Time Management For Hard Questions

Test Preparation SAT Preparation
1

Hello everyone,

I took the most recent SAT (with essay) and I noticed that I have time management issues especially in math sections. What usually happens with my practice tests is that I do careless mistakes in math. Double checking and making sure my answer corresponds with what is asked always helps. However, since it is more time consuming, this technique leaves me with so little time for the last questions. Given that the last questions are considered hard compared to other questions, there is a higher possibility that it has some word play or something about the question that you should pay more attention to.

When I double check my answers during practice tests, I’m left with about 4-5 minutes for the last 3 questions of the section which is enough time for me. During the SAT however, I get about 3-4 minutes but knowing that it’s the real thing and the thought of not being able to do the rest in the remaining time puts me in a panicked state. What happens is that I can’t even read the questions properly and end up reading small parts of each question.

I double check my questions in other sections than math and I never had a problem with timing. Solving faster, I believe, will cause me to do even more careless mistakes, not double checking and being able to solve the last questions properly would pretty much be like exchanging the questions where I made careless mistakes with last questions which will give me nothing extra in my score report (Assuming I get every one of the last questions correct).

My question is how do I save more time during math sections so that I can be able to pay more attention to last questions and not guesstimate most of the time?

Thank you for reading.

2

You shouldn’t need to double check every question. If you comprehend the question and understand what it’s asking you to solve than you shouldn’t have that kind of problem. The math section is broken up into different types of math questions some are logic based others are just plain algebra and geometry. Figure out which one you need to improve on. Also if you aren’t aiming for 800 math don’t worry about the last few math questions and focus more on the easy and medium ones. The last few questions are pretty hard.

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Thank you for your reply. Not 800 but I am aiming for 740 and above so it’s pretty close considering the curve from 800 to 700 usually goes +/-20 per question. Even if I skip some last questions, there is still a possibility that I might do careless mistakes on the easy and medium ones. Wouldn’t it be better to have the time to focus on hard questions as well?l Because even though most of them are tricky, they can be solved. I will spend less time double checking easy questions on practice tests. The SAT in January is the last one before the new SAT so I really do not want to leave this to chance. :slight_smile: