Need help with timing

[zhonghang]

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Hey everyone just curious if you guys have any advice, tips, or suggestions to perfect timing for each passage/question. I've noticed that when I do not do FLs under times conditions I score significantly higher than when I am timed because I just have a hard time finishing the exam within the alotted time. I get questions wrong because I just don't have the time rather than because I do not know the content or how to read the experiments.

I've heard of people doing all of the passages in the science sections first and then saving the stand alone questions for last. Has anyone found this to be helpful? I'm considering trying this because I've just found that by the end of the section I'm so burnt out and I always struggle with the last 2 passages.

 

[Punxsutawney Phil]

Here is what I did:

Go through the section in order, but skip questions that are going to be time consuming. If you see a passage with an experiment you are very familiar with, tackle it right away. Same goes for independent questions. You'll find that after you get through everything that you easily know, you should have more than half the time left for the remaining questions. Keep a mental clock in your head like "there's 45 minutes left, I have 30 questions finished, I'm above pace).

 

[Necr0sis713]

The more practice tests do, the more you realize that getting stuck on one question isn't really a big deal. For every "Wtf?!" question, there are tons more easy questions. You have to learn to eliminate, make your best guess, and mark and move on.

 

[TheRealCookieMonster]

Hey everyone just curious if you guys have any advice, tips, or suggestions to perfect timing for each passage/question. I've noticed that when I do not do FLs under times conditions I score significantly higher than when I am timed because I just have a hard time finishing the exam within the alotted time. I get questions wrong because I just don't have the time rather than because I do not know the content or how to read the experiments.

I've heard of people doing all of the passages in the science sections first and then saving the stand alone questions for last. Has anyone found this to be helpful? I'm considering trying this because I've just found that by the end of the section I'm so burnt out and I always struggle with the last 2 passages.

First of all like these people have said... practice practice practice FLs. You need to practice a whole test and give yourself the same amount of time for each question. It's about a minute and 15 sec per question... I don't remember exactly. You need to focus on eliminating wrong answers for questions you don't know quickly. If you have a question that you know is tough and your struggling eliminate obvious wrong answers and then give the remaining answers a close look and pick within your given time per question and don't go over. MCAT answers often have a trend and follow a logical path from the subject topic to the specific question. You'll start understanding the trend with more practice. Especially on the verbal reasoning. Practice is king, but often timing comes down to pressure, relax and be confident in you preparation, the MCAT is designed so that everyone will miss questions.

TL DR: Practice full lengths and stick to the time per question standard, which you should look up, but I think is about 1min 15sec per question. Gl

And remember.... "C is for Cookie"

 

[zhonghang]

First of all like these people have said... practice practice practice FLs. You need to practice a whole test and give yourself the same amount of time for each question. It's about a minute and 15 sec per question... I don't remember exactly. You need to focus on eliminating wrong answers for questions you don't know quickly. If you have a question that you know is tough and your struggling eliminate obvious wrong answers and then give the remaining answers a close look and pick within your given time per question and don't go over. MCAT answers often have a trend and follow a logical path from the subject topic to the specific question. You'll start understanding the trend with more practice. Especially on the verbal reasoning. Practice is king, but often timing comes down to pressure, relax and be confident in you preparation, the MCAT is designed so that everyone will miss questions.

TL DR: Practice full lengths and stick to the time per question standard, which you should look up, but I think is about 1min 15sec per question. Gl

And remember.... "C is for Cookie"

Hey I appreciate the advice. I'll definitely bust out a ton of FL practice. But I'm just wondering how you manage the 1 min 15 sec per question standard? Am I supposed to just constantly look at the time? I feel like that would be stressful and distracting...

