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Great questions!

What time limit do you use before moving on from a difficult Quant question?

3:30 (for standard time). The trick, as you mentioned, is noticing when you’re there! One thing that helps is to build your internal sense of a minute (or two). You can train yourself by setting a stopwatch to count up, then starting an activity (reading, cooking, talking on the phone). Every time you think a minute (or two) has passed, hit the lap button. After about ten times, stop and see how you’re doing. Keep practicing this until you get to be accurate!

What are the signs that tell you that you’re stuck?

For me, there is often an emotional signal. I’ve been working a problem, and I start to feel frustrated or rushed. That, or I’m just spinning, and I either feel disorganized or I don’t know what to do next.

Do you ever deliberately guess and move on, even if you think you can eventually solve it?

Absolutely! This was actually a really important part of getting a 99th percentile score for me. I used a benchmark time management strategy (it’s outlined inEverything You Need to Know About GMAT Time Management). If I was more than three minutes behind on any benchmark, I guessed on the next problem. Simple as that.

I also had to guess if I was getting to that 3:30 benchmark. It helped to flag the problem for review and tell myself I could come back to it if I had extra time.

How do you balance spending more time on a difficult question versus protecting time for the remaining questions?

The benchmark time management strategy really helped with this. It was also really important for me to internalize that the difficult questions are the least important ones to get right. Because the test is adaptive, and the section scores are based on where you end up within the mix of difficulty, the most important thing is to show the GMAT you can get all of the easy questions and most of the moderate questions correct. Once I truly believed that it was a bad time investment to spend over 3:30 on a hard question, because it might cost me a (more important) medium or easy one, it became easier to move on.

You’re asking all the right questions! And getting the time management strategy nailed down takes practice. I recommend doing mixed, timed problem sets regularly, including longer ones that allow you to practice your benchmarks.

Best of luck!
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