Strategy after being granted a GMAT accommodation

[sdking2]

Hi, I didn't see another post about this so I apologize if there is guidance out there somewhere else. If possible, please point me in that direction.

My question is regarding guidance once we have been granted an accommodation on the GMAT. Specifically a 50% time increase. I have received guidance from my class instructors to test using the new timing limits to establish new benchmarks and use the full time wisely. Also to consider (with the extra time) taking a stab at a few riskier problems that I would otherwise skip. I would like to know are there any other study strategies to implement now with the knowledge that I have some extra time to play with on the test.

Thanks.

[sdking2]

still waiting on answer from Stacey.

[StaceyKoprince]

Please remember to read the forum guidelines before posting. I know you were waiting for a while, but please don't "bump" your own post! We respond to all posts in order, oldest first, and the date of your post is based on the date of the last post in the thread, not the first. If you bump your own post, you will wait longer for a response.

I have been traveling since 5 December (and I'm not actually back in the office until 16 December) but your teacher, Jamie, emailed me to alert me to your post, so send her your thanks :)

First, there is actually a danger associated with having extended time: your brain is going to get even more tired out because you're going to be working over a longer period of time. So that is reasion #1 why you actually do not want to take a crack at a few harder problems with your "extra" time.

Second, you don't really have extra time. If you were approved for testing accommodations, then you were able to demonstrate that you have some condition that makes regular time an objective disadvantage for you. The extended time is an attempt to level the playing field for you - to make it "normal" for you, as it is for everyone else.

In a nutshell: you're really still going to be doing what everyone else is doing, except your timing decisions are increased by 50%. For example, you're still going to be deciding around the halfway mark whether to bail on a too-hard problem. Your halfway mark is just 50% longer than someone else's. :)

I'm going to go back to my first point: stamina. Mental stamina is a KILLER on this test, so it's very important to make good decisions about where to use your brain. The LAST thing you want to do is spend extra mental energy on a few things that are really too hard for you - for two reasons. First, there will be consequences - you will get other stuff wrong that is easier / you know how to get right, because you're going to get sloppy later in the test if you use too much brain energy on too-hard stuff.

Read this:
https://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/inde ... lly-tests/

And then look for the "outlier" part of this:
https://www.manhattangmat.com/blog/inde ... -the-gmat/

(That last part is yet another reason why you don't want to spend extra time / mental energy on too-hard problems. :)

[sdking2]

Stacey,

Thanks for your reply. I didn't intend to break any forum rules, I was just pointing out the fact that I was still waiting for a reply. You had personally responded to a few posts that were written after mine and it seemed as though my question had been skipped. So in fact you do not respond to them in order and I will thank Jamie for her assistance in getting someone's attention.

Thank you for your suggestions regarding the timing for the test. I appreciate it and will use them going forward. I also apologize for the inconvenience during your travels. Like many on this forum we are pressed for time and looking for answers. With my test being less than 2 weeks out now I was trying to find any gems of knowledge out there from you the experts.

Thanks again and Happy Holidays

[StaceyKoprince]

Every time I log in, I literally just go to the bottom of the list and work my way up. I only go out of order if a teacher makes a specific request (as in your case), and this is pretty rare.

Oh - this is what might have happened. We get spam posts sometimes, and those temporarily push a post later in the queue. Then, when the spam post is removed, that question drops back to its original position. So you may have seen a post that appeared to be later, but that was only because of the spam post - the person did actually post before you did.

Please no need to apologize about anything - I only mentioned my travel schedule / Jamie so that others would know why I was replying to you even though there were other students below you in the folder who had not yet gotten a response (and also why it would still be another several days before I could get back to anyone else).

If you ever have last minute / urgent questions, you can also call our office (800.576.GMAT) and they will email me (or the appropriate person) directly to find the answer.

Good luck - let me know how it goes!

[DianaG875]

Hey Stacey,

The links you inserted in your comment lead to an error page (404). How can we reach those resources?

Thanks,

[StaceyKoprince]

Hi, Diana! Actually, those posts have since been replaced by other things (they're about 10 years old).

The first link is similar to the text in the GMAT Mindset introduction section of both the All the Quant and All the Verbal books, so take a look at either of those if you haven't already.

The second one applies only to the Classic GMAT—if you're studying for the GMAT Focus, the concept of outliers in the algorithm no longer applies.

But if you are studying for the Classic GMAT, then this is the idea: On any given test, the questions that you see cover a certain range of difficulty. The 1-2 hardest questions in your mix and the 1-2 easiest questions in your mix are slightly discounted by the algorithm because they are considered "outliers" relative to the other questions that were in your mix.

So, if you were to get the easiest question wrong (but you obviously also got lots of other harder stuff right), it wouldn't kill your score just because you happened to get one really easy one wrong. Likewise, though, if you got the hardest question right (but mostly got other similarly-hard questions wrong)...well, maybe you just got lucky on that one problem. So the test isn't going to give you a lot of credit for getting just that one really hard one right.

And this discussion ties back to the Mindset concept: Your goal is to get a lot of things right, but not everything—because the time and mental effort it would take to try to get the hardest stuff right would just end up hurting you somewhere else on the test. For example, if you try to get everything right, you may run out of time or start making more careless mistakes towards the end of the section. So, in the end, your score would be lower than it could have been if you'd just let the too-hard questions go.