 

[Wolfpack93]

First of all like these people have said... practice practice practice FLs. You need to practice a whole test and give yourself the same amount of time for each question. It's about a minute and 15 sec per question... I don't remember exactly. You need to focus on eliminating wrong answers for questions you don't know quickly. If you have a question that you know is tough and your struggling eliminate obvious wrong answers and then give the remaining answers a close look and pick within your given time per question and don't go over. MCAT answers often have a trend and follow a logical path from the subject topic to the specific question. You'll start understanding the trend with more practice. Especially on the verbal reasoning. Practice is king, but often timing comes down to pressure, relax and be confident in you preparation, the MCAT is designed so that everyone will miss questions.

TL DR: Practice full lengths and stick to the time per question standard, which you should look up, but I think is about 1min 15sec per question. Gl

And remember.... "C is for Cookie"

Not sure I agree with this. I spend like 10 seconds on some questions and other questions I'll take like 3 minutes on when they involve a ton of understanding graphs and relating it to passage info. I haven't had trouble finishing a section yet, but I have been close a few times haha

 

[Necr0sis713]

Not sure I agree with this. I spend like 10 seconds on some questions and other questions I'll take like 3 minutes on when they involve a ton of understanding graphs and relating it to passage info. I haven't had trouble finishing a section yet, but I have been close a few times haha

I've done so many FL's to the point where "I've seen them all" By that I mean when I start reading the passage I'm already familiar with what they did. Really helps.

 

[BerkReviewTeach]

Timing is a huge part of your preparation. That is why in our books we dedicate Phase II of the homework for each section to practicing timing. I like a few things people have written here.

I really like CookieMonster's comment about who to attack questions. If you develop a systematic way to attack questions that works 80% of the time, then your timing issues will be few. There will be a few screwy questions here and there, but you can field those as needed. The timing we strongly suggest is 3 to 3 and a half minutes per passage and 1 minute per question on average in the C/P, B/B, and P/S sections. That is what we use for all of our books and exams in terms of suggested timing.

I like what Wolfpack wrote about the range of question difficulty being such that you could spend as little as ten to fifteen seconds or as much as a couple minutes. Keep in kind that you need to average one minute per question, which means there will be a range of times centered around 1 minute.

As far as improving timing goes, you need to practice not wasting time. Time is most often wasted (1) re-reading material in the passage or (2) second-guessing yourself and re-doing questions or answer choices. Try to not look back unless you absolutely need a specific term or value form the passage. When it comes to questions, get used to ranking each answer choice and then picking the choice you have ranked highest. By ranking, I mean things like true and relevant > true and irrelevant > false and relevant >> false and irrelevant. It doesn't have to be exactly this, but developing your own way of looking at answer choices is essential to doing well.

 

[Pre-Med Village]

Remember that the MCAT is a kind of performance. Practice is key. It exercises your knowledge-base and makes the ideas accessible. Practice teaches you how the exam is itself a kind of choreographed exercise where timing is critical. BerkReviewTeach's advice is very good to focus in your practice to learn to recognize the particular kinds of questions that have a way of turning into time sinks and to have a strategy for those based around saving time. Practice teaches you catch yourself before losing ten minutes on one question. Don't do it. One question isn't worth risking a crisis in the last two passages.

In my experience the questions that cost a lot of time are generally going to be the quantitative problems and the deeper conceptual ones. In quantitative problems often difficulties can occur where you take a wrong turn in set-up. You might have started using a Newton's laws formula when work & energy would have given the answer much more quickly. Questions that also cause problems with time are the most sophisticated conceptually oriented ones such as those oriented around judgment regarding research conclusions. It's hard to give up or reassess a question you have already spent time on, so there can be a sunk cost fallacy that compounds the problem.

With regard to the conceptually subtle questions, in these you can find yourself caught between two answers. You are going back and forth between the passage and the answers. In this scenario there is a tendency, especially if you are having a good exam, to turn the perfect into the enemy of the good. Accept missing a question or two even if you are aiming for Harvard. Don't worry about being perfect. Very good is enough. If it helps remember that you're probably going to get the question right anyway. That's just probability. If you are stuck between two answers, your chance of getting the question right is greater than 50% because instinct is on your side. Trust your instinct and move on. Step back and instead of thinking about which answer choice is the most appealing, try asking yourself which is least worst. Make your choice. It can help acceptance to make a notation so that you know you can go back at the end of the section if you have time to spare. Move on.

