Timing Issues or Knowledge issue.

[adhir.kadve]

Hello,

I seem to be coming to an impasse. My test is on May 19 2015. As of this post i have studied most of the subject matter. Here is my issue, while doing the problems, i am answering most of the easier (based on the mgmat navigator) questions correctly. However i am struggling to answer the moderate and harder questions, within the 2 minute time constraint (i time myself on all the questions). When i go back and look at the question and try to answer it without the time constraint i usually get it right, sometimes quickly sometimes it takes me upwards 4-5 mins. How can i remedy this? How should I should i go about my studying form here on out? Any help is greatly appreciated!

[StaceyKoprince]

You can give yourself a little extra time on some questions, because you will answer some other questions faster than the average time. But you can't go too far.

So if you have a question that's supposed to average 2 minutes but takes you 2 minutes and 30 seconds, that's okay, since you'll also have others that you answer in 1m30s.

But if a question takes you 4 to 5 minutes, that's an indication that you don't really know how to do that question in a reasonable time, so the best response is to guess and move on before using up all that time (and brain energy).

This means that you have to:
(1) learn how to identify what you can and can't do in a reasonable amount of time
(2) have the presence of mind to recognize when you can't do it (vs. thinking to yourself, "If I just had a little more time, I'm sure I could figure it out...")
(3) have the discipline to cut yourself off, guess, and move on

Section 4 in part 2 of this article talks about how to train yourself to do this:
http://tinyurl.com/GMATTimeManagement

You should read that whole article and start doing what it says, but section 4 will be of particular importance for the issue that we're discussing right now. I also recommend reading this article:
http://tinyurl.com/executivereasoning

(In fact, I recommend reading that last article frequently.)

Next, you want to make sure that you're studying in a way that allows you to learn to recognize more and more when new questions pop up. This article talks about how to do so:
http://tinyurl.com/2ndlevelofgmat

Practice that on old problems first - ones that you've already done. There's a lot you could have learned from those problems that you didn't yet. When you start to get the hang of it, you can start to mix in new problems again. (But still analyze old ones, looking for things that you didn't learn the first time around but can spot now.)