You look at the clock. You’re behind. You panic a little and put your head down – it’s time to go faster. This is a common behavior with GRE test takers, but it’s actually counterproductive. In this podcast with Charles Bibilos, CEO and GMAT / GRE tutor at GMAT Ninja, Charles explains why speeding up on the GRE actually slows you down, and provides tips for not falling into this trap.
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1.1s Welcome to GRE snacks. Snackin episodes about the GRE exam in graduate school admission. I'm Tyler. Founder of achievable. Our affordable hundred ninety-nine dollars GRE course includes everything, you need to ace your GRE: a full textbook, tons of questions backed by our memory enhancing algorithm, and full length practice exams. And if you like it, the podcast gets you 10% off at checkout. Let's get started. So, today we got Charles be with us on the line. Charles is why I choose yourself tonight. I own a company called gmatninja, real sad music for more than 20 years now. 45.2s Yeah. Sorry, Charles byblos, I always double-check when I, like, inviting on counter lights, are still check that. It feels like, especially when you're when you're both kind of in the test environment there, some anxiety, and my make you to work a little over the past. And then, you know, especially if you kind of fell behind the triangle faster and that actually works against you. So I'd love to hear you. Your, you said, you had examples for Quan and over, but I'd love to have you just walk us through it because it's, it's one of those counterintuitive things that I, I wished you to pay more attention to 105.2s You just want to start racing through and especially if you know who pick on verbal to start, if you know that you're not very fast reader or, you know, the attendance drug, always spend your wheels on it at a very basic question, picture of wild last time you took a test and probably finish on time. And so you see that timer starting you just want to go racing through and in so many cases. It's the opposite of what you want. It works against you 129.3s Part one is that. Yeah, obviously, these are going too fast. You can make silly errors on an Adaptive test like the GRE that can cause tons and tons of damage for you. You miss the easy questions that's going to hurt. You more than missing her so there's not really basic version of it. But how does it affect your timing? You would still think. What if I, if I read faster on the intersection faster, I answer more questions. Yeah, maybe I'm stopping on one or two, but all I had and a person that is not true at all. And one of the things we see over and over former students reading comprehension. For example, if you try to read that passage to quick, 166.3s Do you like great? I just saved a bit and a half by reading. The passage in 1 minute set of two and a half minutes or whatever. The numbers are the questions and you're going to start look at the Enterprise has a gun, I don't really know what that primary purpose was and you got to go back to the passage and you got the answer choices to the passage. Answer choice answers for the passage answers passage, and you're still locked in, you don't realize that you're just hemorrhaging Time by doing that. And we see that all the time will be people whose to the average times on GRE reading-comprehension, they should be and we'll go ahead and stop at you at all. Speed is totally fine for the need to get done on the GRE in the time they have. But because they're so jacked up. Going to do that passage, they don't fully digest it and they spend 226.3s Trivia questions and they don't even feel it. Because you don't notice, you're spending that time. It feels like you notice, when you're spending a lot of time reading, you don't know the next thing, you know, you spent a total of 8 minutes, 10 minutes on a passage and three questions when it should have taken me five. Yeah, and you're basically redoing the work multiple times. 252.9s That's it. You're gonna have to read that passage anyway. So if you go through and then you realize he didn't have a great grasp of the primary purpose and you're going back and forth to the answer choices in the passage, you're going to go try to mind that primary purpose anyway. And it basically means you're going to read the passage more times and it's wickedly inefficient, right? So then what are you actually like for the verbal or the stick to her before now? Like what do you recommend instead? I mean other than you know, reading slowly and deliberately is there any other sort of tips to catch yourself? 287.8s Yeah. But we working with our students is to make sure that they stopped at the end of every paragraph or a really long paragraph, her way to the paragraph and go. Why is his hair was ever want from me? Why is it here? I was stopped at what point of views are being presented at the second paragraph, the third paragraph. Why is it here? How to connect your feet is two paragraphs and different types of note-taking work differently for different people. There's, there's plenty of customization amount, we were students one-on-one, but the fundamental thing that is absolutely essential oil is used to be able to get some sort of big picture purpose, fight for purpose, quite understand that connection between different paragraphs for him. 347.8s Chunks of Passage. If you don't give me pretty good shape for going to get to the big picture, questions, and south rim, a whole lot faster on average. And even that the questions might be a little bit more detail. Pastry harder questions that are detailed based understand. The detail is going to be shooting for a really high score on GRE verbal. It's really essential understand that they even for the detail questions in the shortcut of skimming through and then hunting for the detail later it's just going to hurt your time and your accuracy. Yeah, I probably would actually hurt for better for worse. The GRE probably knows if that's the thing that people do and it might be a gacha at some point where you're like, oh, like the detail, you know, it means this in the sentence but it's not with the proper context. 