Strategy?

Old timers: Any advice on the strategy you guys adopted during the exam? Like tackling quantitative questions first, qualitative towards the end or doing the problems you know first or just going in order?

Just one more day to go- good luck to everyone!

-Suryan

Nothing gimmicky like preranking or bouncing around. Do them in order and come back to the ones that stump you later. Questions are arranged by topic so you can zero in on one area instead of scattershot. When all else fails guess. Time permitting double check your calcs and answer sheet.

suryan said:

Old timers: Any advice on the strategy you guys adopted during the exam? Like tackling quantitative questions first, qualitative towards the end or doing the problems you know first or just going in order?

Just one more day to go- good luck to everyone!

-Suryan

Click to expand...

I took the test twice - and had difficulty with time both times, but the second go-round, when I came to questions I had no idea how to tackle, I didn't waste any time trying to figure out how to solve, I just went on to the next one and made a star at the top of the page to remember to look at that problem again if I had time to review things. The first time I think I definitely spent too much time on complex problems, which didn't leave me enough time to adequately do the ones that I found easier.

Try to use the last 5-10 minutes going over your answer sheet to make sure you have all the bubbles filled out correctly (the way you want them to be) - it's amazing how you can sometimes mistakenly color in "b" when you really mean "c"!

Also - make sure to use the bathroom BEFORE you enter the test room to sit down - they didn't let us leave once we were in the room until after the test started, which, obviously, led to me wasting a few precious minutes to relieve my bladder. I wish someone would have told me that before I took the test the first time!

Good luck to you!

Valuable tips!! Thanks a bunch and I will definitelly fill in my 2 cents here after the exam! Ready to get this done!!

Cheers,

Suryan

Check out the consolidated advice thread. I'll repost my advice, but lots of other people talk about what worked for them too.

I spent five minutes going through the exam at the start and ranking the problems that I knew or could do really quickly, ones I thought I could solve, and ones I knew I wouldn't get, would need a lot of time, or didn't understand at first glance. Then I started going through all the easy ones (I actually started at the end and worked forward since I was at the back of the booklet anyways). I marked everything on the answer sheet as I answered. Anything I had to come back to, I circled the number. Then I worked my way though all the middle-tier problems, then had about 45 minutes at the end to address the handful I had ranked the hardest. I attempted all of them and made educated guesses. This worked out really well for me.

Like VTEnviro said, the questions are grouped by topic so I was still generally doing all of the same types of problems at once, but I didn't waste time spinning my wheels on things I wouldn't be able to solve. Also, I think answering the ones I knew how to do first was a huge confidence boost, and that certainly didn't hurt anything. I swear the first few problems on both the morning and afternoon are the hardest ones in the whole booklet!

I just went through the questions in order, and made an attempt on each one before moving on. If I found myself stumped, I would mark the question and come back to it later. But generally, I found that I really didn't get badly stumped, except on a few. If I just tried for a minute or two, I would quickly figure out what they were getting at, and where to go in my references for the answer. This resulted in me barely having enough time to finish the morning questions, but I did. In the afternoon, I finished up nearly an hour early.

So I say don't worry about a strategy too much - just try to answer the problems in order. Plus, I always have a fear that if I skip one or more problems, I will accidentally forget to skip the corresponding bubble and end up completely screwing up my answer sheet.

Answer in order, come back for the ones that take too long. The will be some you will know without any paperwork, so you don't want to miss out on those...

Good luck, and please come back to let us know how you did!

I went through them in order and answered the ones that I knew off the top of my head or that I knew exactly where to look up. Then I went back through the rest.

Make sure you carefully read all of the questions. Don't skip one because you think you know what it's going to ask (based on a diagram or table or something).