GMAT Tip of the Week 6 Reasons That Your Test Day Wont Be A Labor Day

As the northern hemisphere drifts toward autumn, two events have become just about synonymous: Labor Day and Back to School. If youre spending this Labor Day weekend getting yourself ready to go back to graduate school, you may well labor over GMAT study materials in between barbecues and college football games. And if you do, make sure you heed this wisdom: GMAT test day should not be Labor Day! What does that mean? On a timed test like the GMAT, one of the biggest drains on your score can be a combination of undue time and undue energy spent on problems that could be done much simpler. The long way is the wrong way as a famous GMAT instructor puts it those seconds you waste, those extra steps that could lead to error or distraction, theyll add up over the test and pull your score much lower than youd like it to be. With that in mind, here are six ways to help you avoid too much labor on test day: QUANTITATIVE SECTION 1) Do the math in your order, only when necessary. Because the GMAT doesnt allow a calculator, it heavily rewards candidates who can find efficient ways to avoid the kind of math for which youd need a calculator. Very frequently this means that the GMAT will tempt you with calculations that youd ordinarily just plug-and-chug with a calculator, but that can be horribly time-consuming once you start. For example, a question might require you to take an initial number like 15, then multiply by 51, then divide by 17. On a calculator or in Excel, youd do exactly that. But on the GMAT, that calculation gets messy. 15*51 = 765 a calculation that isnt awful but that will take most people a few steps and maybe 20 seconds. But then you have to do some long division with 17 going into 765. Or do you? If youre comfortable using factors, multiples, and reducing fractions, you can see those two steps (multiply by 51, divide by 17) as one: multiply by 51/17, and since 51/17 reduces to 3, then youre really just doing the calculation 15*3, which is easily 45. The lesson? For one, dont start doing ugly math until you absolutely know you have to perform that step. Save ugly math for later, because the GMAT is notorious for rescuing those who are patient enough to wait for future steps that will simplify the process. And, secondly, get really, really comfortable with factors and divisibility. Quickly recognizing how to break a number into its factors (51 = 3*17; 65 = 5*13; etc.) allows you to streamline calculations and do much of the GMAT math in your head. Getting to that level of comfort may take some labor, but it will save you plenty of workload on test day. 2) Recognize that Answers Are Assets. Another way to avoid or shortcut messy math is to look at the answer choices first. Some problems might look like they  involve messy algebra, but can be made much easier by plugging in answer choices and doing the simpler arithmetic. Other times, the answer choices will lead themselves to process of elimination, whether because some choices do not have the proper units digit, or are clearly too small. Still others will provide you with clues as to how you have to attack the math. For example, if the answer choices are something like: A) 0.0024; B) 0.0246; C) 0.246; D) 2.46; E) 24.6, theyre not really testing you on your ability to arrive at the digits 246, but rather on where the decimal point should go (how many times should that number be multiplied/divided by 10). You can then set your sights on the number of decimal places while not stressing other details of the calculation. Whatever you do, always scan the answer choices first to see if there are easier ways to do the problem than to simply slog through the math. The answers are assets theyre there for a reason, and often, theyll provide you with clues that will help you save valuable time. 3) Question the Question Know where the game is being played. Very often, particularly in Data Sufficiency, the GMAT Testmaker will subtly provide a clue as to whats really being tested. And those who recognize that can very quickly focus on what matters and not get lost in other elements of the problem. For example, if the question stem includes an inequality with zero (x 0 or xy 0), theres a very high likelihood that youre being tested on positive/negative number properties. So,  when a statement then says something like 1) x^3 = 1331, you can hold off on trying to take the cube root of 1331 and simply say, Odd exponent =  positive value, so I know that x is positive, and see if that helps you answer the question without much calculation. Or if the problem asks for the value of 6x y, you can say to yourself, I may not be able to solve for x and y individually, but if not, lets try to isolate exactly that 6x y term, and set up your algebra accordingly so that youre efficiently working toward that specific goal. Good test-takers tend to see where the game is being played by recognizing what the Testmaker is testing. When you can see that a question is about number properties (and not exact values) or a combination of values (and not the individual values themselves) or a comparison of values (again, not the actual values themselves), you can structure your work to directly attack the question and not fall victim to a slog of unnecessary calculations. VERBAL SECTION 4) Focus on keywords in Critical Reasoning conclusions. The Verbal section simply looks time-consuming because theres so much to read, so it pays to know where to spend your time and focus. The single most efficient place to spend time (and the most disastrous if you dont) is in the conclusion of a Strengthen or Weaken question. To your advantage, noticing a crucial detail in a conclusion can tell you exactly where the game is being played (Oh, its not how much iron, its iron PER CALORIE; its not that Company X needs to reduce costs overall, its that it needs to reduce SHIPPING costs; etc.) and help you quickly search for the answer choices that deal with that particular gap in logic. On the downside, if you dont spend time emphasizing the conclusion, youre in trouble burying a conclusion-limiting word or phrase (like per calorie or shipping) in a long paragraph can be like hiding a needle in a haystack. The Testmaker knows that the untrained are likely to miss these  details, and have created trap answers (and just the opportunity to waste time re-reading things that dont really matter) for those who fall in that group. 5) Scan the Sentence Correction answer choices before you dive into the sentence. Much like Answers are Assets above, a huge help on Sentence Correction problems is to scan the answer choices quickly to see if you can determine where the game is being played (Are they testing pronouns? Verb tenses?). Simply reading a sentence about a strange topic (old excavation sites, a kind of tree that only grows on the leeward slopes of certain mountains) and looking for anything that strikes you as odd or ungrammatical, that takes time and saps your focus and energy. However,  the GMAT primarily tests a handful of concepts over and over, so if you recognize what is being tested, you can read proactively and look  for the words/phrases that directly control that decision youre being asked to make. Do different answers have different verb tenses? Look for words that signal time (before, since, etc.). Do they involve different pronouns? Read to identify the noun in question and determine which pronoun it needs. Youre not really being tasked with editing the sentence as much as your job is to make the proper decision with the choices theyve already given you. Theyve already narrowed the scope of items you can edit, so identify that scope before you take out the red marking pen across the whole sentence. 6) STOP and avoid rereading. As the Veritas Prep Reading Comprehension lesson teaches, stop at the end of each paragraph of a reading passage to ask yourself whether you understand Scope, Tone, Organization, and Purpose. The top two time-killers on Reading Comprehension passages/problems are re-reading (you get to the end and realize you dont really know what you just read) and over-reading (you took several minutes absorbing a lot of details, but now the clock is ticking louder and you havent looked at the questions yet). STOP will help you avoid re-reading (if you werent locked in on the first paragraph, you can reread that in 30 seconds and not wait to the end to realize you need to reread the whole thing) and will give you a quick checklist of, Do I understand just enough to move on? Details are only important if youre asked about them, so focus on the major themes (Do you know what the paragraph was about a quick 5-7 word synopsis is perfect and why it was written? Good.) and save the details for later. It may seem ironic that the GMAT is set up to punish hard-workers, but in business, efficiency is everything the test needs to reward those who work smarter and not just harder, so an effective test day simply cannot be a Labor Day. Use this Labor Day weekend to study effectively so that test day is one on which you prioritize efficiency, not labor. Getting ready to take the GMAT? We have free online GMAT seminars running all the time. And as always, be sure to follow us on  Facebook, YouTube,  Google+  and Twitter! By Brian Galvin.