GMAT Tip of the Week Is Not A Player, It Just Crushes A Lot

On this last day of Hip Hop Month in the GMAT Tip of the Week space, lets talk about the big picture related to your GMAT score with a nod to one of hip hops most notorious B-I-Gs: Big Punisher. The Big Punisher of your GMAT score the item that can take what would have been a great day and leave you walking away from the test sobbing Its So Hard (another Big Pun hitlook it up he had more than one!) is poor time management. On a test-takers route to a strong section score, there lie a handful of questions that tempt you to devote several fruitless minutes playing around with equations, calculations, and techniques that arent working. A few questions later you look at the clock and realize that even though 90% of the problems have gone well for you, youre several minutes off your target paceall because of that one big punisher, the question you should have left alone. Fortunately, Big Punisher has a mantra for you to keep in mind on test day: Im not a player, I just crush a lot Meaning, of course, that youre not the kind of test-taker who aimlessly plays around with the 3-4 big punisher questions that will ruin the time you have left for the others. You quickly identify that no one question is worth taking your whole pacing strategy on (as Snoop would say, Im too swift on my toes to get caught up with you hos, hos, of course, being short for horribly involved problems that Ill probably get wrong anyway) and bank that time for the many other problems that youll crusha lot. Functionally that means this: when you realize that youre more likely wasting time than progressing toward a right answer, cut your losses and move on so that you save the time for the problems that you will undoubtedly get rightas long as you have a reasonable amount of time for them. You might consider paying homage to Big Pun by using his name as a quick mnemonic for your strategic options: P: Pick Numbers. If the calculations or algebra youre performing seems to either be going in circles or getting worse, look back and see if you could simply pick numbers instead. This often works when youre dealing with variables as parts of the answer choices. U: Use Answer Choices. Again, if you feel like youre running in circles, check and see if there are clues in the answer choices or if you can plug them in and backsolve directly. N: Not Worth My Time. And if a quick assessment tells you that you cant pick numbers or use answer choices, recognize that this problem simply isnt worth your time, and blow in a guess. Remember: youre not a player you wont let the test bait you into playing with a single crazy question for more than a minute without a direct path to the finish line so save the time to focus on crushing a lot of problems that you know you can crush. On your journey to completing entire GMAT sections on time, heed Big Puns warning: dont stop (to play around with questions you already know youre not getting right), get it, get it meaning pick up the pace to have meaningful time to spend on the questions you can get. The biggest punisher of what should be high GMAT scores is poor time management, almost always caused by spending far too long on just a few problems. So remember: youre not a player on those problemsgo out there and crush a lot of the problems you know you can crush. Getting ready to take the GMAT? We have free online GMAT seminars running all the time. And as always, be sure to follow us on  Facebook, YouTube,  Google+  and Twitter! By Brian Galvin.