One of the single biggest mistakes that GRE students make is immediately jumping into trying to answer practice questions with a timer going. If you are going to master answering GRE math and verbal questions, you have to give yourself the time to deeply analyze questions, learn to see what you need to see, and struggle and hack and do everything you possibly can to get to correct answers. How will you ever learn to do those things if you start off trying to answer every question in 2 minutes or less, or 1 minute, or even 3 or 4?

Here’s the funny thing about imposing time constraints when you first start your GRE practice: students tend to think they’re giving themselves an added challenge by setting a timer, but they’re actually letting themselves off the hook!

When the clock is ticking, you always have a ready excuse to stop trying on a challenging question. Rather than stick with questions, build your stamina and mental toughness, learn to closely analyze what is going on in questions and answer choices, you can say to yourself, “Two minutes are up? Oh well, I guess I have to move on to the next question.” Is this method of practice actually going to help you sharpen your skills in answering GRE questions efficiently? Probably not.

Here’s another fact about GRE practice that may seem counterintuitive: You need to learn how to answer GRE questions before you can learn how to answer them quickly. In fact, if you’re further along in your prep and you find that you’re having trouble answering questions of a certain type under time constraints, you probably need to devote more time to studying that material.

So, I generally recommend to my students that in the beginning of their GRE prep, they don’t worry about the clock at all when completing practice questions. Instead, they should focus solely on analyzing questions and finding right answers. This is painstaking work, but it’s essential if you want to be able to answer GRE questions both quickly and correctly. The good news is, as you gain experience and skill in analyzing questions and finding right answers, you will naturally begin to speed up in your GRE practice. Just try not to be discouraged if it takes you much longer than you expected to answer GRE practice questions when you’re just starting out. Remember, you’re doing exactly what you need to do to drive up your GRE score, and with every question, you’re strengthening your skills.