Help!!

[RiyaR]

I have taken three GMAT tests till now, I have scores ranging between 650 and 680. How do I improve my score? It is a little frustrating as I finish both sections 30 minutes early. Please Help!!!!!

[Brent@GMATPrepNow]

Finishing each section with 30 minutes remaining is not a good idea. Ideally, you should finish the test with very little time remaining.

When you finish 30 minutes early, I assume that you felt that you answered every question correctly (otherwise you would have spent more time). Of course, your scores indicate that you did not answer every question correctly. Given this, you should use that extra time to carefully review each answer. So once you've chosen a response, go back and re-read the question (to ensure you didn't miss anything the first time) and then review your response/calculations. This should help minimize any careless errors and increase your score.

If you're interested, we have a free GMAT time management video at https://www.gmatprepnow.com/module/gener ... es?id=1244

Cheers,
Brent

[[email protected]]

Hi RiyaR,

Finishing the Quant and/or Verbal sections 30 minutes early is NOT a good thing. To maximize your performance on each of those sections, you should be thinking to maximize the 75 minutes that each section gives you. So the immediate piece of advice is to slow down, do more work, double-check the work that you do, etc. and pick up those missing points (after you review each CAT, you should be able to find a bunch of questions that you should have gotten correct except you made a silly/minor mistake --> theoretically, you could have used that extra time to keep those silly mistakes from happening).

I have a few questions about the CATs you mentioned:
1) What were your Quant and Verbal Scaled Scores on each of those CATs?
2) Did you take the ENTIRE CAT (including Essay and IR) each time?

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

[JTuquero]

Hi RiyaR

You've received some great advice already on this chat thread, so I thought I'd jump in with a few tips that our tutors like to give folks on time management:

When studying, try grouping five Quant questions together and spend no more more than ten minutes on them. You can use this strategy on both practice questions and simulation exams. If you fall behind schedule, make a strategic guess or two to catch up. Make strategic guesses on questions that you aren't confident on or that would take you much longer than two minutes to answer. That way, you buy yourself some time and you can spend more time on questions that you can confidently answer. Since running out of time is not an issue for you, go back and review if you find that you're moving ahead of schedule.

Apply the same strategy on the Verbal section, except give yourself nine minutes to answer five questions.

Here's a link to a few more blog posts on timing strategies: https://gmat.economist.com/search/blog_post?keys=timing.

Hope this helps.

Jessica