It’s quite common for students to be anxious about the GRE’s time constraints. After all, the way students pace themselves through the exam can make or break their GRE scores. However, you don’t get faster at solving GRE questions by simply going faster. Although it may seem counterintuitive, the best way to get faster is to start slow. Invest your time into learning the material thoroughly. Master the concepts. Allow the techniques to become second nature. Ensure that all important facts, figures, and formulas are at the tip of your fingers. Spend ample time practicing these concepts, strategies, and techniques.

You’ll find that as you become more comfortable with the material, you get faster. In other words, you need to focus on getting better at solving GRE questions before you can get faster at solving them. That’s why when I hear students proclaim that they know the material, but their GRE scores are low because they “just don’t have the timing down,” I generally recommend they take a good hard look at their conceptual and procedural knowledge levels.

In fact, in my more than 15 years of teaching the GRE, I can count on one hand the number of students who actually had the content down cold but had a legitimate problem with test-day timing. Thus, plan to improve your knowledge of the content.

So, focus on learning the material inside and out and consistently achieving high accuracy on practice questions before you begin to impose time constraints during your practice. If you know how to answer questions well, you’ll be much better prepared to answer them quickly.

Warmest regards,

Scott Woodbury-Stewart
Founder & CEO, Target Test Prep