Best time strategy ?

Question

i have recently read somewhere that if you have less time to answer in verbal section it is best to skip questions rather than guess (even if you might get it wrong) and in quant section it is better to guess rather than skip unanswered so as to ensure that you lose lesser compared to vice versa. Is this true ? and if not what is the best time strategy in each section respectively besides the ideal scenario (try to improve your speed and answer all).

KarishmaB · Answer

Different strategies work for different people so there is nothing called the "best strategy". Here is some input that might help you:
In Quant, you have about 2 mins per question and the time spent on reading the question is usually about 10-15 secs. 
In Verbal, you have about 1.5 mins per question and the time spend on reading the question is usually more than 30 secs.

The point is that you want to minimise wastage of time (to bank maximum time for rest of the questions) if you are going to guess/skip a question but still want to good probability of getting it correct. 
So in Quant, if you do read the question and take an educated guess, you could still do it in about 30 secs (banking the rest of the 1.5 mins) and increase your probability of getting it correct to about 50%. 
In Verbal, if you do read the question and take an educated guess, it could take as much as 45 sec to a min hence leaving you with just 30 secs to bank. It does increase the probability of getting the answer correct but doesn't add much value to the time bank. You might as well put in another 30 secs and give it your best shot!
Hence the strategy you mentioned.

I would suggest you to check out the CR question stem if nothing else and if the question is in your comfort zone, go ahead and invest in it. Else, you can decide to skip it. Ideally you should spend 1 min in SC questions so skipping them doesn't add too much value in any case until and unless the statement is long and convoluted.

DmitryFarberMPrep · Answer

Whatever source you are reading is clearly not reliable, since it is not possible to skip questions unanswered on the GMAT--you have to confirm your answer before moving on to the next question. The only way to leave a question blank is to run out of time before completing the test, and this is terrible for your score!

It's important to stay more or less within time constraints (about 2 min/q on quant, and a little less on verbal). If you find yourself falling behind, guess on a question here and there to catch up, but avoid guessing randomly on strings of questions, as this can cause your score to dip down too far and you'll more or less have to work your way back up.

Of course, you don't want to keep track of time on a question-by-question basis, so you'll want to memorize some timing benchmarks. Here's one take on that subject from my colleague Stacey Koprince:

https://www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/blog ... tch-paper/

OptimusPrepJanielle · Answer

Hello Vikhyath,

Ideally, you should accomplish the SC in 1-2 minutes (2 is generous), CR/PS/DS in 2 minutes, and the whole RC passage and questions in 6 minutes. Each question for reading shouldn't take much time if you've set aside enough time to read the passage carefully enough.

No matter what the timing is, the key is to answer every question with the best of your ability. Even if the clock is running fast you have to stay calm and focused enough to answer as best as you can. That requires making educated guesses. To do that you'll need to be skilled at process of elimination. For quant this requires thorough knowledge of the GMAT math concepts and for RC/CR this requires an understanding of the scope of the text/argument. You can often eliminate choices swiftly when you see that they are clearly out of scope. But to see that requires careful reading even down to the last second.

I hope that helps!

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