![\"gre](\"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2020\/03\/mprep-blogimages-wave1-39-3-e1583245211508.png\")
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The GRE is a typical standardized test in some regards. For one, it\u2019s a test of endurance\u2014you will be sitting there for around four hours. It\u2019s also typical in that it is a test of speed\u2014you will face significant time pressure. And it\u2019s a test of skill, of course\u2014you will be tested on content that graduate schools have deemed relevant to their admissions decisions.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n But one way in which the GRE is not like some other standardized tests is that the problems on the GRE are not ordered by difficulty. Within any given section of twenty problems, they are all mixed up.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n What does this mean in terms of your strategy?<\/span><\/p>\n It means a couple of things:<\/span><\/p>\n You have the freedom to skip around within a section. There are buttons at the top of the screen enabling this option, along with a button to \u201cmark\u201d (flag) questions for review. A review screen shows you what questions you haven\u2019t answered and what questions you\u2019ve marked for review. While you don\u2019t want to mark <\/span>too <\/span><\/i>many problems because you don\u2019t have time to go back and retry more than a couple of problems, you should know that these features exist so that you can use them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Your Quant and Verbal scores are based on the number of problems that you answer correctly regardless of their difficulty level. This means that you want to \u201cget your easy points\u201d as we say here at Manhattan Prep. Since some of those easy points may be at the end of a section, you want to make sure that you have time to do those problems if you so choose. This means that when you reach a very difficult problem in the middle of a section, you should be prepared to cut yourself off if necessary. In other words, don\u2019t over invest time in a single difficult problem early in the section. In general, you should be spending no more than two minutes on a given problem.<\/span><\/p>\n Certain problem types are notorious for sucking up all of your time. On both Quant and Verbal sections, one of these notorious time-sucks is the Select-All-That-Apply problem. This is a multiple-choice question for which there can be more than one correct answer, and you will occasionally be given up to seven or so choices from which to choose. Testing out seven choices takes as long as it sounds.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Another time-suck problem is the Data Interpretation on the Quant section, of which you are likely to see approximately three. Coming around two-thirds of the way through the section, these problems consist of graphs that you must carefully read and understand before answering a series of questions about them. Since the graphs are rarely super simple, they tend to require a time investment.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n It is wise to go into the test with a plan for both of these question types. For Select-All-That-Apply, you may decide that you\u2019re going to guess on them and then mark them for review if you have extra time\u2014or you may decide simply to cut yourself off after two minutes. (Relevant to this consideration is that there is no partial credit given on any GRE problem; if the correct answers are A, C, and D, and you choose only A and C, or you choose the right answers plus an extra, like A, C, D, and E, you\u2019ll get no points.)<\/span><\/p>\n With regard to Data Interpretation problems, you may want to play around with saving them for the end of the section so that they don\u2019t balloon to soak up all of your time. (This is what I do.)<\/span><\/p>\n And yet there is a caveat, which is that skipping around is itself a demand on your time and even your brainpower. The last thing you want to do is find yourself scattered and confused by what question to work on next, or how to organize your test taking <\/span>while <\/span><\/i>you\u2019re taking it. For this reason, with the exception of some question types such as the ones discussed above, I suggest that, by default, you do the problems in order, and be ready to skip and mark <\/span>as needed. <\/span><\/i>This way you will avoid becoming overwhelmed by the decision of what to do next while also remaining open and flexible.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n RELATED:\u00a0<\/strong>How to Take a GRE Practice Test<\/a><\/p>\n Don\u2019t forget that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GRE courses absolutely free. We\u2019re not kidding! <\/i><\/b>Check out our upcoming courses here<\/i><\/b><\/a>.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n Mary Richter is a Manhattan Prep instructor based in Nashville, Tennessee. <\/i><\/b>Mary is one of those weirdos who loves taking standardized tests, and she has been teaching them for 15 years. When she’s not teaching the LSAT or GRE for ManhattanPrep, she’s writing novels under the last name Adkins. You can find them wherever you buy books. <\/span><\/i>Check out Mary\u2019s upcoming GRE prep offerings here!\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The GRE is a typical standardized test in some regards. For one, it\u2019s a test of endurance\u2014you will be sitting there for around four hours. It\u2019s also typical in that it is a test of speed\u2014you will face significant time pressure. And it\u2019s a test of skill, of course\u2014you will be tested on content that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":183,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1365091,168,1365092,1365093],"yst_prominent_words":[1364189,1365084,1365085,1364948,1362627,1365082,1365081,1362672,1362634,1362669,1363227,1363421,1365083,1363094,1362751,1363272,1365090,1362628,1363199,1364960],"class_list":["post-12753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gre-strategies","tag-gre-questions","tag-gre-strategies-2","tag-gre-testing-strategies","tag-skipping-around-on-the-gre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12753","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\/183"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12753"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12758,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12753\/revisions\/12758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12753"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=12753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}GRE Question Tip 1: Don\u2019t just blindly do the questions in order\u00a0<\/b><\/h3>\n
GRE Question Tip 2: Make sure you get through the section\u00a0<\/b><\/h3>\n
GRE Question Tip 3: Look out for \u201ctime sucks\u201d<\/b><\/h3>\n
GRE Question Tip 4:\u00a0<\/b>Still…don\u2019t jump all over the place\u00a0<\/b><\/h3>\n
\n![\"Mary](\"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2020\/01\/mary-green-close-up-1-150x150.jpg\")
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