Timing Strategies for Quantitative Section

Hi DebbieChats - thanks for the response!

To clarify your point, you definitely don't want to be trying to gauge the difficulty level as you move through practice tests/tests. That will hands-down be counterproductive come test day, as you'll want to be focusing as much of your time and effort as possible on the questions themselves. I brought up the tendencies of the adaptive nature of the test to show that on test day, data shows us (as do the ESRs - they break the scoring up into sections, so you're able to tell roughly where - if any - questions were missed) that the algorithm will be gradually adaptive, as it's meant to identify the threshold of questions you're able to manage over the course of the section. Have you taken any of the official practice tests from MBA.com? They won't give you the same analytics as outside resources, but they're the closest to the real thing you could expect to see on test day. I've found that many outside resources for practice tests - while wonderful prep resources - can tend to be more adaptive in nature than the real thing.

In terms of pacing strategies - the idea behind benchmarking is keeping in mind that you won't necessarily see all questions around the same difficulty, and they won't all be designed to take precisely the same amount of time. So, don't be afraid to take the extra 30 seconds or so on that tougher question you're feeling confident in - you'll likely encounter a more conceptual question to offset the time spent. That said, if you get 20-30 seconds in and are feeling lost on a question, don't allow stubbornness to leave you guessworking your way through the question for 3, 4, 5 minutes. That's where stubbornness will get you.

So, if you find you're generally a stubborn test-taker, try to translate that stubbornness into structure, and have a process for when you need to move on from a question that just doesn't hold the potential to add value for you.

Beyond that, the best thing you can do to continue to address pacing is reflect on your practice to identify common themes in question types you miss/questions that tend to be more time-consuming for you, so that you can identify and eliminate any processes in your approach that are adding time without adding value. So, positive pacing techniques are not one-size-fits-all. You'll want to reflect on your tendencies as a test-taker, and learn to approach each section broadly with an emphasis on maximizing your success in the section, rather than hyper-focusing question-to-question.

I hope this helps clarify!

This is very informative


:)



Thanks for summing it up Debbi

Posted from my mobile device

If I could correct one thing above, the test is not 'gradually adaptive'. Instead, it's 'generally adaptive', or a bit unpredictably adaptive. It can happen that you get a question right, and your next question is much harder, or easier, than the previous one. The test does not need to adapt all that precisely to produce accurate scores, and it doesn't. There are a few reasons for this: for one, the test just doesn't have an enormous pool of questions to choose from, so even if it wants to give you a 660-level question, it might not have one available. And that's because the test uses more than just your ability estimate to pick your questions - it also needs to balance PS and DS, and needs to balance which topics you see, and it also has a security provision so that it doesn't overuse any one question. So some tests might gradually increase in difficulty, and some tests might jump around more (and ESRs can be misleading about this, in part because they average out difficulty, and in part because the scale appears to be compressed).

But otherwise everything Hailey says above is very good advice. You certainly do not need to get every 700-level question right to get a 700 -- in fact, by the definition of a 700-level question, you're only supposed to get 60% of them right to get a 700. It's only if you want a 760 that you need to get most of the 700-level questions right. It is critically important though, on an adaptive test, to get your easy questions right. A 700-level test taker almost never answers an easy question incorrectly. So if you do, it becomes very hard to persuade the algorithm that you are at that level - you need to be almost perfect. So as Hailey emphasizes, and this is the most important thing - be sure you're getting the easy and medium things right. Don't worry at all about getting some hard questions wrong; you're supposed to do that.

And you shouldn't be thinking about question difficulty during a test anyway. The easy and medium questions are the ones you'll understand and know how to answer. And that's what you should be thinking about: "do I know how to answer this?" If yes, you should spend the time to do it (within reason), even if it will take more than 2 minutes. Invest time when that investment will pay off. But if you see a question, and after a minute of thought, you feel "I don't really understand this and don't know how to answer it", there's no good reason to think extra time will help. Math is very often a "you see it or you don't" kind of thing. Those are the hard questions, and you should be saving time on them unless you see a path to a solution - save your time for questions where time will certainly help you.

