Simple way to always control time during the quant part.

Simple way to always control time during the quant part.

I had a lot of problems with timing and always wanted to check how much time I have. And usually I received advice to check time only per 10 questions by making simple calculations and compare result with timer. But for me it was too extreme, because during exam I am usually nervous and don’t have sense of time and I can spend much more time than allowed during 10 questions. I did a lot a lot of mock tests but sense of time transform to another form: I begin make quant part too fast and I start make a lot of careless mistakes because of this.

Finally I found solution that advices to write quantity of remaining minutes in the corner of each page. For me I decided to write remaining minutes after each question.
Before quant part we have one minute of instructions, during this minute I write numbers in each corner of each page: 73, 71, 69 and so on.



And then I just solve tasks in each corner from left to right (4 tasks per list).

So after EACH task I know how much remaining time should I have and I completely have no needs to make some calculations and spend precious seconds: all I need it is just look on timer and at the corner of page. So with this technic you are in full control of your time and you can apply all timing strategies with full understanding do you really need to skip one question or you just have a wrong feeling that you are out of time. Also you can control that you are not to fast and not make careless error. I prefer to be 3-5 minutes ahead of time just in case if I met some difficult task.

P.S. sadly but this technic is not applicable to verbal part because of different time needed for RC, CR and SC questions.

Update:
Nice trick with RC from Engr2012 who hear this trick from bb
"For verbal, I used to write down the time at which I would start an RC passage and see to it that I finish reading the passage+ answer all the related questions within 6-8 minutes (depending on the length of the passages)."