Soooo I just started sn2ed's schedule, but here's my problem. If I time the passages I'm doing awful but if I take my time I'm doing great. Should I keep walking before I run so to speak? When do you do every passage timed? I literally started this week.
I was running into the same thing and here's what I've done so far to fix it, and it seems to be helping. Instead of doing my practice sections on paper, I made an excel workbook for each of the four subjects. Inside each workbook are two sheets for each section. One is for the answers I submit and the other is for grading purposes. I go through way ahead of time and enter the answer keys so as not to bias the scores. I implemented a check column which comes back with a check mark or an X for correct or incorrect, respectively. Beside that, I have a column which allows me to log the type of mistake I made. These tally to a table that gives me a quantitative distribution explaining why I'm missing questions. Depending on what this table says, I make a decision as to how I want to approach the issue of timing on a given subject.
The reason I made a distinction is because I realized the reasons I was missing biology questions was completely different from the reason I was missing physics or chemistry questions. For example, I was missing biology questions because my undergraduate experience in biology wasn't as solid as other courses. As a result, I was missing things because I was completely unfamiliar with the concepts. Of course, all of the information is in the passage, and I did much better when I took my time, but the real test IS timed so it came down to properly preparing for the feel of a testing environment and wasting limited and expensive practice content or ignoring the time limits and risking being too slow on the day of the test.
My rationale is this: Studies have proven our behavior doesn't change that much over time. As a result, if you have a hard time letting go of a question you can almost answer, this is likely going to be a challenge for you to some extent on test day no matter how much you prepare, because the fact is that you care about knowing it. This makes it hard to move on. For a mistake made based on a lack of knowledge, the only solution is to go back and truly learn it inside and out. Your instincts and reading speed won't change much before the test, so in my opinion, don't waste your practice content if you truly don't know the material well enough.
Consider another subject, physics. Most of my errors were due to concentration. I wasn't focused enough because I knew the material very well, and I jumped to a conclusion and made a foolish mistake. In this case, I absolutely force myself into a timed setting, because I know that I have to learn to focus intently even when i know something well, because there is no time to go back and discover my mistakes.
Lastly, lets take chemistry. This section is, in my opinion, the most taxing mathematically. It is SO easy to double and triple check your math and waste time in the process. We've been programmed to do this since we were old enough to think. This is something you HAVE to let go of. Take it under timed conditions, and if you solved the problem differently then they did, spend your time learning how to do it their way. Of course then, you're relying on the review program heavily with your fate, but if you chose a good review program, concede to the fact that they've been doing it a long time and are probably better at their job than you are. Let them teach you how to succeed on this test rather than trying to take the longest, most inclusive approach to every problem. While I can't speak for other review programs, the Berkeley review is excellent at this. And I've found that as I start forcing myself to solve problems their way, even though it is unfamiliar and absolutely uncomfortable to do so, the scores don't lie, and what was once one of my weakest subjects is getting stronger and stronger.
In biology, the more you know going in ahead of time, the less reliant you are on extracting information from the passages, which saves time. Thus, if you don't know it well, you'll see a trend between faster times and more mistakes.
In chemistry, the concepts require little memory recall, and so the mistakes present themselves in two regards. The either-or type (e.g. Is it endothermic or endothermic that acts this way, I can't remember!!) and the math-related errors. Either-or situations a frustrating, because they represent easy points, but guess what, you're already at that unfortunate junction and you have a 50/50 chance, so make a guess and move on. The math can slow you down significantly, which is why it's important to adopt their methods of estimation and answer elimination rather than busting out your kinematic equations or formula derivations starting with the Gibbs free energy equation every time, and trying to solve it purely with sound theory.
All of this is to say, if you truly haven't gone over something well enough, don't burn through the content, or you'll have nothing left to validate your level of understanding later on. Hindsight can undermine true weaknesses if you just rush through and read the answer keys and don't catalogue your mistakes. The excel workbook really helped, but if you don't want to take the time to set one up, I would be happy to upload mine for anyone who wants it.