401.7s Exactly. And the Jerry's not out to get you, it's not too late wraps for you. Anything. They're, they're trying to be really, really fair about evaluating your, your verbal reasoning skills as they like to call it. But when you think about how somebody's going to write a question and make it difficult, yeah, you're going to have a right answer. And then somewhere in your answer choices, there's going to be a really delicious tempting wrong answer. That sounds really right if you read to sloppily or that it's, it's going to sound right or seem, right. But it doesn't really capture the contacts in the right way cuz it really catch what that details doing there. So you're not comprehending, the Bible passage, which is the Seventh Son. 441.1s Great. Well yeah and then I would love that kind of explored the GRE Quant side of things as well. Right? Like, where does speeding up actually hurt you? And the quad side always, the biggest one is dead. If you're let's, let's say that you're bashing, true. And then, let's hit some nice. That's a great question. You could be anything but it is easier than you start. The question you have to do. Let's say six lines of algebra and you start doing in your in a big old hurry and read the question. Wrong. 473.4s And you don't notice until I get to the very end and he gets an answer. Let's say it's, it's a, it's a standard problem. Solving multiple choice question, and you got a holy poop on a stick. My answers, not there. Now, what you got to redo the whole freaking question, I think you do. Maybe you can find that one are, but if you made it early in the process, 492.4s Or you just get it wrong, which is just as that. But that's the most obvious waiting for a ton of time as you make mistake early on in the process because you're being too sloppy. You're not reading twice, you're not checking your work. And she go have a question and I think for a lot of people listening if you practice a lot of eirik want you probably caught yourself doing a question 3 times. Maybe I might ask maybe just a practice. It might make a mistake, right? Read the question. Twice, check every step of your work, doesn't matter who you are. Four times, seven is sometimes 32. It just is you're going to you're going to do silly stuff. That's human. 539.7s And the question is, are you getting used to checking for it? Every line about where you do everything right time? And I'll see how much for E. Triangle, you turn on a question double-checking before I move on and it takes 3, S 6, s check your word and that can save you a minute and a half 2 minutes, if it, if it's a shame original question. 560.0s Great one. Also, right, as you mentioned, another episode but there's also a lot of important detail and Jerry Carr questions where, you know, things like extras an integer versus like, you know, XY is is not an integer, right? Like these little like little words to make a very big difference on the entire problem and it was correct. He may be the worst thing you could do is just like get the, the wrong answer and do the ask Ali and the wise getting up to slow you down to my trunk want, is it the GRE at times? Has a really nice job of giving you multiple ways to solve a question. And there's a person I was talking about with some one of those quantitative comparisons and it's it's kind of a blob of algebra as a fraction with quadratics on the numerator denominator is 616.1s I think it's both A and B. And the punchline is that you might. Look at that question, a specific question. And say, lots of Algebra 2, quadratic bunch of stuff that would be great. And the way that particular ethical questions, written, that's going to turn into a bloodbath bloodbath fast and there's really no viable solution past there in a minute. But if you can look at it and think about the properties of those numbers instead and just go, wait a minute, if this one's a fraction, this one's positive in the negative and thinking those sorts of terms instead. Think, logically abstract, you can get out of that question for you. I S 656.7s And they're wonderful. But you did a really nice job of creating these questions at times that, yeah, you can pick numbers, maybe that's fast. Maybe that's slow, you can kind of think logically about the properties of algebra. Maybe that's fast. Slow. And if you're looking at the question and going to be in the process of deciding what to do, 684.7s you're going to be in that position, more more frequently that you pick up a package at a tree pickup trucks, going to take you 3 or 4 minutes that you can afford and if you take us instead and go what's my best way? 697.6s Yeah. Yeah, this is particularly important when that clock is bearing down on you to keep doing this. 706.8s And that's when it gets the hardest, right? As soon as, you know, that have that 10 minutes left. It's hard to hang in there and, and be deliberate. And read the question twice, be thoughtful when it's the most important. If you are at first question twice, now you're really going to be stressed out and it might cost you two or three more, right? And stressed out and make a mistake, right? Like I got to keep playing the game by the Bridle Path. 737.3s Okay, thanks very much. Charles this is Ben Jerry, snack. So she by Tyler from achievable with Charles fibula from Gmail mobile. You can check out achievable GRE course for free at achievable.me and you should know, podcast, get 10% off.
