Crucial to doing well on your exam is managing your time. Unfortunately, too many students find themselves at the end of a section of a test with very little time and way too many questions left to answer. Why does this happen? Because most students prepare for the exam by reviewing the content and practicing taking test questions without practicing their timing.

How do we practice our timing? It’s pretty simple. For every exam, there is a student guide that tells you how many questions are in each section and how much time you have for that section. It’s a simple math problem to determine the amount of time you have for each question in each section.

Once you have determined the amount of time you have for each question on each section, you need to set a timer for each set of practice questions you do. Stick with the timer and stop when the timer goes off. Answer why each question is correct and why each incorrect answer is a distractor to help you understand how the test writers think but make sure the timer is ALWAYS present. Eventually, you will develop an innate sense of timing for your exam which will force you not to linger too long on any one question.

Be sure to set a strategy for easy questions and hard questions. It’s usually more efficient to go through the easy questions first and mark the more difficult question for later to ensure you give the maximum amount of time you need to deduce an answer.