<p>I'm currently a sophomore, and i got my psat scores today: </p>
<p>Critical Reading: 57
Mathematics: 55
Writing Skills: 67
179</p>
<p>I knew i could have done much better on the tests if i finished; as i did not finish the mathematics section and the critical reading section, i had to guess on some questions and omit the rest. I have this problem on other tests, too; it takes me the longest to finish tests in science and math, and all the questions i miss on math tests are generally those that i dont get a chance to start on. Does anyone have any advice to take tests faster and more efficiently? I feel as if this problem will weigh me down on the sat and the psat next year.</p>
<p>Well, there’s that trick everyone knows, in which you do all the easy questions first, and if you get to a question that you know is going to take a while, mark and skip it, and then go back to it later.</p>
<p>You should also try taking more practice tests to get more of the “feel,” I guess. Looking for patterns might help too. That math portion usually has a lot of questions in which you can find the answer with shortcuts, though I can’t really say that I remember how to do them.</p>
<p>For the reading portion…well, you’d have to find out which way is best for you to take it. You can either scan the paragraph quickly and then start on the questions and go back to the paragraph in more detail while answering the questions, or read the questions first and then scan the paragraph, or read the paragraph in detail and then answer the questions while scanning every now and then, etc, etc. I usually skip to the questions first when I take the SAT, but when I take the AP test I read the whole paragraph first.</p>
<p>And I guess that’s it from me. If I just said a bunch of stuff that you know already, sorry.</p>
<p>kagami6918 is right. You need to find shortcuts to do math questions. If you know the shortcuts, which are pretty much the same for certain types of questions, you only need at most 30 seconds to finish most questions on math sections.</p>