Scope of materials: I would prefer you to read our outline to get a general view of the queations you will face. If you have done so, go to stage 2
Difficulty levels.
I’ve left high school mathematics for years and further I received Bachelor’s Degree in Humanities, what should I do? Absolutely nothing! Well, as long as you can add, subtract or find a product of numbers, it’s OK. The only thing you want to do is to practice more. ETS doesn’t expect you to ace in university Calculus to get a 90%tile score in the quantitative section.
So what does ETS want to test me? First of all, you have 75 minutes to complete 37 math questions, 17 - 18 of which are problem solving questions. I don’t want to talk about time management at this stage, but on
average you have 2 minutes for a quantitative question. Fortunately or unfortunately, each test taker views a data sufficiency question differently, that is, one finds it easy while the other take minutes to do
it. As a result, your allocation of time is unique. However, I think you should not spend more than 4 minutes on each question. Such huge time would be compensated by a 30-second question. Believe me such
questions exist periodically. My point in this stage is that ETS doesn’t care much whether you have learned Advanced Calculus. Rather, speed and accuracy are the two factors to determine your final score.
Final notes. I took GMAT twice and did quite well in the Q section (95%tile). My personal problems was I spent too much time on the very first questions. (I guess you all have heard rumors that the first,
let say, 10 - 20 questions are everything. We will discuss this later). The result, I randomly guessed in the last 3- 5 questions. Moreover, the very last questions are not that difficult, but in such a very
tight situation you don’t even know how to set up an equation. So spent your time wisely. It’s probably the difference between the successful executive and....!