For the overall management of pace I suggest checking in every half hour, not more than that, to see if you are on track for 20 questions / half hour. Of course this isn't in stone because things can vary depending on questions per passage and how things fall, but it's a good rule of thumb to catch yourself if you if you are having problems. Check in at roughly the half hour mark and make sure you are at around 20 questions. At the one hour mark, see that you are around 40. If you are on pace, you should finish with at least a few minutes to spare. If you have run into a tough passage or two and find yourself falling behind, then you need to bring out plan B mode to catch up. In plan B mode, you don't have the luxury to look back at a passage so much. Every passage has a question or two that is going to be difficult. Just two or three times in plan B mode, you will need to identify that question right away and stop yourself from dwelling on it because you are using the most difficult questions to harvest time back. Make a good guess quickly on three difficult questions where you have narrowed down to two answers . You probably got two of them right anyway. It's a small sacrifice to make sure you have time for the last two passages where there are ten easy questions in jeapardy. Try not to fall behind, but if you do, go to plan B mode for a few passages, and at the next check-in you will be back on pace.

 

[Pre-Med Village]

Remember that the MCAT is a kind of performance. Practice is key. It exercises your knowledge-base and makes the ideas accessible. Practice teaches you how the exam is itself a kind of choreographed exercise where timing is critical. BerkReviewTeach's advice is very good to focus in your practice to learn to recognize the particular kinds of questions that have a way of turning into time sinks and to have a strategy for those based around saving time. Practice teaches you catch yourself before losing ten minutes on one question. Don't do it. One question isn't worth risking a crisis in the last two passages.

In my experience the questions that cost a lot of time are generally going to be the quantitative problems and the deeper conceptual ones. In quantitative problems often difficulty with tiime can occur where you take a wrong turn in set-up. You might have started using a Newton's laws formula when work & energy would have given the answer much more quickly. Questions that also cause problems with time are the most sophisticated conceptually oriented ones such as those oriented around judgment regarding research conclusions. It's hard to give up or reassess a question you have already spent time on, so there can be a sunk cost fallacy that compounds the problem.

With regard to the conceptually subtle questions, in these you can find yourself caught between two answers. You are going back and forth between the passage and the answers. In this scenario there is a tendency, especially if you are having a good exam, to turn the perfect into the enemy of the good. Accept missing a question or two even if you are aiming for Harvard. Don't worry about being perfect. Very good is enough. If it helps remember that you're probably going to get the question right anyway. That's just probability. If you are stuck between two answers, your chance of getting the question right is greater than 50% because instinct is on your side. Trust your instinct and move on. Step back and instead of thinking about which answer choice is the most appealing, try asking yourself which is least worst. Make your choice. It can help acceptance to make a notation so that you know you can go back at the end of the section if you have time to spare. Move on.

For the overall management of pace I suggest checking in every half hour, not more than that, to see if you are on track for 20 questions / half hour. Of course this isn't in stone because things can vary depending on questions per passage and how things fall, but it's a good rule of thumb to catch yourself if you if you are having problems. Check in at roughly the half hour mark and make sure you are at around 20 questions. At the one hour mark, see that you are around 40. If you are on pace, you should finish with at least a few minutes to spare. If you have run into a tough passage or two and find yourself falling behind, then you need to bring out plan B mode to catch up. In plan B mode, you don't have the luxury to look back at a passage so much. Every passage has a question or two that is going to be difficult. Just two or three times in plan B mode, you will need to identify that question right away and stop yourself from dwelling on it because you are using the most difficult questions to harvest time back. Make a good guess quickly on three difficult questions where you have narrowed down to two answers . You probably got two of them right anyway. It's a small sacrifice to make sure you have time for the last two passages where there are ten easy questions in jeapardy. Try not to fall behind, but if you do, go to plan B mode for a few passages, and at the next check-in you will be back on pace.