Maximizing your performance in GRE quant requires three major steps. First, you must master the content. Second, you must spend a lot of time testing your knowledge with GRE practice questions. Finally, you must refine your timing strategy.

In this article, I’ll lay out a number of quant timing strategies that you can follow to help reach your goal score in GRE quant.

To better understand these timing strategies, let’s quickly review how the GRE is structured and scored.


The GRE is a modified computer-adaptive test comprised of five sections, the first of which is always the Analytical Writing section. The remaining four sections consist of two Verbal and two Quantitative sections.

You may see a third Verbal or Quantitative section that is unscored; however, since test-takers are not informed of which sections count and which don’t, you should strive to do your best on all sections. Conversely, if you don’t score well on the early questions, later questions will be less challenging and worthless points, and thus it will be more difficult to earn a top score.

Each Quant section contains 20 questions, which you have 35 minutes to complete. The first Quant section you see will be a mix of easy, medium, and hard questions. If you answer most of these questions correctly, then the questions you see in the second Quant section will be of the “hard” variety and worth more points than those that will appear if you get many questions in the first Quant section wrong. Think of it as building a skyscraper, with the first Quant section as the base. The more questions you answer correctly, the wider the base and the higher you can potentially build your score.

It’s important to note that for both the Quant and Verbal sections of the GRE, you do not have to answer the questions within a section in order, and you can flag questions for future review. A status screen that you can pull up summarizes the questions you have answered, those you have flagged, and those you have not yet answered in the section. Although you can skip around within a section, you cannot go back to a previous section.

Now that we’ve reviewed how the GRE is structured and scored, let’s look at a few overarching strategies to keep in mind when pacing yourself throughout the test. You can also learn more about how the GRE is scored in this article on GRE scoring percentiles.


Many test-takers believe that they must correctly answer all of the quant questions on the GRE to earn a high quant score. In fact, it has been my experience that when people take the GRE with the mentality that they must correctly answer every question, they tend to score significantly lower than their skills suggest they will.

Let’s suppose that you perform well on the first Quant section and are presented with very challenging questions in the second Quant section as a result. You may find that you are unable to solve some of those challenging questions in a reasonable number of minutes, or that you have no idea how to solve them.

If you’re wasting time and energy (which are very limited) trying to solve questions that you have a very low chance of answering correctly—those that are above your current ability level—you’ll put yourself at a big disadvantage.

On the GRE, you must be comfortable letting go of questions that you cannot solve. This means playing to your strengths and acknowledging your weaknesses. Let’s discuss in further detail.


Given the structure of the GRE, you have an average of 1 minute and 45 seconds for each quant question. However, you should consider this average time a baseline—a reference point by which you can track your pace—not a fixed point to which you must adhere. Due to the varying levels of difficulty of questions on the test, and your particular strengths and weaknesses, some questions may take you only 30 seconds to answer, while others may require three minutes. In fact, you should expect some variation in time per problem and consider that part of your test strategy. If, for example, you answer a relatively easy quant question in 30 seconds, you’ve just “banked” an extra minute and 15 sections for a more difficult question in that section, or an extra 45 seconds each for two medium-level questions.

You should also be aware that there may be some questions that you won’t be able to solve even with an extra minute or two—or an extra 10—and it’s essential to recognize what those questions are before you spend an inordinate amount of time on them. This will require knowledge of your specific quant abilities going into test day.

As part of your GRE preparation strategy, you should be solving a large number of realistic practice quant questions on every tested topic, and carefully logging and tracking the questions with which you struggle. In doing so, patterns should begin to emerge as to which types of questions are most difficult for you. In the week leading up to your exam, spend time carefully reviewing which types of questions you answered incorrectly during your most recent practice sessions. Maybe you discover that you’re still very weak on remainder questions presented in the form of quantitative comparisons, or that you consistently incorrectly answer problems involving quadratic equations. Then, when you are presented with these types of questions during your actual GRE, you can immediately recognize them as such. Give such questions you are all for, say, 30 to 45 seconds. If after that time you find that a question is unfolding much the way similar ones did during your practice—that is, you’re confused and no closer to an answer—make an educated guess and move on, realizing that you have a low chance of correctly answering that question no matter how much time you spend on it. Using this method, you not only preserve energy and brainpower but also save time that you can put toward solving questions that you are much more likely to answer correctly.

You want to give every question you encounter on the GRE your best attempt, but you also want to use your time wisely and strategically to ensure that you have the opportunity to accurately answer as many questions as possible.


Although you may not have the time or ability to solve every quant problem on the GRE, a solid GRE timing strategy is to answer every quant question as you encounter it. If you leave several questions blank because you’re unsure of their answers, and then you run out of time, there is no chance that you will get any of those questions correct. If, instead, you guess an answer for each question you’re unsure of, and then mark the question for later review, even if you run out of time, there is still a chance you guessed correctly.. Remember, there is no penalty for an incorrect answer. If you do have time remaining after you’ve gone through all of the questions in a section, you can bring up the status screen and revisit the questions that you flagged during the first run-through. Another benefit to this strategy is that you will be familiar with all of the questions that you guessed at, and thus you will better be able to decide which ones are worth spending your remaining time trying to solve.

If you find that there are two minutes left on the clock and you’ve only seen 15 out of the 20 questions in a Quant section, it is still better to fill in answers to all remaining five questions before those two minutes are up, rather than leaving any questions blank. That may mean taking a few seconds to eyeball each question and quickly guess an answer, and then returning to the question you are most likely to correctly solve in the remaining 1:30.

In the best scenario, you’ll have carefully paced yourself through each section so that you have sufficient time to work systematically on the final questions presented to you. But if that is not the case, you should do whatever you need to in order to ensure that you answer all of the questions, even if you only have a few seconds to select a random answer. Do not leave any question blank in any section, or your score will be harshly penalized.