Lastly, I'm not sure how you're evaluating the difficulty level of the questions you're using for practice. But if you're using prep company questions, their 'hard' questions are often 'hard' for the wrong reasons -- they're often only hard because they're long and complicated. Official hard questions tend to be hard because they're logically tricky, not because they're time-consuming. I find I spend less time on hard questions on the real GMAT than I do on medium level ones, because medium level questions often involve more awkward calculations to balance out the time they take with the thinking time you need on harder questions. Of course, those questions are only fast if you see what to do right away, and if you don't see what to do quickly, move on - if you're well prepared, and can't see how to answer something, it almost has to be a hard question, and guessing at hard questions doesn't hurt your score much at all.

Hi Debbiechats,

So, I understand that you’d like some more information regarding “quant pacing”; however what stood out to me the most from your post was that you are at a “500” level but would like to be scoring at a 700+ level. Given that you are not scoring close to your goal score, I think your focus right now should be on improving your skills rather than worrying about GMAT quant timing, right?

Additionally, it’s important to understand that timing on the GMAT, as in life, improves as your knowledge, understanding, and skills improve. Timing does not improve simply through one's “trying to go faster.” In fact, when people try to force speed before they’re ready to go faster, they tend to end up making a significant number of preventable mistakes. Sometimes these mistakes badly erode people’s test scores. In addition, when people rush learning -- a common pathology of those trying to force speed -- they actually never end up developing the speed they seek. One of the great paradoxes of learning is that to develop speed, a student must slow down to ensure that he or she masters the material. Consider the following examples, which hopefully will bring you some more clarity:

Imagine your goal were to run a mile in four minutes, a difficult feat even for professional athletes. So, you get yourself a running coach. You show up on the field and ask, “Coach, how do I get faster?” The coach responds, “Well, just run faster.” So, you try your best to “run faster,” but you can't; you’re running a 12-minute mile. Out of breath, you come back to the coach and say, “Coach, I stink. How do I get faster?” Again, he says, “Just run faster.” So, you try again, but this time you fall and skin your knees. You keep trying to run faster. On the tenth attempt, you pull your hamstring, falling to the ground in pain. Over your next four months of recovery, you ponder why you couldn't run faster.

That situation would be insane, right? No qualified running coach would ever provide you with that advice, because the coach would understand that no one gets faster merely by trying to run faster. Instead, the coach would set you up on a linear, comprehensive plan to make you a BETTER runner. He may have you run progressively longer distances at relatively slow speeds. He may have you run up and down the stairs at the football stadium. He may have you run up and down hills. He even may have you engage in strength training, yoga, or Pilates to make you a more fit athlete. After all of that training, he finally would bring you back on the field and time you running the mile. At that point, he’d coach you on how to push yourself through the pain of sprinting and help you to understand what a four-minute-mile pace feels like. He now could help you with those things because you would be in the necessary shape to be receptive to them. So, you begin your run, and BOOM! You run a 6-minute mile. What happened? Well, you became a better runner. You became a fitter athlete. You became stronger. Although you’re not yet at the four-minute-mile mark, your training has yielded considerable improvements.

Now imagine your goal were to play a complicated song on the piano. The tempo at which a pianist plays greatly impacts the way a song sounds. To make songs sound the way they should, often a pianist must play at a fast pace. But your experience with the piano is limited. Can you imagine trying to play the complicated song at full speed right at the outset? Doing so wouldn't be possible. Instead, you first need to master many aspects of the piano -- without really trying to get faster. In fact, you need to proceed slowly at first, sometimes very slowly. As you master the piano, you find that you’re able to play your song at progressively faster tempos. With time and dedicated, proper practice, you’re able to recreate the sound you seek. If in the early days of practicing you had tried to force speed instead of mastering your technique, you never would have gained that speed. You never would become truly accomplished at playing the song.

The process of getting faster at solving GMAT questions is quite analogous to the process of improving one’s running speed or ability to play the piano at the proper tempo! To get faster, you must get better. As you further develop your GMAT skills, you will get faster at a) recognizing what a problem is asking and b) executing the necessary steps to quickly attack the problem.

The key takeaway is that once your GMAT knowledge improves, better timing will follow. In fact, a great way to know how well you have mastered a particular topic is to be cognizant of your reaction time when seeing a particular question. For example, consider the following simple question with which many students who are beginning their prep struggle:

14! is equal to which of the following?

