<p>I was thinking about ways that would assure I finish CR on time. Has anyone tried this method:
Doing the big passage first (usually questions 13-24)
Then doing the vocab and the short paragraph questions.</p>
<p>I was thinking that by doing this approach, if you are struggling with time at the end you will only have the short paragraphs to deal with and it is easier to pick out the answers in them, then being stuck with the big passage and trying to find the answers in that LONG passage in the final few minutes..</p>
<p>Any thoughts? Has anyone tried this approach?</p>
<p>It is a great idea. I did this for GRE in the 1980’s for the verbal portion. I did the passages first, making sure that I leave myself about 5 minutes for the vocab (and analogies) section. I also tried the same approach for Biology Advanced GRE test. Worked great. I scored 98 percentile in GRE Verbal and 99 percentile in Biology advanced.</p>
<p>Make sure you practice it well though to figure out how much time you need for short passages/vocab. I would even consider doing short passages before vocab.</p>
<p>The only problem is that I am testing on Saturday. I guess I will try one section to see how I do with this method, then I will decide if I should switch my strategy last minute :/</p>
<p>this method actually came to me on the day of the June SAT while my proctor was still reading the directions, i took a risk, and i have to say i went up from a 450-570 looking for a 600+ in October ^_^</p>
<p>I feel like it is risky, since the SCs and short passages can be completed very quickly. Then you have the entire time to focus in on the more difficult long passage. You don’t want to speed through the big one because often times, it requires deeper thinking that may take a little extra to understand.</p>
<p>^I agree, but there’s no perfect strategy that works for everyone, so its best to experiment and see what works for you</p>
<p>I find that long passages, while they take up a lot of time, aren’t worth doing at the beginning of each section. Think about it like this: you start a passage but find that it’s hard. Assuming you haven’t practiced this strategy before, you subconciously think that you’ve finished the short passage/SC problems while you’re cracking the hard passage. You may end up spending 20 minutes on a hard passage and have to rush through SC/short passages. Even assuming you’d get all long passage questions right, you have another 10-or-so questions to do in 5 minutes. Of course, if the passage isn’t too hard then by all means, go for it, but plan your time WISELY. I usually give myself 12-13 minutes for the longer passages and 8 minutes for the others so that I have 4-5 minutes left to review.</p>
<p>still i think getting the easy marks will be the best way</p>
<p>Here’s the logic of this approach. First requirement is that you have made up your mind on answering all or almost all questions. Second, RC requires reading and digesting the information in passages, which is harder when you are looking at clock as the time starts running out. There is no such pressure with SC as each question requires reading and quick analysis of sentences and choices. It worked very well for me in GRE. During practice, I found that I could answer more RC questions right by doing them first without affecting my accuracy on vocab. Indeed, GRE Biology subject test had 200 questions, first half factual multiple choice and second half data analysis and interpretation requiring reading and understanding of experimental observations. I did the data analysis part first followed by the factual questions. I did not run out of time and I scored a 99 percentile. And third and final, you need confidence that you will not forget or run out of time to do SCs before time’s up.</p>
<p>The concern I have is that with new SAT, SCs/vocab make up only a small part of CR section.</p>