Improving speed in msr

Question

I am facing an issue in completing the DI section of Gmat. Is there a way to improve my speed in msr as it takes away more than 10 minutes everytime

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

Hi ajain12 ,

MSR timing is one of the most common pain points in DI, and the good news is the fix is almost always the same: the time is being lost  before  the questions, not during them.

Here's what usually happens. Students open an MSR prompt and start reading Tab 1 deeply (trying to absorb everything) before moving on. By the time they get to the questions, they've spent 3–4 minutes just on the setup and they haven't even started answering yet. That hole is very hard to dig out of.

The shift that tends to unlock speed is changing  how  you read the tabs on your first pass. Your initial read-through should be a quick orientation, getting a sense of what kind of information is on each tab and roughly where things are located. You're not trying to understand or memorize anything yet. Think of it like scanning a map before a hike: you just want to know the terrain. The deep reading happens only when a question sends you back to a specific spot.

Once you're in the questions, two habits will save the most time:
 
  Use keywords from the question to navigate.  If the question mentions "projected revenue" or "2021 data," scan for that phrase in the tabs rather than re-reading from the top. This alone can cut 30–60 seconds per question. 
  Identify your mission before moving.  Before switching tabs, ask yourself: what exactly do I need to find, and where is it most likely to be? MSR rewards students who are deliberate. Jumping between tabs without a clear target is the main reason questions balloon past 5 minutes.

Also worth noting: a lot of students slow down because they're trying to process every number in a table or every sentence in a passage. MSR prompts deliberately contain irrelevant information. Part of the skill is deciding what  not  to read closely.

For your notepad, try jotting down the key data points you pull from each tab as you go. It sounds like it would add time, but for multi-tab questions it actually speeds you up. You stop having to toggle back and forth to re-confirm figures you've already found.

Please let me know if you have any additional questions.

KarishmaB · Answer

Here are a couple of videos you might find interesting: MSR Timing: https://youtu.be/JU-Nrt2D1Cw Time management in DI: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-eGp95nuog

Improving speed in msr

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