Timing

Question

Hi Mike,

Most articles concerning timing and scores mention what to do if you notice during a test that you are behind time.
Most of them also agree that the earlier the question appears, the more it has impact on your score.
So my question is this, if I see that I am behind time, why should I start guessing (or any other method) and sacrifice getting the more early question wrong just to catch up on timing?
Why not keep with my schedule, and if I see in the last 5 mins that I am very behind time, only then start guessing?

mikemcgarry · Answer

Dear Ron, First of all time management is a very important skill on the GMAT and in the business world. It's very important to do absolute every practice problem with a clock set. Untimed practice is useless. Knowing how to solve a problem with unlimited time is of no value on the GMAT; if you can only solve a problem in 5 minutes, that is in every way equivalent to not knowing how to solve the problem at all. You must practice absolutely everything with the strictest possible time limit. See: https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/pacing-and ... -the-gmat/ The idea that earlier question affect your score more than later question is highly questionable. The truth is: the CAT is organized on a very sophisticated psychometric model, and many folks who know zilch about psychometrics are speculating about it. My answer is: don't ever fall behind . Again, in all your practice, you should have such a rigorous sense of time that you instinctually know when 90 second is about to expire. Set a timer throughout the day, in all kinds of activities, so you develop a very keen intuitive sense of how long 90 seconds is. The worst thing you can do on the GMAT is to take longer on a string of problems, and then pull some catastrophic "catch up" strategy. That's an exceptionally poor idea. You need approach each question within the time limit. What if you can't finish the question and the time is up? You need to guess, but here's the thing: if you have thought about the question a little, you probably can eliminate at least one answer, maybe more. At this point, you are not random guessing. This is called solution behavior . See this blog: https://magoosh.com/gmat/2013/when-to-guess-on-the-gmat/ Ideally, you should keep a rigorous 90 second/ question pace throughout, so each question in the second gets the same amount of time. If you do this skillfully, there will be just as much time for the last question as for the first. What if you are not so skillful in your application of this, and find yourself with little time near the end? Then, what you should do differs on the Q and V sections. See: https://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/guessing-s ... -the-gmat/ Again, don't plan to run out of time at the end. Plan to keep a steady tempo, question by question, so there is no crunch at the end. I can't emphasize this enough. It not that you learn material & strategies for the GMAT, and time management is just something extra that presents difficulties. No. Time management skills are as essential to GMAT success as any other skills. Does all this make sense? Mike :-)

ronr34 · Answer

Thanks for your answer Mike!
Learned a lot from it, but I must say that I'm very surprised.
Almost every blog/article directs to the fact that the first questions are more important than the last ones...
It's the first I'm hearing a different thing....
Kind of surprising.

Timing

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