(A) 87,178,291,200
(B) 88,180,293,207
(C) 89,181,294,209
(D) 90,000,000,003
(E) 91,114,114,114

Upon seeing this question, what is the first thing that comes to mind? Grabbing a calculator to add up the values in the expression? If you are able to quickly recognize that using the “5 x 2 pair rule” will allow you to attack the problem quickly and efficiently (see the solution below).

Solution:

14! = 14 × 13 × 12 × 11 × 10 × 9 × 8 × 7 × 6 × 5 × 4 × 3 × 2 × 1.

Notice that there is at least one (5 × 2) pair contained in the product of these numbers. It follows that the units digit must be a zero. The only number with zero as the units digit is 87,178,291,200.

Answer: A

Although this is just one example of many, you see that you must have many tools in your toolbox to efficiently attack each GMAT quant question that comes your way. As you gain these skills, you will get faster.

So, since you are currently scoring around a 500 level, you may want to look at HOW you have been preparing, and potentially make some changes. Moving forward, you need a study plan that allows you to learn linearly, such that you can slowly build GMAT mastery of one topic prior to moving on to the next. Within each topic, begin with the foundations and progress toward more advanced concepts. Certainly, if you’d like more specific advice on how to improve your GMAT quant skills, feel free to reach back out.

Also, you may find it helpful to read the following articles about The Phases of Preparing for the GMAT and Timing Strategies For a Higher GMAT Quant Score.

Feel free to reach out with any further questions.

Good luck!

"You'll want to reflect on your tendencies as a test-taker"

"I find I spend less time on hard questions on the real GMAT than I do on medium level ones, because medium level questions often involve more awkward calculations to balance out the time they take with the thinking time you need on harder questions. Of course, those questions are only fast if you see what to do right away, and if you don't see what to do quickly, move on - if you're well prepared, and can't see how to answer something, it almost has to be a hard question, and guessing at hard questions doesn't hurt your score much at all."

"In fact, a great way to know how well you have mastered a particular topic is to be cognizant of your reaction time when seeing a particular question."

There could have been no more truer words spoken than above -
Very well recieved advice - gives confidence and direction - thanks a ton everyone.

A lot of fantastic advice has already been given in this thread, but for anybody who's just skimming it, I want to reiterate that this isn't the case for a couple of reasons!

1. A 700+ score can come from a lot of different combinations of Quant and Verbal subscores. There's not really any such thing as a "700 in Quant" - you can get a 700 by getting a 44 in V and a 41 in Q (approximately), or a 35 in V and a 50 in Q, or a lot of different possibilities in between!

2. But, suppose you want to get a certain score in Quant (let's say a 47.) Do you need to get every 47-level question right? Definitely, definitely not. In fact, if you DO get every 47-level question right, you'll end up scoring far higher than a 47, assuming that you don't run out of time at the end of the Quant section. It's more likely that somebody who scores a 47 in Quant got around 2/3 of the "47-level questions" right.

(I put "47-level questions" in quotes there because that's also an oversimplification, but it's too much to go into here!)

3. Here's some reading material, based on actual data from Enhanced Score Reports, on how many questions you actually need to get right:

https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... an-i-miss/

Very helpful post by all of you. Thank you. Cleared some air.

Posted from my mobile device

Yes, the test is designed so you get 60% of questions at your level right, roughly. That's actually the assumption behind the algorithm. If there were no answer choices, a question would be at your level if you had a 50% chance to get it right. But with five answer choices, the assumption is you'll get a question at your level right 50% of the time, and the other half of the time you'll guess, and you guess right 1/5 of the time, for a total of 60%.

That's a slight oversimplification, because on some questions (especially in DS) everyone guesses better than 1/5, and the algorithm knows how often guesses are right for each question (by looking at how well low-level test takers do on each). But this is why most people, except those at the absolute upper and lower ends of the scoring scale, answers between 30% and 40% of their questions incorrectly - the Q49 level test taker and the Q26 level test taker have very similar numbers of wrong answers. It's just that the Q49 level test taker is getting high-level questions wrong, and the Q26 one is getting low-level questions wrong.

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