Need Help Timing Passages

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OrangeMed

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Hello my compassionate SDN peers,

I am here to seek suggestions and tips on timing sections during the test. Do you time each passage or go by number of questions done in a given amount of time.

Basically, I am rushing through all my sections, especially Physical Sciences/Chem. I strongly believe I can break my plateau if I get the timing down. Can people please share their timing strategy? Do discreet first, passage later? How often you look at the timer?

Please explain your timing strategy for all the sections. Help a brother out!

Thank you very much!

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I aimed for 15-20 minutes/10 questions(2 passages). At 45 minutes you should be done with question 30. The C/P section is a very "boom or bust" section. For the questions you know how to do, you should do them very quickly and build up a time advantage. There are usually 4-5 "challenge" questions that require a larger amount of time/thinking and you don't know which they are until you reach them, so you should always go a little faster than you aim for and maybe save them for after you finish the section.
 
Hello my compassionate SDN peers,

I am here to seek suggestions and tips on timing sections during the test. Do you time each passage or go by number of questions done in a given amount of time.

Basically, I am rushing through all my sections, especially Physical Sciences/Chem. I strongly believe I can break my plateau if I get the timing down. Can people please share their timing strategy? Do discreet first, passage later? How often you look at the timer?

Please explain your timing strategy for all the sections. Help a brother out!

Thank you very much!

A good formula, especially for CARS, is to just divide total time by the # of questions.

Example:

90 minutes total / 53 CARS Q's = 1.7 min / question or.... ~~ 1 minute 40 seconds per questions

That means for a:
5Q passage, you have 8 minutes, 20 seconds
6Q .... 10 minutes
7Q ... 11 minutes, 40 seconds

________________

It's harder with the other sections because of freestanding questions, but follow that "time per question" formula to gauge it.
 
I aimed for 15-20 minutes/10 questions(2 passages). At 45 minutes you should be done with question 30. The C/P section is a very "boom or bust" section. For the questions you know how to do, you should do them very quickly and build up a time advantage. There are usually 4-5 "challenge" questions that require a larger amount of time/thinking and you don't know which they are until you reach them, so you should always go a little faster than you aim for and maybe save them for after you finish the section.
I'll keep the 45 minute mark in mind next time. Thank you!
You're so right. Its worse for me because I can't move on without figuring out the answer for those "challenge" questions. I'm like I can figure it out, but its gonna take me some time so I should do it later, but then I end up spending the time figuring it out and get off track.
 
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A good formula, especially for CARS, is to just divide total time by the # of questions.

Example:

90 minutes total / 53 CARS Q's = 1.7 min / question or.... ~~ 1 minute 40 seconds per questions

That means for a:
5Q passage, you have 8 minutes, 20 seconds
6Q .... 10 minutes
7Q ... 11 minutes, 40 seconds

________________

It's harder with the other sections because of freestanding questions, but follow that "time per question" formula to gauge it.
Thanks for sharing your strategy. So then do you time yourself for every other passage? It seems like it would take a while figuring out and setting the timer.
 
Thanks for sharing your strategy. So then do you time yourself for every other passage? It seems like it would take a while figuring out and setting the timer.

For CARS, since there are 9 passages and 90 minutes, my thought process is: "I have 10 minutes/passage. Oh, this passage has 7 Q's?? Then, I have an extra 2 minutes or... this passage has 5Q's??? Better do it in less than 10."

But, by 50 mins in, you should pretty much have 5 passages done. It's a good rule of thumb.
 
For CARS, since there are 9 passages and 90 minutes, my thought process is: "I have 10 minutes/passage. Oh, this passage has 7 Q's?? Then, I have an extra 2 minutes or... this passage has 5Q's??? Better do it in less than 10."

But, by 50 mins in, you should pretty much have 5 passages done. It's a good rule of thumb.
Thank you, good sir.
 
Hello my compassionate SDN peers,

I am here to seek suggestions and tips on timing sections during the test. Do you time each passage or go by number of questions done in a given amount of time.

Basically, I am rushing through all my sections, especially Physical Sciences/Chem. I strongly believe I can break my plateau if I get the timing down. Can people please share their timing strategy? Do discreet first, passage later? How often you look at the timer?

Please explain your timing strategy for all the sections. Help a brother out!

Thank you very much!
There is no 1 best way to time yourself. What you should realize is that the AVERAGE passage in the sciences should take ~ 8 minutes (giving yourself 1 min per stand alone question)

In CARS you have 10 minutes per passage/Q set, on average.

How you PACE yourself in each section will depend on how you want to attack each section. NextStep's Strategy and Practice Books and a few other prep company's books (EK, TPR) have discussions of strategy and timing, which you can check out and pick from.

A good place to start is to time yourself doing 2-3 passages (30 min CARS, 24 mins Sci). this way you are not checking the clock too often or too rarely, but you also build in the fact that 1 passage may take a bit longer and 1 passage may take a bit less time.

Have pacing milestones worked out ahead of time so that, like a runner, you can check where you are vs. where you want to be in a section.

Example:


Chem Foundations

Task complete (Time remaining)

Discrete Qs (80 mins)
Psg 1-3 (56 mins)
Psg 4-6 (32 mins)
Psg 7-9 (8 mins)
Psg 10 (0 mins)


You can also do the entire section in order, but then it gets a bit messier to have reliable milestones as the # of Qs in a discrete set is not constant nor is the number of passages between discrete sets.


Once you are comfortable with timing (completing the avg passage in 8 mins or 10 mins) you can move onto Pacing.

hope this helps, good luck!
 
There is no 1 best way to time yourself. What you should realize is that the AVERAGE passage in the sciences should take ~ 8 minutes (giving yourself 1 min per stand alone question)

In CARS you have 10 minutes per passage/Q set, on average.

How you PACE yourself in each section will depend on how you want to attack each section. NextStep's Strategy and Practice Books and a few other prep company's books (EK, TPR) have discussions of strategy and timing, which you can check out and pick from.

A good place to start is to time yourself doing 2-3 passages (30 min CARS, 24 mins Sci). this way you are not checking the clock too often or too rarely, but you also build in the fact that 1 passage may take a bit longer and 1 passage may take a bit less time.

Have pacing milestones worked out ahead of time so that, like a runner, you can check where you are vs. where you want to be in a section.

Example:


Chem Foundations

Task complete (Time remaining)

Discrete Qs (80 mins)
Psg 1-3 (56 mins)
Psg 4-6 (32 mins)
Psg 7-9 (8 mins)
Psg 10 (0 mins)


You can also do the entire section in order, but then it gets a bit messier to have reliable milestones as the # of Qs in a discrete set is not constant nor is the number of passages between discrete sets.


Once you are comfortable with timing (completing the avg passage in 8 mins or 10 mins) you can move onto Pacing.

hope this helps, good luck!

Thanks Anthony! I will make sure to try your strategy as well. So is there a different way of figuring out where the discrete questions are rather than clicking "Next" on every page?

Also, do you have any tips on moving-on from the "challenge" questions without wasting too much time on them. I know they're not worth pondering over, but I feel conflicted, for a lack of better word, inside by moving on without marking an answer that I feel confident about. Is it something that I just need to get over with or is there a smarter way/ a strategy to pick an appropriate answer on such questions?
 
For the first and the third section, I aim for 23 minute/15 questions. That leave me with some time to review and 10 min for every passage in CARS
 
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