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Ran out of time for the first time on Quant

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Ran out of time for the first time on Quant

by bkw » Fri Mar 18, 2011 9:57 am
I was working problems TOO intensively today on gmatprep so I ran out of time with 6 unanswered questions.
So foolish I cannot believe myself, I watched the timer at least when I had 1.5minute and 1minute left. I use to just guess during the last 30-60seconds. But today I got caught up in a darn calculation and while just finishing the problem I suddenly was shocked by the "OUT OF TIME" window on the screen. :-((

I am glad this was BEFORE the real deal. I think I must be extremely time conscious when I have 1-2minutes left on the test!!

Anyway, I scored Q38. How much different would it have been if I e.g. had guessed the 6 remaining questions wrong?
Or 3Wrong 3Correct?
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by lunarpower » Mon Mar 21, 2011 4:34 am
received a pm.

sorry, i actually don't know specific answers to questions like this. i know that not finishing the test is one of the worst things that can happen to you, though -- you *must* try to finish the test.

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more importantly...

this is the sort of question to which the answer isn't helpful anyway -- even if you have answers, they're sort of useless. (if i could tell you the score increase from getting 3/6 right, what are you going to *do* about it? it's not as though you can magically make 3 of your 6 guesses correct.)

in fact, having too many answers to questions like this is almost certainly more likely to be detrimental than beneficial, in two ways -- (1) you'll have way too many things floating around in your head at the same time, and so you'll be too distracted to concentrate sufficiently on the problem in front of you; (2) thinking about these things will increase the stress factor (especially because the people who think about little details like these tend to be exactly the same people who are already stressing out to unhealthy levels in the first place!)

when you take the test, you should be thinking about exactly 2 things:
1) THE PROBLEM IN FRONT OF YOU
2) TIMING

that's it. if you are asking questions as detailed as this one, then it's likely that you are also thinking about 65,535 other things while you're doing the questions. if you are -- if you are thinking about *anything* other than #1 and #2 above -- then that has to stop, pronto.
Ron has been teaching various standardized tests for 20 years.

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by bkw » Mon Mar 21, 2011 5:22 am
lunarpower wrote: when you take the test, you should be thinking about exactly 2 things:
1) THE PROBLEM IN FRONT OF YOU
2) TIMING
that's it. if you are asking questions as detailed as this one, then it's likely that you are also thinking about 65,535 other things while you're doing the questions. if you are -- if you are thinking about *anything* other than #1 and #2 above -- then that has to stop, pronto.
Thanks for reply, I totally agree now when you say it. How would this help me... :S

I know I have tendencies to think about "this thing will be over soon", especially in verbal when I see that there are e.g. 30, 20, 15minutes, ... left or so. One approach to keep from doing this would be to hide the stop watch. But I will not do that since it will require you to be fully confident with hidden(no stop watch visable) pacing.
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by lunarpower » Tue Mar 22, 2011 3:07 am
bkw wrote:I know I have tendencies to think about "this thing will be over soon", especially in verbal when I see that there are e.g. 30, 20, 15minutes, ... left or so. One approach to keep from doing this would be to hide the stop watch. But I will not do that since it will require you to be fully confident with hidden(no stop watch visable) pacing.
if you aren't confident with no-stopwatch pacing, then you aren't ready to take the test yet.

before you take the exam, you should be able to pace yourself for at least 5-6 questions, on time, *without* looking at a stopwatch or clock. then, when you sit for the exam, you can hide the timer, and show it only at intervals of every 5 problems or so.

this way, you'll keep yourself from looking at the timer after/during every single problem -- a pretty serious issue. remember, it's impossible to just look at a timer; every time you look, you'll also subtract, recalculate, stress out, and lose time. if you only do that every 5 problems instead of every time, you'll suddenly find yourself with a couple extra minutes basically out of nowhere.
Ron has been teaching various standardized tests for 20 years.

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