Pacing on the GMAT is critical – many students report that they can answer most questions correctly…only eventually.  Within an average of two minutes per question, the questions get harder, stress levels get higher, and the GMAT authors achieve their goal of creating a difficult test.  For that reason, most examinees need to build more speed with GMAT concepts and questions, and in doing so cannot afford to sacrifice much (if any) accuracy.

How does one go about building speed?  Take lesson from those who have the most to gain or lose from pure speed – track and field athletes.  Even athletes competing at endurance distances – 10,000 meters, marathon, etc. – incorporate healthy doses of sprint-based interval training in their workouts to build the fast-twitch muscle fibers that are so instrumental in increasing one’s speed.

The same can be done for your GMAT preparation.  As you attempt to solve problems faster, you will likely need to develop a “quick first step” akin to the bursts of speed that runners seek.  The single-greatest place for test-takers to lose time is at the beginning of a question, at which point they will often:

1)    Read the entire question
2)    Get to the end and think “whoa…that looks tough”
3)    Go back to the start of the question and debate how to begin
4)    Realize that they’ve wasted time getting started and begin to panic (optional)

This process takes time – if you spend 30 seconds of your approximate two-minute allotment per question without making any advancement, you’ve spent 25% of your time with nothing to show for it.

The key to getting faster on GMAT problems is to use those first 30 seconds on each problem productively by actively reading the problem.  In that time, you should:

•    Identify known quantities and jot them down (e.g. “The end price to the customer is $100, so $100 = …”)
•    Start building relationships between what you know and what you need (e.g. “That $100 will be made up of the retailer’s revenue plus the tax, so $100 = R + T, and the tax rate is 10%, so T = R/10”)
•    Think about the parameters of the problem to begin thinking of efficient methods  (e.g. “the answer choices are all spread apart by $10, so I may be able to test one number and get away with an estimate”)

If you simply have something to show for those first 30 seconds – an initial equation, the assignment of variables, an eliminated answer choice – your confidence level will increase, and you will use the next minute-plus much more efficiently, as well.  To paraphrase Newton, a test-taker in motion will stay in motion.

To better increase your speed using track-and-field methodology, consider this “interval training” drill:

1)    Select a set of 10 quantitative problems
2)    Give yourself 30 seconds to get started on each problem, and move on immediately when that 30 seconds is up (use a watch with a lap timer, or a computer equivalent to set up these intervals)
3)    Once the set is done, go back and finish each problem based on the point at which you left off

This drill will help to accomplish a few goals:

1)    You will learn to start each problem more quickly by reading actively and building relationships while you read.
2)    You will determine the types of mistakes you tend to make at the beginning of problems, and you can focus on fixing them.  People often find that they have bad reflex habits when it comes to particular equation or problem setups, and this drill will help to exacerbate them.
3)    You will break the monotony of simply “doing problems”.  One of the unsung benefits of interval training for athletes is that you accomplish a fairly high level of overall training (mileage for runners; yardage for swimmers; etc.) without having to slog through that distance – the interval training is more interesting, or at least gives you a specific goal to accomplish.  Interval training for the GMAT can help you change up your study routine while also attacking explicit objectives.