Time Management Tricks

[WoodyJI]

I have a question about pacing for each section of the test:

1. In the Natural Sciences Portion, how much time do you give to each section?

Say, hypothetically, if you were working on Bio, and realized you needed to move to G-Chem, what time would the timer read? Or perhaps moving from G-chem to O-Chem- what's the smallest amount of time you would leave yourself with for O-Chem?

2. In the Reading Comprehension Test, do you do the 3 passages in order of difficulty? How much time do you give each passage? Do you always mark certain questions and come back to them later?

3. How do you pace yourself in the Physics Section? What question # should you be answering at about 1/2 way out of time?

4. Would you recommend marking all word problems and coming back to them later for Quantitative Reasoning? Do you do certain problems first, and save the rest for later?

-Got any other time management tricks?

Thanks in advance!

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[catzeye523]

I have a question about pacing for each section of the test:

1. In the Natural Sciences Portion, how much time do you give to each section?

Say, hypothetically, if you were working on Bio, and realized you needed to move to G-Chem, what time would the timer read? Or perhaps moving from G-chem to O-Chem- what's the smallest amount of time you would leave yourself with for O-Chem?

2. In the Reading Comprehension Test, do you do the 3 passages in order of difficulty? How much time do you give each passage? Do you always mark certain questions and come back to them later?

3. How do you pace yourself in the Physics Section? What question # should you be answering at about 1/2 way out of time?

4. Would you recommend marking all word problems and coming back to them later for Quantitative Reasoning? Do you do certain problems first, and save the rest for later?

-Got any other time management tricks?

Thanks in advance!

With Natural Sciences, I made sure that I left more time for General Chem and Orgo. I finished up the Bio in about 20-25 minutes. Think about it this way, you don't really have much math to deal with in that section. As for General Chem and Orgo, I gave myself about 30 minutes each. Or I'll say that I made sure there was at least 30 minutes left on the clock for Orgo. I did that so that I could still have some time to go back and check the incomplete or marked questions.

With Reading Comp, I didn't bother reading the passages, I skimmed. Then, I went through the questions and looked up the answers to be on the safe side. I just did it in order because the questions for all of them were straight forward. I thought 60 minutes was enough time.

With Physics, I don't remember how I paced myself, but I just immediately marked the ones I wasn't sure of and just went on to the next question that I positively knew how to work on. Whenever you're done with the ones you know for sure, then go back to the ones you marked.

Same goes for QR. That section was the worst for me because I was already a bit anxious to finish the test, and I was getting nervous since I found myself skipping a lot. My best advice for that is the same as Physics. Skip the ones you don't know immediately (or all the word problems), and fight for the problems you know you can do. Then go back and try to do the ones you missed. If you ever feel overwhelmed, take a couple of seconds and take a deep breath.

I must say that I like the computerized version. I hate taking big tests on scan trons because I get paranoid about skipping a problem and possibly screwing up the rest of the test. You also save time with flipping pages or filling in all those circles.

Hope I could help a bit. Good luck!

 

[pre_opt_sku]

I have a question about pacing for each section of the test:

1. In the Natural Sciences Portion, how much time do you give to each section?

Say, hypothetically, if you were working on Bio, and realized you needed to move to G-Chem, what time would the timer read? Or perhaps moving from G-chem to O-Chem- what's the smallest amount of time you would leave yourself with for O-Chem?

2. In the Reading Comprehension Test, do you do the 3 passages in order of difficulty? How much time do you give each passage? Do you always mark certain questions and come back to them later?

3. How do you pace yourself in the Physics Section? What question # should you be answering at about 1/2 way out of time?

4. Would you recommend marking all word problems and coming back to them later for Quantitative Reasoning? Do you do certain problems first, and save the rest for later?

-Got any other time management tricks?

Thanks in advance!

For the natural sciences section, I found I had more then enough time. Bio should go by pretty quickly since there are no calculations...if you don't know the answer to the question right off then pondering about it for a minute isn't going to do you much good. The chem and O chem sections will likely require more time than you spend on bio simply because there are more calcuations/extra work.

For RC, I also just skimmed through the passage and then went back to kind of hunt for the answers. I actually found the first passage to be the most difficult.

For physics I felt like I had the most time left over. I was actually able to check over all my answers and then I just went to the next section with time remaining. I don't think most people have trouble finishing this section; the calculations are really easy. Most of the calculations can be done in your head because they give you nice, easy numbers to work with.

For QR I didn't necessarily skip the word problems, I just skipped the ones that I didn't know how to tackle right off the bat. There is no point in wasting a lot of time thinking on a question that you probably won't get right anways. I had about 5 questions left over that I wasn't sure about and my time was almost up so I picked good old reliable 'b' for all the answers..... Make sure you can do calculatins FAST and then you'll be fine. That is the key thing to acing this section is thinking fast and being able to do the calculations as quick as possible....

QR was the only section that I felt pressed for time.. good luck