not seeing any upside to the "robot-like" thing at all here, so there's not really a trade-off. one side is good, the other side is bad.

Also, I have experience that studying intensively on a topic within a short time (e.g. studying the assumption type questions for 5 hours in total within a day) helps to form the GMAT thinking pattern, but the potential pitfall is losing the flexibility to react to unexpectedness. Your insights are greatly appreciated.

you seem to be implying that "the GMAT thinking pattern" is something different from, and contrasting with, "the flexibility to react to unexpectedness" -- since you said that you gain one while losing the other.
i'm not following you here; as far as i understand, "the GMAT thinking pattern" is "the flexibility to react to unexpectedness". that's basically the only thing you need for 2/3 of the entire verbal section (cr and rc). well, that and your ordinary human reasoning skills, combined with the ability to read high-level english decently fast.

[lunarpower]

Hi Ron,

You explained previously that:

"more generally, it's important to realize that 'two minutes per problem' is an AVERAGE, which must be considered with the same degree of common sense as any other average. it is definitely not a rigid guideline to be applied to every single problem individually."

It follows that one might adopt a more robust, adaptable approach to timekeeping & benchmarking. What are your recommendations and what's your take on random guesses as a means of improving one's time position?

honestly, there are really only two things you need to manage time properly:

1/
be brutally honest with yourself about whether you are stuck.
-- if you are just staring at the problem, you're stuck.
-- if you are just pushing variables around the page, or just thinking in random circles about a verbal problem, then you're also stuck. (this is what most people aren't honest with themselves about)
it's like driving a car: if you are pulled over by the side of the road, hopelessly lost, and just sitting there, then you're lost... but, if you are driving around in random directions, then you're also lost.

2/
if you're stuck, QUIT. like, right now.
-- if you can think of something else to try, try it.
-- if you can't, then guess and move on.

honestly, that's it -- those two things are all you need to manage time properly. if you can absorb these two things, then numerical time guidelines will be superfluous; you won't need them anymore.
numerical time guidelines are only useful for people who don't have the self-discipline or self-honestly do do #1 and #2 above. (that is probably most people.)

i'm not sure exactly what you are asking me about guessing, but the basic idea about guessing is ...
... if you're stuck, then guess;
... if you're behind on time, then you're going to have to guess on some problems to get caught back up.

Finally, in an effort to stay centered and mentally flexible on exam day, do you have relaxation tips for the exam and days prior? (Since timing is significant source of stress, I imagine your answer here might tie into the above).

i don't think you should try to "relax" too much. if you do, then the stress of the test day will probably be even worse than otherwise. (as an analogy, think about walking out into harsh sunshine. now, think about walking out into harsh sunshine after being in a dark movie theater all day long. the second situation is worse.)

what you should do, instead, is realize that there is going to be stress, and make the stress work FOR you, rather than against you.

think about a day in your past when you accomplished a lot of stuff -- a day when you were "firing on all cylinders", so to speak.
i would be willing to bet a lot of money that you were NOT, at all, "relaxed" on that day. you were probably full of stress -- faster pulse, faster heartbeat, higher blood pressure, faster movements, more muscle tension, etc. -- but you just framed the stress in a helpful way, rather than in an oppressive way.

stress is, physiologically, completely neutral; it is neither inherently good nor inherently bad (except in cases of extreme and truly debilitating stress, in which case you should consult a doctor, or counselor, or whatever). if you tell yourself it's good, it's good. if you tell yourself it's bad, it's bad.
it's the same difference that exists between athletes who shine under pressure ("clutch" athletes) and athletes who choke under pressure. the nature of the pressure/stress isn't any different; however, the first group has decided (consciously or otherwise) that it's positive stress -- the same kind of stress that lets you accomplish lots and lots of stuff -- while the second group has decided (again, perhaps unconsciously) that it's negative stress.

it's all in your head. but, the stress is going to happen, so, for most people, relaxation isn't the answer.

[meanjonathan]

Ron, Thanks for the really thoughtful reply on all fronts and for the constructive criticism about my use of the word "tandem." You're a standup guy. Thanks again.

-mj.