Thanks for joining us here! It's actually really common to not improve on your second practice test.
In fact, it's so common, that I warn the students in my classes
before they take their second test. And the biggest reason is exactly the one that you state: Time management issues.
Basically, two things are happening:
(1) You've just learned a bunch of new stuff, but you're still practicing how to execute all of that new stuff. So you're slower with it than you will be eventually.
(2) Because you just learned a bunch of new stuff, you feel like you "should" be able to answer things that you knew you couldn't answer on the first practice test. So you hang on longer on the second test...and then that just messes up your timing even more.
Go look at your data and the individual problems with those points in mind—I bet you'll find some places where, in hindsight, you now realize you should have let go faster...but you didn't on the second practice test for the reasons that I cited above.
When you first learn how to do a new type of problem, take as much time as you want to do your first several practice problems of that type. After that, yes, I do still recommend what you cited: When practicing, do the problem under exam conditions the first time, then take as much time to review it / try it again afterwards as you like.
But here's the key that maybe you're missing? When you spend as much time afterwards as you like, the goal is not "How can I get this problem right no matter how long it takes?" Rather, the goal is two-fold:
(1) Can I get to the point that I understand this problem and know how to get to the right answer?
(2a) If YES, then can I figure out how I would do something like this in future
within a reasonable* timeframe for this type of problem? (If yes, what is the path that allows you to do something like this efficiently next time? Practice whatever that is. If no, see 2b below)
(2b) If NO, then how will you recognize next time "This problem isn't good for me—I'm going to guess now and move on?" and then how do you train yourself to follow that directive?
*A reasonable timeframe is up to ~45 seconds longer than the average for that problem type...as long as you're not doing this on EVERY problem type in that section.
But if you have some problems in that section that are faster (either because you can get them right faster OR because you can get them
wrong faster...more below), then you can spend a certain amount of extra time on other problems. (Note: More than ~1 min extra is a "warning sign"—if you need that much extra time, this problem is so much of a struggle that you're more likely to get it wrong anyway. So don't spend that much extra time on any one problem.)
And here's another key that might be part of the problem:
You will
never get everything right (especially not on your weaker section). You will
always get stuff wrong. A lot of stuff! You have to train your brain to fully accept that this is how the test works—or you will hang on to some problems for too long and that will hurt you elsewhere on the section.
You
do have some control over
what you get wrong and especially
how long you take to get it wrong. So literally...learn how to get stuff wrong faster.
This is why we talk so much about that Executive Mindset. It's almost always the case, when I talk to students, that they understand this concept at a high level...but they're still trying to do too much / hanging on too long when they take their practice tests. So go back over the individual questions again. Which ones should you have just let go (a lot) faster? How will you recognize next time so that you spend less time getting those questions wrong?
Finally, let's figure out whether there are any patterns to where you're spending your time on verbal-based problems.
– Are ALL verbal-based question types (CR, RC, verbal-based DI) slower? Or are some slower than others? Are there any patterns by question type, type of content (science, social science, business), etc?
– On how many problems did you carefully learn a *lot* more of the detail than you ended up actually needing to answer the question(s)? In this case, train yourself to feel ok with going to the question knowing just the big picture / having skimmed over a lot of the detail. For example, you're only going to need like 30% of the detail you're reading for RC and MSR. If you're learning 50+% of that detail carefully before you even know which details you need...you're trying to understand too much on your first read-through.
– If you read something and it doesn't make sense, try reading it again. If it still doesn't make sense, move on. That might mean guessing on the whole problem or just moving on to the next sentence / paragraph / tab, depending on the problem. But learn to be ok with the fact that you're not actually going to understand everything and that's ok.
And maybe some of the timing problems are due to what happens when you get to the answers:
– On how many problems did you narrow down to two (or maybe three) answers, and then agonize back and forth between those remaining answers? Once you're down to two answers, compare them to each other ONE more time. Then pick and move on. (If you aren't sure what to pick after the first direct comparison, you're not going to be more sure after the fifth direct comparison...)
– If, after going through the answer choices twice, you are not down to two answers (or one answer), pick and move on.
Dig into that analysis and let me know what you discover.
By the way: Yay to your 5-point jump on Quant!! Great job there!
[b][/b]