When it came to exams, even Albert Einstein got the jitters. A lot of successful candidates tend to be very particular about time. Time management is a very important skill that one should develop whether a home-maker, a parent, a student or a working professional. All you should be bothered about is how to manage your time.

What should you do on the test day? You’ve prepped well, followed the study plan and reached this point. Here are a few Time Management Tips for the day of the GRE.

Mnemonics

Follow the mnemonics. MIGMO. MIGMO stands for Make an Intelligent Guess and Move On. GRE is a timed test with no negative marking. So, it’s not advisable to skip any question on the GRE. Skipping questions does not add any value to your score! Take a guess, it might go right and that will add value to your score! Don’t skip any question. If you have to, guess. But never leave any question un-attempted.

Go for approximations and estimations. This is very important, especially for a timed test like the GRE. Use estimations & shortcut techniques rather than long approaches to solve problems.

Go for standard percentages. Follow a rational approach for solving QC type questions. You should not take more than 1.5 mins to solve these GRE Math questions. Back substitute for MCQs and MAQs. Go for the answer elimination method, do not use the analytical approach.

Follow the mnemonics ZONEF and PIES. ZONEF is when you want to plug-in values. For example, if X is a positive number, then it can be a fraction or an integer. So ZONEF – Zero Once Negatives Extremes and Fractions comes into play here. More on this later in the blog. PIES is for word problems. Parts Information Equation Solving. Go for visual interpretation when dealing with Geometry question types . Go for textual information when dealing with word problems.

Question-wise break Up

Now for numeric entry questions – there will be 2 or 3 questions and you will have to allot about 2.5 minutes per question. The reason being that numerical entry might involve an analytical approach. You will have to fill in the answer, there are no options. It might be a fraction, it might be a decimal.

Next, MCQs. There will be 2 and you should not take more than 2 minutes per question. This should not involve an analytical approach, use back-substitution to get to the answer. There are five options so use the elimination method to arrive at the right answer.

Quantitative comparison questions –For each question, you can afford to allot 1.5 minutes. However, it shouldn’t take you more than 1 minute per question.

You need to spread up your thirty five minutes in an efficient manner so that it’ll be easier for you to review what you have done before submitting it and then make sure that you have not made any mistakes.
Galvanize Test Prep has made a clear path for the students to perform well on this basis and has good practice tests.

On Screen Calculator

About the onscreen calculator – the GRE does allow you to use an onscreen calculator. However, not many GRE Quantitative questions – in fact, at most one question will involve tedious calculations. Mostly I'd suggest not to use this calculator everytime. It will take time for you to open the calculator & plug in the answer choices.

Now when you do have the onscreen calculator open, you should remember the important mnemonic – PEMDAS. This stands for Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, Subtraction. You have to plug in the expressions only in this order- otherwise your answer will be wrong. It’s not a scientific calculator. At the most, you can find the square root of the number – that’s all that’s given to you, right?

You have a ‘mark & review feature’ on the GRE General test. You can always mark any question that you don’t know to come back to later. You should not skip any question. You can come back and answer it when you have the time.