Hi I'm Erika, one of the senior curriculum managers here at Magoosh, and a GMAT expert.
Now if you've watched my video on GMAT scoring you know how important it is to finish a section and
how much not finishing a section or having to guess through a bunch of questions at the end
is going to tank your score but, how do you avoid that? How do you ensure that you finish a section?
In this video we're going to talk through four quick tips to sail through the exam and ensure
that you finish your sections. All right tip number one is to have multi-question timing checkpoints
and this actually comes from the two biggest timing mistakes I see students making on the GMAT.
So mistake number one is not looking at the clock at all and that is obviously a problem because you
don't know how you're doing. So you could be going way too slow and end up not finishing the section
or you could be going way too fast and be making mistakes and guessing on questions that you
actually don't need to be. So not looking at the timer a mistake. Mistake number two is looking
at the timer way too much. So I see a lot of folks who are looking at the timer after every
single question or maybe multiple times per question. And that's also a mistake because, one
not every question takes the same amount of time so that's putting a bunch of stress
on yourself that you shouldn't be, um but also because it's distracting to look at the clock.
Right, it takes time every single time you're looking at the timer and it's distracting you
from the problem that you're working on. So, we also don't want to be doing that.
So what we want to do is we want to split the difference and we want to look at the clock at
regular intervals that we have predetermined amounts of time for. So the checkpoints that I
recommend are for Quant 10 minutes per five questions and for Verbal 11 minutes per six
questions. So I find that that five to six question range is really nice because it means that you're
looking at the clock frequently enough that if you end up going a little bit too slowly you can
recover or a little bit too fast you can recover. Um but it's not so frequent that it becomes
distracting and it's not so frequent that you end up with a good balance hopefully of questions that
take longer and shorter so that it balances out to roughly the correct amount of time. Now
a quick caveat I recommend with these checkpoints giving yourself about a one to two minute buffer.
So if you're maybe one to two minutes over the recommended time for your checkpoint no big deal
keep doing what you're doing but if you are more than that behind or more than that ahead that's
when we want to start adjusting our pace so that we don't dig ourselves a hole. All right, tip number
two is to have a maximum time spent per question. Now I know I literally just said that we shouldn't
be looking at the clock on every single problem. These are for special occasions, so these are for
question types that you know you spend too much time on that's something that you know
about yourself. Or, um for questions where you start working and you're going I'm not really sure about
this, I know I could spin my wheels on this one, I know I could spend way too long here, that's when
these are gonna come into play. So take Quant for example, so we know that on Quant we're spending
approximately, or on average, two minutes per question and that's what gives us that checkpoint
of 10 minutes per five questions, right. Um but we also know that not every question takes the same
amount of time, some might go longer, some might go shorter and hopefully that balances out again
hence that multi-question timing checkpoint. But if we're spending way too long on an individual
question the shorter questions aren't going to balance them out. So what we want to do is have
a number where we cut off. So for quant for me that number is three minutes and that's the number that
I recommend I do not spend more than three minutes on a given math question. I find that that's enough
to get me those questions that deserve a little bit of extra attention but it's not enough for me
to spin my wheels on questions that I'm just gonna end up getting wrong anyway. So if I'm working on
a question and I hit that marker I guess based on what I have left and I move on. Now for Verbal it's
a little more complicated if you've watched my video on Three Tips for a Top Verbal Score you
know that I really recommend spending different amounts of time on different types of verbal
questions and this applies to question maximums as well. So for me on a sentence correction I am
never gonna spend more than a minute and a half per question. For critical reasoning I'm never
gonna spend more than three minutes per question and then for reading comprehension it's a little
bit tricky because we've got the passages and the questions themselves but for an individual
reading question I'm never gonna spend more than again a minute and a half. All right tip number
three is to have a minimum time spent per question. So this is kind of the inverse of tip number two
and the reason for this is that there are a lot of questions that when we look at them we go
I have no idea what to do, this is going to take me forever, I'm really gonna get wrapped up in
this I'm gonna hit my maximum and I'm still not gonna have the answer I'm gonna have to guess.
I might as well just guess now and move on right save myself some time and that seems
smart. Um but this test is designed such that there are questions that are going to look
really, really, hard but once we give them just a little bit of time, a little bit of effort,
just try a couple of things they're going to open right up to us and going to be easier
to handle. So what we want to do is just give ourselves enough time to give that problem
a fair shake and determine is this actually something that I should be guessing on because I -
I really actually don't know what to do and can't make any progress here. Or is this one of those
sneaky questions that is going to make sense to me and going to be solvable for me, maybe even quickly
if I give it just a little bit of effort. So what I recommend for all question types is a 30 second
minimum. So take those 30 seconds to break down the question no pressure here right break down the
question, do what you can with it and then at the end of those 30 seconds if you're still feeling
like no this is a waste of time then guess, then move on right. If you're not at that point, okay
then we might want to just kind of take note of where we're at on the timer so we can
apply our maximums later if we need them and then go ahead and give that problem a shot. So we want
to have maximums but we also want to have minimums. All right and my fourth and final GMAT timing
tip is to get comfortable guessing throughout the section. For timing now this is a really important
tip because it actually comes from and builds on all of these other tips. So thinking about tip
number one multi-question timing checkpoints, what happens if we run over a checkpoint? How do we get
back on track? By guessing, by guessing on questions that we think are gonna take too long and that we
think we're still likely to get wrong. Okay tip number two uh to question maximums what happens
if we hit our maximum on a question or we're running up on our maximum we should start
preparing to guess so that we can move on. Tip number three question minimums, what happens when
we hit that minimum and we go this question is still going to take too long I'm still going to
hit my maximum I still don't know what I'm doing, I'm still going to get it wrong, what do we do?
We guess, so guessing is going to be the thing that helps us along the way with all of these
timing strategies. So we want to be comfortable doing it because if we don't do it we're going to
be forced into guessing anyway just at the end of the section. So get comfortable guessing throughout.
The way the scoring is built is to accommodate guessing and getting questions wrong. So prioritize
your guessing around the things that you think you're gonna get wrong, that are gonna take
you too much time. And those are my four GMAT timing tips to help you sail through the exam.
If you like this video I recommend checking out my video on five tips to avoid an average GMAT score
where one of the tips is about nailing down your timing strategy. Let us know if this video helped
you by liking and subscribe for more videos from me and the other experts here at Magoosh
and if you have any questions or comments or suggestions for future videos as always
you can leave those in the comments thanks for watching and I'll talk to you soon!