Time Management Strategies on GMAT Focus

• The grid is like a checkpoint - it tells you at 3 points during your test that immediately signal if you are ahead or behind on your timing. Thus you can adjust your speed as needed. The purpose is to save time so you do NOT stare at the clock and try to calculate and frak out. Instead, you check the clock only 3 times during the test (turn it off actually)
  
  
• After you finish question #5 for example, you should turn on the clock and check your time. If you have more than 35 mins left, you are doing great. If less, you know you need to speed up a bit and you know by how much. Do the same after question 10 and 15. 
  
• At the bottom, the last row called "Time Box". Time box is a term I use for guessing questoins and then coming back to solve them and change their answer. This row shows  how much time you should left before you go to deal with the questions you guessed and skipped. 
  
• Do NOT Count/include questions that you put into the "time box" (this means bookmarked to attempt later, so if by question 10, you have 2 already in the time box, you are technically at question 8, not 10. 
  
  
• There are different strategies for each of the sections:
  
  • Use the "time box" only for questions that you can quickly identify as too hard to solve in 2 mins. Most likely that will only apply to quant questions and the strategy reflects that. The idea is that it only pays to solve a question later if you have not spent 2-3 mins on it already. Let me know if you disagree with this assumption!
    
    
  • For Quant, you can quickly identify which questions will be too hard to solve for you and thus require extra time. Skip them and put them into your time box (bookmark, and perhaps even mark on your scratch paper or dry erase board the number). I highly recommend time-boxing questions  right away and revisit them later (guess, and move on) instead of trying to solve, fail, tim box, and then come back and waste more time on re-reading. 
    
    
  • For Verbal, Unless you have a way to identify a hard Verbal question right away, I do not recommend putting any into the time box. Plan on solving/guessing questions and moving on, assuming you will NEVER see them again. Go ahead and bookmark the ones you guessed in case you have extra time to come back to them but due to shortage of time, make the final guess, assuming you won't have time to come back
    
    
  • For Data Insights, You have 2 options as a strategy for DI - you need to pick one depending on your hsitoric performance: 
    
    • 1. You can timebox the entire MSR (guess all 3 questions and come back later with at least 8-10 minutes of time. Note that some tests may have multiple MSR passages with 3 questions each. 
    • 2. Timebox anything other than MSR if you generally can do well on MSR's 

• Time yourself whenever you solve any questions. Whether you are solving 10 or just 1 question, make sure you are familiar with the ticking of the clock and pressure that it puts on you. Use:
  
  
  

  • Forum Timer
  • Forum Quiz
  • GMAT Club Error Log
• You have 3 questions on GMAT Focus that you can boorkmark and return to - use them to your best ability. Usually you should only have 1-2 questions that you need to "skip" and come back to later. You want to practice this skill of saving and coming back to later on your practice tests. Note how many questions  you would LOVE to add to the "save box" and refine the strategy further: 
  
  
  

  • The feature of putting questions into the "come back later save box" is only useful if you have time to come back to them later. Make sure you save enough time for that. You should aim to have 3 mins per question saved. 
  • Avoid putting RC's or MSR's if you can as they require revisiting the passage/text and will eat up more time
  • Learn how to tell "hard" questions you want to save for later right away so you don't waste 2 mins on them, put them into the "save box" and have to spend another 2 minutes only to get to the same place. 
• If you are making many careless mistakes, try this this trick: Pause after reading a question. esp. on the quant section, after reading a question and before starting to solve it - stop for 5 seconds and instead of throwing yourself at it, take a casual look at it and think if an easier solution exists. Don't just rely on your reflexes, use your brain too. While it sounds counter-productive, this trick will help you save time and also avoid some silly mistakes you may make by rushing to read the question.
  
  
  
• Most Important Tip: Never ever ever spend more than 3 minutes on a single question unless this is your LAST question. You should guess, bookmark, and move on. If you don't, it will hurt for the rest of the test. One mistake will not ruin a test, but one 3-minute question will. Plan and know your limits and promise to yourself that you will follow the timing plan. This may sound counter-productive but it will help you. 
  
  
• You need to be prepared that the timing will not go as you wish or plan. Battle plan rarely survives contact with the test: you may get a hard start or a few questions in a row that will get you down, but you need to be flexible and adjust to the test, just as the test tries to adjust to you. Plan to be stuck. Plan to be freaked out. Plan to panic. I don't mean plan to have a mental breakdown and practice rolling on the floor - I mean plan for all of these situations/scenarios and how you will respond in each. Know when it is time to move on. Prepare to face the expected.
  
  
• If you have problems with timing - experiment during practice tests! For example, you can take a test on which if you don't answer a question within 2 minutes, you simply move on. I took one like that, and what I did was guess when I was overtime on hard questions. My results that day, perhaps, were the lowest of all, but it allowed me to finish early and measure the time I had left as an "extra" time for hard questions. Another test you can take is "untimed" (some software simulators allow it including GMAT Club tests in Study mode) and take the time I needed on every question - this showed how much time i comfortably needed, and surprisingly it was not that much more. This helped build my confidence with the clock.
  
