Why the time limits of the GMAT make the test hard?

Do not let the title of this article intimidate you. This is not my intent. However, this article will warn you about the time constraints of the GMAT.

The time factor

The time limits can sneak upon you. For example, be prepared to type for 15 minutes during each of the two analytical writing essays. But before you start typing those essays, take 10 minutes to read and formulate your thoughts. The remaining time needs to be devoted to proofreading your essays.

In my opinion, the GMAT’s quantitative section is no joke. The majority of the math concepts were probably in your high school’s curriculum; however, the GMAT’s test writers know how to write questions that can trick you, especially if you lack focus or do not understand the question. Unfortunately, some questions may take you 2 minutes or more to solve, depending on your GMAT math skills. Nevertheless, do not spend too much time on any one question; otherwise, you run the risk of having 5 questions left with only 5 minutes remaining in the test section. Your goal is to answer all thirty-seven quantitative questions in 75 minutes. It would be sad to lose additional points because you did not answer every question in the section.

The verbal section is a tedious exercise of sentence correction, reading comprehension, and critical reasoning questions. You will have 75 minutes to complete forty-one verbal questions. The passages for reading comprehension are very academic. I cannot think of a better description for these passages. Force yourself not to get tired while you are reading a reading comprehension passage, for you do not have time to read each of the four passages more than one time. If you are doing well on the verbal section, you can expect to see some long sentence correction problems. The critical reasoning questions ate up most of my verbal time; I thought a handful of the critical reasoning questions were as tricky as the data sufficiency questions of the quantitative section. I probably finished the verbal section with about 30 sections left on the clock.

Conclusion

Honestly, I worked really hard to finish each section within its time limit. I was sweating to finish the verbal and analytical writing section. On the other hand, I had a few minutes to spare on the quantitative section. Anyway, be aware of the time limits when you take the GMAT; you do not want your score to suffer because you failed to answer even one question in a section.