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To achieve a high GMAT score, you need to have a strong foundation for GMAT concepts (concept mastery) and effective time usage (time mastery)
At Prep Zone, we spend a lot of time focusing on the latter. In fact, our trainers consider concept mastery to be worth 30% of your GMAT prep, while the remaining 70% is time mastery.
If I remove the time component for my GMAT students after 2 months, most would score 680+; yet less than 20% reach 680+ with the time component.
Here are 5 simple tips to help you do better on time management:
Tip #1. Learn to read faster
The average reading speed is ~250 words per minute (wpm). Consider that some GMAT questions are very text-heavy, learning to read faster will help with your processing speed.
Ideally, you want to learn to read at a ~400 – 500 words per minute (yes, it’s feasible!). This would make a significant difference during your actual test.
To improve your reading speed, head to readspeeder.com and start practicing!
Reading faster will improve your processing time and provide more time to actually work on the question – pretty simple!
Tip #2. Time yourself, and improve your timing.
Candidates with the best scores will also answer a question much faster than others.
To practice your answering speed, create series of 10 questions in advance and measure how long it takes for you to answer them.
As you progress, reduce the allocated time.
You can start with slightly more than 20min per series with the goal to end up at ~18 min per series
Tip #3. Learn when to give up.
Like a trader who has taken a wrong position, it’s important to cut the losses and move on.
If you find yourself spending too long on a question that you have no idea how to solve, save your time and move on to the next question.
Tip #4. Skip questions (strategically).
Sometimes, it’s best to purposely skip questions (aka randomly answering them).
The key for a top GMAT score is to balance accuracy and time.
It is better to answer correctly to 8 questions out of 10 (having randomly answered the 10th one) than answering correctly only to 6 or 7 questions because you were rushing out of time
Tip #5. Cut time on your practice tests.
One key thing you need to do is to regularly do timed, full-length practice tests. Not only will this be beneficial to your concept mastery, you will also build confidence for the real thing.
Once you achieve your target score on practice tests, do it again, but cut out ~10% of the allocated time.
That will surely boost your confidence!
Want To Score In The 99th Percentile For The GMAT? We Can Help!
With a team of veteran GMAT trainers whose scores are in the 99th percentile (750 and above), Prep Zone Academy is proud to be the #1 GMAT training team in Singapore. Our GMAT course syllabus is designed from the ground up to help busy candidates identify their weaknesses and achieve their desired results in any available time frame. We have helped many working professionals to score 750 only after 2-3 weeks of dedicated lessons.
Chat with us today and find out how we can help you achieve your dream score! We can help you to:
- Devise a dedicated, personal plan to achieve your target GMAT score.
- Identify your weaknesses and create a workflow for you to break score ceilings.
- Plan your MBA admissions route and assist with your MBA application.
- And much more!
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