![\"Manhattan](\"\/\/cdn2.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2017\/09\/guessing-on-the-gre-moving-on-cat-powell.png\")
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You can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GRE courses absolutely free. Ready to take the plunge? <\/i><\/b>Check out our upcoming courses here<\/i><\/b><\/a>.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n <\/i><\/b>Persistence is, in most endeavors, an admirable quality\u2014just not when taking the GRE. For this test, knowing when to give up on a problem, guess, and move on, is a crucial skill. It\u2019s important to remember that this is more than just a test of math knowledge or reading skills; it\u2019s also a test of how one makes decisions under pressure.<\/span><\/p>\n Here are a couple important facts about the GRE which will help you to establish a strong timing strategy:<\/span><\/p>\n Good timing choices are most important in the first half of each section. If you fall behind here, you\u2019ll end up rushing to compensate\u2014which makes you more likely to make careless errors in the second half of the test. It can be harder, too, to make aggressive timing decisions early on, because you have more time on the clock, and thus can be tempted to think (incorrectly) that you have a little more leeway.<\/span><\/p>\n Instead of stalling at the beginning and rushing at the end, you want to aim for a steady, consistent pace throughout each section. This definitely takes some practice to get right, but there are a few things you can do that will help to ensure you\u2019re making smart timing choices.<\/span><\/p>\n For each problem, make a deliberate decision about whether or not to commit to that problem. It can be easy to start solving a tricky problem, get bogged down, and not notice that you\u2019ve wasted four minutes on it.<\/span><\/p>\n I give myself a minute to start each problem and see how it goes. At the minute mark, I then ask myself if: do I think it\u2019s likely I\u2019ll be able to solve this problem correctly within another minute or so? If not, I guess and move on.<\/span><\/p>\n You can practice this method as you study. Each time you start a problem, set a one-minute timer. When the timer goes off, figure out what decision you\u2019d make on test day. Regardless of your answer, continue solving the problem (take as much time as you need to). When you\u2019re done, see if you made the right decision\u2014were you able to solve the problem efficiently or not?<\/span><\/p>\n Do this consistently, and this \u201ccheck-in\u201d will become an automatic part of your problem solving practice. That way, on test day, you won\u2019t have to look at the clock constantly, because you\u2019ll have an ingrained sense of how long to spend on each problem before committing or moving on.<\/span><\/p>\n In my classes, I force my students to commit to an answer for every question we solve, even if this answer is a blind guess. This is because guessing on the GRE is itself a skill that requires practice.<\/span><\/p>\n If you\u2019re skeptical about this, I have a story for you. A student of mine recently took the test and found herself grappling with a tricky probability question at the end of one section. With fifteen seconds left, she\u2019d narrowed it down to two answers but couldn\u2019t decide between them. Paralyzed, she let the clock run out. If she\u2019d guessed, she\u2019d have had a 50% chance of getting the problem right. Instead, she ended up not putting in an answer at all.<\/span><\/p>\n So force yourself to guess. If you reach your minute check-in mark and decide that this is a good problem to skip, force yourself to write down a guess before continuing on. Do this over and over, and you become comfortable with committing quickly to an answer you\u2019re not totally sure of.<\/span><\/p>\n While you do want to stay on top of timing, you don\u2019t want to end up staring at the clock. For this reason, it helps to set a few timing benchmarks throughout the section. For example, the average timing for a vocabulary question is 1 minute. Each Verbal section usually starts with six vocabulary questions. This means that, when I get to my first RC question, I want to be about 6-7 minutes into the section, so I\u2019ll have 24-23 minutes left on the clock. (The GRE clock counts down, not up, something that can take a little getting used to).<\/span><\/p>\n When I see that first RC question, I glance at the clock. If I\u2019m around the 24-minute mark, I proceed as usual. If I\u2019m running behind, I don\u2019t start rushing. Instead, I continue at the same pace, but decide that I\u2019ll guess and skip on the next tricky problem that I see. If I\u2019m running early, then I slow down\u2014I don\u2019t want to make careless errors by going too quickly.<\/span><\/p>\n I like to write my benchmarks down on my scratch paper at the start of each section, so that they\u2019re on the paper in front of me as a reminder. In general, the more I do on paper, and the less I try to hold in my head, the more efficient I\u2019ll be. ?<\/span><\/p>\n Want more guidance from our GRE gurus? You can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GRE courses absolutely free! We\u2019re not kidding.\u00a0<\/i><\/b>Check out our upcoming courses here<\/i><\/b><\/a>.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n You can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GRE courses absolutely free. Ready to take the plunge? Check out our upcoming courses here. Persistence is, in most endeavors, an admirable quality\u2014just not when taking the GRE. For this test, knowing when to give up on a problem, guess, and move […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":160,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,474284,921840,6,7,733451,733445,154333],"tags":[1362464],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-10661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-challenge-problems","category-current-studiers","category-gre-prep-2","category-gre-strategies","category-how-to-study","category-life-hacks","category-study-tips-2","category-taking-the-gre-2","tag-guessing-on-the-gre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/160"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10661"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10661\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10687,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10661\/revisions\/10687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10661"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=10661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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One Minute: Make a Decision<\/b><\/h4>\n
Practice Guessing on the GRE<\/b><\/h4>\n
Set Timing Benchmarks<\/b><\/h4>\n
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\n![\"cat-powell-1\"](\"https:\/\/d27gmszdzgfpo3.cloudfront.net\/gre\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2017\/08\/cat-powell-1-150x150.png\")
Cat Powell<\/a>\u00a0is a Manhattan Prep instructor based in New York, NY.\u00a0<\/strong>She spent her undergraduate years at Harvard studying music and English and is now pursuing an MFA in fiction writing at Columbia University. Her affinity for standardized tests led her to a 169Q\/170V score on the GRE.\u00a0Check out Cat\u2019s upcoming GRE courses here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"