Your Pacing 'Problem' Is NOT About the Clock
Say you just finished a practice Quant section. Three questions left, ninety seconds on the clock, and you are clicking answers just so nothing is blank. Afterward you give yourself the verdict: "I'm too slow. I need to go FASTER."
That verdict is wrong. It feels right, but it is wrong. A pacing problem never shows up on its own. It is a symptom. Something ELSE in how you work is eating your minutes, and the clock is just where you notice it. Try to fix the clock by rushing and you will make more silly mistakes and lose more points. Fix the cause and the time comes back on its own.
First, Know What the Clock Actually Gives You
On the GRE, each Quant section is 20 questions in 35 minutes. Each Verbal section is 20 questions in 30 minutes. You can see the full layout on ETS's page about the sections and question types. Do the division: that is an AVERAGE of 1 minute 45 seconds per Quant question and 1 minute 30 seconds per Verbal question.
Notice the word average. An average is the total time split evenly, but the questions are not even. Some take 30 seconds. Some honestly need 3 minutes. If you treat 1:45 as a speed limit on every single question, you will panic on the long ones and waste nothing on the short ones, which is exactly backwards.
That time is enough to read each question once, take notes, and do the work. So if you keep running out, you need to ask WHERE the time went.
The Biggest Little Leak: Re-Reading
Stop and think about this one before you read on. How many times did you go back and re-read a question in your last practice section? I'll bet it was MORE than you think.
Here is the math. Say you spend just 10 extra seconds re-reading each Quant question because you did not write anything down the first time. 20 questions times 10 seconds is 200 seconds. That is 3 minutes 20 seconds in ONE section. Across both scored Quant sections, that is 6 minutes 40 seconds gone. In one section, 3:20 is almost two full questions' worth of average time, spent reading words you already read.
Verbal is worse. Reading passages and long sentence-based questions are wordier than most Quant questions, so every re-read costs more.
6 Mistakes That Steal Your Minutes
Not taking notes, so you re-read. You read the question, start working, forget a detail, and go back to the screen. Again and again.
INSTEAD: Write down the facts as you read them, piece by piece. When you finish reading the question the first time, your notes should be ready for you to start working. You should never need to read the whole question twice.
Doing the work in your head. Some people think they are "smart enough" to skip scratch paper. That is pride, and pride is expensive. Mental math is where you drop a negative sign or forget which number was which.
INSTEAD: Put every step on paper. What do you want MORE: a higher score, or the feeling that you didn't need to write anything down? You cannot have both.
Always taking the long way. Many strong math students solve every question with full algebra because that is how school taught them. The GRE is not a math class. It is a thinking test that uses math. The long way is often the slow way.
INSTEAD: Learn the shortcuts. Test the answers (plug the answer choices back into the question) and test values (pick easy numbers for the variables). These are often faster AND safer.
Using the calculator for everything. The GRE gives you an on-screen calculator, and ETS explains how it works on its page about the Quant section. Clicking 6 times 4 into a screen with a mouse is slower than just knowing it is 24.
INSTEAD: Use the calculator for ugly arithmetic only. Estimate when the answer choices are far apart.
Refusing to let go of one question. You sink 4 minutes into a monster because you "almost have it." Then you rush the last five, and some of those were easy.
INSTEAD: Inside a section, the GRE lets you skip questions, mark them, and come back. Use that. If a question is eating your time, take your best guess, mark it, move on, and return if you have time left.
Checking the clock after every question. Every glance pulls your focus off the question and onto your nerves.
INSTEAD: Set a few checkpoints. For Quant, about 10 questions done with about 17 minutes gone means you are on pace. Then stop looking until the next checkpoint.
Long Way vs. Short Way: See It for Yourself
Here is a question in the normal GRE multiple choice format: five answer choices, pick one. Time yourself. Then compare the two ways to solve it.
Neither approach is about typing faster or reading faster. The short way wins because it is a better PROCESS. That is where your missing minutes live.
Why Rushing Makes It Worse
When you decide your problem is speed, you start skimming. Skimming leads to missed details. Missed details lead to wrong answers on questions you could have gotten right. Those easy points are worth exactly as much as the hard ones.
There is another cost. The GRE adapts section by section, so how you do on your first Quant section affects how hard your second one is. Rush the first one and spill easy points, and you are not doing yourself any favors in the next one.
The same thinking applies to the whole day. Sprinting into the test center stressed because you left late puts you behind before the first question. That is why we tell people to treat the commute as part of Test Day. Calm, organized work beats frantic work every time.
Find YOUR Leak
You are not allowed to say "I have no idea why I run out of time." You have the data. Look at it.
After your next practice section, go through every question and ask:
- Did I re-read this question? How many times?
- What did I write down? Was it enough to work from without looking back?
- Was there a faster way, like testing the answers or testing values?
- Did I spend more than 3 minutes here? Did I get it right anyway?
Patterns will jump out. Maybe it is re-reading. Maybe it is the calculator. Maybe it is one question type you always attack the long way. Whatever it is, it has a name, and anything with a name can be trained away. The GRE is a standardized test. It asks the same kinds of questions in the same kinds of ways, so you can practice the exact habits that fix this.
And don't measure your progress with one bad section. Practice tests tell you where you stand; they don't train you. If you end up taking the real thing more than once, it helps to know how ScoreSelect changes the retake math. But the goal is to train the right way so the first official score is one you want to send.
Your Challenge for Today
Pull out the last practice Quant section you took. Pick 5 questions you got right but that took you over 2 minutes. Redo each one with a fresh sheet of paper, writing notes as you read, and never once looking back at the question. Then try to solve each a second way. Time both tries. Write down how many seconds you saved on each one.
Add those seconds up. THAT number is your pacing problem, and you just started fixing it.