  
• Don't spend your time looking at the clock or turning it on and off - instead check the clock 3 times only during each Quant, Verbal, and DI sections - this will save you at least 30 seconds that you were going to use up and also a lot of worrying about not finishing on time. Use the time grid above. 
  
• Finally, an obvious one - do not leave questions unanswered. Each unanswered question on GMAT Focus drops your score by around 4-5 points as confirmed by GMAT prep simulations. Also Note that GMAC has changed their rules a few years ago and now any question that has not been submitted (e.g. the last one) even if it had an answer chosen, will count as unanswered, so make sure you have answered and submitted every question.

• Know by heart the common percent values, square roots, powers, and fractions. This will allow you to save time on calculations - see this post for details: https://gmatclub.com/forum/what-arithme ... 80128.html
  
  
• If you encounter a hard question that you are not sure how to solve - be happy - you must be doing really well and on the right track. Celebrate and don't freak out. Take a pause and think of an un-usual/backsolving/etc solution to it.
  
  
• After reading the question, it may help to review the answer choices with the following thoughts in mind: how far apart is the distribution (how precise the calculations need to be), potential tricks with answers such as \(\frac{1}{2}\) or \(\frac{-1}{2}\).
  
  
• In quant it is fairly easy to remember/get familiar with Question Patterns. Some people are better at this than others, but you will notice that most questions have a pretty set pattern; knowing these will help you save time when solving them and thus most likely will increase your score. This is unfortunately only true about medium and easy questions. The hard GMAT questions tend to be fairly unique. My suggestion is that you know how to solve every question in the OG (not just remember the answer but actually know how to solve a similar question). If you have trouble with this, memorize a typical question and a solution. You can later recreate it and plug your new question into that format without wrecking your mind (true for probability and group questions for me at least).
  
  
• Write intermediary calculations. I am slightly dyslexic and many other folks are it seems as well - if you have that issue, spend extra 3 secs writing your calculations down; see if that helps improve your accuracy at the cost of a few seconds. Don't do it in the head (that eliminated half of my careless errors)

Quant Question Approach in Short:

1. Read through the question (take 5 seconds to look at it and the answer choices)
2. See if you can apply any of the time saving techniques or quicker solutions or a trap!
3. Optional: Read the setup again and write out all the info you will need to answer the question (this helped me)
4. Do not miss an important detail in the beginning of the question - this is a common catch in both Math and CR's
5. If you are too stressed about time, and the test’s got you on the run, take away your eyes from the screen and try focusing them on your hands or the seam of your pants to regain your confidence
6. Know how to solve every math question type (arithmetic, probability, word problems, etc)

• Draw a grid on the scratch paper (A | B | C | D | E) for 5-10 questions and use it with hard verbal questions. (Make sure you do this during your break time or when the clock is not ticking). Then on the test, as soon as you eliminated an answer choice (for whatever reason, mark it on the piece of paper - esp helpful by the end of the verbal section when the brain can no longer function).
  
  
• RC makes the table above with suggested timings a bit tricky since question #15 may be the first of a 4-question RC. With Verbal, you really have to watch your timing and know how much you can afford to spend on each question type. I have spent about 1.5 mins on each CR, and the rest of the time I spent on RC - that was my approach. I could not speed up my RC's but I could speed up many CR's and that has given an opportunity for some extra time on RC. 
  
• Get a handle on Scope, Assumptions, Inference, Conclusions. If you can master these, you will be able to save at least 5 minutes on the GMAT, and probably pick up as many as 4 points in your verbal score. Many answer choices are based on within/outside of scope - that's true for CR's and RC's. The same applies to assumptions, inference, and conclusions - many of the CR and RC questions are using these basic step stops to build questions and traps. If you can be flawless with these, you will be much better off. You the OG/Official questions to train your SCOPE ear.
  
  
• If you are relying on MGMAT guides or a GMAT Course you took for individual question strategies, it helps if you FOLLOW them EXACTLY as they are given! If the strategy says you need to re-read the question, that's what you do, and if it says you must read the question first - that's what you do as well. I see people making this mistake all the time - they try to cut corners and beat the system only to get mediocre inconsistent results
  
  
• The best strategies for me were:
  
  • CR - read the question first and mark on a piece of paper the type of question (W for weaken, S for strengthen, A for assumption, etc)
  • CR - after reading the passage - read the question again and answer it WITHOUT reading answer choices - BEST TIP EVER (if I had to pick one). After that, you only have to find it in the list - very quick and efficient. Learn how to do this.
  • RC - paraphrase each paragraph, take notes as you go - helps to remember the text and not go back
  • RC - spend more time reading the first and last sentence of each paragraph and ask yourself - why was this sentence/paragraph placed here? What is author driving with it? Are you seeing any logical issues/flaws with it?
  • RC - don't go back to the text (if you have read it carefully - you will not have to) - fastest and most reliable way through RC
• I find reading a few thousand pages a good way to prepare to and save time on the verbal section:
  
  • You read faster - helps with every section
  • Better digest large volume of text - helps with RC
  • You're a less boring person to talk to :wink:
• If you are an international student, it is a good idea to know every non-scientific word that you meet in the question text. Write them in a notebook - word, and definition with an example of how you encountered it. It takes time, but by the time you're done with one word, you will remember it

Verbal Question Approach in Short: