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18 Jan 2007, 04:48
Its a good idea to keep a target of time remaining versus questions completed.
Personally during my practice testes I found that concentrating too much on time made me nervous and caused silly mistakes. the 2 minute rule is a pretty good and effective one. What you also need to need to consider is your target score and your own accuracy. For example if you're aiming for lets say a 740 then you probably can get about 6-7 questions in quant and 4 or so questions in verbal (confirm with your gmatprep software) wrong. So lets say you are usually very accurate in quant, then you could just randomly guess on 3-4 questions in the end and still reach the target score. So you may be able to spend some additional time on some of the tougher questions and the CAT will reward you for getting those right.
I also relied on my own feel for the question. If after a couple of minutes I felt that the question was definitely solvable in another 60-90 seconds, then I spent the time on it. If on the other hand I felt that it would take me a long time to solve it, then I would guess randomly and move on.
I personally allotted more time to the questions in the beginning rather than those in the end. I had decided not to look at the clock for the first 10 questions and then take it from there. I was prepared to spend upto 25 mins on the first 10 questions. Luckily this worked, not looking at the clock didn't make me nervous and by the time I finished I had 56 mins left. So I didn't have any timing problems on the real exam in quant.
Verbal was a different ball game. For some reason, I got really stumped by the first couple of questions. I took about 7 minutes to answer them. From then on I got really panicky and kept looking at the clock after almost every question on the verbal. That really hurt me. I should have just ploughed through atleast the first 10 verbal questions without checking the clock. I think that would have helped my concentration.
So after this big rambling post my point is that it is important to have checkpoints. But be a bit flexible about them. Don't get nervous if you are over your target time. Don't check the clock too often especially in the initial period. This is a CAT, so tougher questions will count more. Go with your instinct on a tough question. If you feel it is solvable then go for it, else click and move on....