Your GMAT Pacing 'Issue' is Really Easy to Define and Fix

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At some point during their practice, test day, or both, most GMATers face some type of problem with their overall pacing in one (or more) of the sections of the GMAT. I’m often asked about this ‘issue’ and the truth is that it’s easy to explain the cause – pacing ‘issues’ are a direct result of how you go about dealing with GMAT questions. One specific choice, made by most test takers, is the ultimate cause of this issue.

To properly understand the point, you’re going to have to do a little math (thankfully, I’ll do the math with you – or for you, depending on your point of view).

Quant pacing

When reading through a GMAT quant prompt, how often do you really take notes? How often do you read the prompt, then go back to reread it? For the sake of using ‘round’ numbers, imagine that you didn’t take notes while you read, so you had to spend (on average) an extra 10 seconds rereading each quant question before you took your notes. How much time would you end up spending on the REREADING alone?

37 Quant questions x 10 seconds/question = 370 seconds.

That 370 seconds translates into six minutes and 10 seconds of time that you could have spent answering questions if you had been more proactive with your notetaking. Would it be easier to deal with the quant section if you had over six minutes of extra time? I think that the answer from most GMAT test takers would be YES.

Verbal pacing

Next, you should think about how that ‘shift’ in note-taking could impact how you handle the pacing of the verbal section. The time-savings there would be even more profound. Beyond the obvious reason (the verbal section has 41 questions to the quant section’s 37), verbal prompts are generally much longer than quant prompts, so you could end up saving 10-15 minutes of time just by taking your notes on the first ‘pass’ through each verbal prompt.

Thankfully, every issue (pacing or otherwise) that you might have during your studies can be defined. Once you put in the proper analysis, you’ll find that every aspect of this process CAN be defined and improved. Ultimately, these are the same critical thinking skills that you’ll use during business school and beyond. If you find that making these types of improvements is a bit difficult, then you should reach out to the experts. We’re here to help.