How Do You Know When To Guess And Move On?

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nomdeplume1234

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I find myself pressed for time on some practice passages (especially C/P). Is there a strategy you would recommend for timing on each separate section or is there a way to at least figure out what to work on and what to guess on now that it is more difficult to skip around on the test?

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It's not that much more difficult to skip around. You just have to remember to mark your unanswered questions and go back to them. I skipped questions that were taking me longer than average to think about/answer (or that I had no idea how to answer), and went back to them at the end. However I will say that I was also struggling to finish C/P on time in my practice exams, but had no problem on the real thing.
 
How do I know? When they ask me a unit conversion question. JUST NOPE! And, on a lesser note, if any sort of math takes me longer than 1 minute to calculate. That just means I probably have no idea how to do it.
 
Do you have the AAMC Question Packs? I'd run through those and work on timing there.

On my first practice test (PR) I paced perfectly for C/P. Fine on a second. On the AAMC practice a week before the exam I didn't answer 7 questions because I ran out of time. After revisiting pacing strategy (introspective, looking at the AAMC practice test and Q-pack) I saw that I was mainly getting bogged down on Chem passages that I simply didn't know the answer for. Instead of making an semi-educated guess (knock out 2, then flip a coin?), I was trying to reason out the answer and spending >3 minutes on random questions instead of marking them and returning. Soo... I studied my weak chem topics.

On test day I wrote at the top of my paper in big letters/numbers: "59 Q, 95 Min. 30Q, 47 Min" and circled it. Just to remind myself to look at the half way (time) to make sure I was on track. You can be responsive in the test, and if at the half way (time or question number) you find you're going too slow or too fast, you still have time to modify your behavior.

Spending 3 minutes on a question (to get it correct!) is ok if you only spend 20 seconds on another. I didn't limit myself on any particular passage/question, but I kept the 'checkpoint' in mind to assure I wasn't behind.
 
I have a habit of skipping heavy physics passages for last or take educated guesses and move on. Usually on every C/P section I have done 7 out of the 9 passages were reasonable and 2-3 of them were straightforward/easy. For the other 2 of the remaining 9, I often find myself taking educated guesses at times. Cut your loses, can't get everything right. I've been scoring around 124-125 on C/P for TPR exam however.
 
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