There may be times when you encounter a problem that you feel you can solve. But because you either make a calculation mistake or are just a little rusty with this type of question, you’re having a hard time getting the answer. The time is getting away from you. What do you do?

You May Need to Make and Educated Guess and Move On

In such a case, it’s tempting to continue investing time and energy into the problem. However, at some point, you may have to make an educated guess and move on because, regardless of whether you can answer the question correctly, you can’t afford to spend five minutes doing so. At that point, it wouldn’t matter that you got the question correct, because you’d likely end up running out of time to answer later questions that you could have solved had you not spent so much time on the earlier one.

This is not to say that if you are truly close to an answer, you should guess anyway at some arbitrary point in time. Maybe you understand the problem well, but you accidentally solved for x instead of y. Maybe you missed a step, but it’s a step you recognize and can quickly execute.

It might make sense to finish answering the question, even if you’re behind on the clock. But if you’re clearly not close to an answer and you’re racking up the minutes, even if every bone in your body is telling you that you can answer the question given more time, you may have to make an educated guess, mark the question for later review, and move on. If you happen to have time at the end of the section, you can revisit the question.

Warmest regards,

Scott Woodbury-Stewart
Founder & CEO, Target Test Prep