General Timing Guideline

How much should I spend on the problems?

Averages
Quant 2 MIN
-------------------
SC 0:45—1:45
CR 1:30—2:30
RC
Reading the passage:
Shorter 2-3min
Longer 2.5-4 min
Question:
If you have to find things 1:00-2:00
Finding one thing closer to 1:00
Multiple searchescloser to 2:00
If you don’t have to find things 0:30-:45

Limits
QUIT the quant problems once you have reached about 2:45-3:00
If you score was 650+ when you started studying or if your quant score was 47+, THIS is going to
be the hardest part of the test for you—QUITTING

ONE THING YOU MUST LEARN

This is an insight-based test
If you don’t get a problem by the time shown here, you will probably not get it even with more
time. So quitting is the best option at that position

At what point should you switch from solving the problem mode to strategic guessing mode?
AS SOON AS YOU KNOW THAT YOU ARE STUCK, you should stop what you are doing, and try
something else.
Stuck means”
- On SC, it means that you are looking at a split, or at some grammatical construction, and you
just don’t know what to do with it.
- On NON-algebra quant problems, it means that you are basically just staring at the problem.
- On ALGEBRA problems, IF YOU ARE JUST PUSHING VARBIALES AROUND THE PAGE, HOPING
THAT SOMETHING WILL HAPPEN, for more than 10-20 seconds, you are stuck.
Try something else means:
SC look at something else in the sentence
Quanttry a backup method such as plug in numbers or estimation, etc. –February 4

What should I do with the timer?

Should try to get to a place, mentally, where you can HIDE THE TIMER.
YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE TO PHYSICALLY LOOK AT A TIMER TO HAVE GOOD TIME MANAGEMENT
Here is what you should do
- Generally HIDE the timer
- Learn to measure APPROX—internal stopwatch
- Check the time only at checkpoints on a TIMEING MAP
If you have seen way more SC’Syou should be ADHEAD of the timing map
If you have seen way fewer SC’sIt’s ok to be a little BEHIND the timing map

What should I do if I fall behind in timing?

You need to make some guesses.
If you get behind the issues is NOT guessing VS not guessing—it’s guessing on your choice VS
being forced to guess at the end.
If I have to THROW AWAY problems. How do I decide WHICH ONES to throw away?
You need to have a list of TROW AWAY CATEGORIES prepared AHEAD OF TIME
- WEAK areas
- SLOW areas
- Things that look very hard