Ensuring top GMAT performance is all about knowing when to be fast by adopting shortcuts and knowing when to slow down and be extra vigilant. Students often neglect the principles of smart time use, thus resulting in them either making careless mistakes or running out of time to finish the test. Pick up the following tips if you wish to learn about using your time smartly to achieve the best score you can for your GMAT test.
1) Check the clock at most once after every 10 questions
Although it’s important to be mindful of the time you have left, constantly checking the clock can lead to a high level of anxiety. This can result in you making careless mistakes because your attention, which should have gone to the calculations and careful reading of the questions, is occupied with the clock.
Instead, adopt a smart timing strategy. An ideal strategy is to only check the timer at most once after every 10 questions.
2) Skip difficult questions
There will no doubt be a couple of extremely hard questions in your GMAT. But don’t devote all of your time over these questions. Just deliberate each difficult question for 30 seconds before letting it go or giving it a logical guess. Knowing that you have sufficient time on your hands from letting these questions go will give you a psychological advantage that will improve your overall score.
3) Focus only on what the question requires
If you encounter a problem that seems to require a tedious amount of calculations, stop and check that you have read the question correctly. An effective GMAT time management strategy includes knowing when solving a problem is not going well. Remind yourself to focus only on what the question requires and the information you need to answer it. If you are still stuck after one minute, move on to the next question.
4) Don’t be deceived by seemingly easy questions
Although it’s encouraged that you speed through easy questions to gain time, you still have to be alert. It is so easy to answer a seemingly easy question wrongly because of some minor trick. It’s advisable that you take a few seconds to pause and confirm the answer by reworking the question. This will help greatly in avoiding careless mistakes.
5) Take advantage of note taking with your pen and paper
Once you’ve read through the problem, it is encouraged that you note down the primary equation that you will be using and the gist of the problem. This will help you to focus on the requirements of the problem and to easily regroup if you made an error. This tip requires some practice before the test so you will learn just how much you need to write in order for this tip to be effective.
6) Analyse the answer choices given when solving the question
You don’t have to force yourself to peek at the answer choices given only after you’ve solve a problem. The fact is that for many problems, the best method of solving them involves an engagement between the answer choices and the problem itself. You can tell from the answer choices if they are too small or too big to be the correct answer. If the answer choices only consist of fractions, this will inform you something about the problem. If the answer choices are far apart, the problem may have something to do with approximation. So remind yourself that checking out the answer choices may be just what you need to solve the question efficiently.
Although these tips will help you greatly while sitting for GMAT, it is still important that you practise well beforehand to help you prepare for the test. A combination of good time management and doing a fair amount of GMAT practice papers will greatly improve your chance of getting a high test score.
Author Resource:
Joel Lee is an independent test preparation consultant specialising in GMAT preparation (http://icon-plus.com/ ). Apart from helping candidates to improve their scores through a customized GMAT course, he actively contributes to websites related to GMAT Test.
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