Order of Difficulty
Math questions in a timed section generally increase in
difficulty from the beginning to end of a timed section. Knowing
where you are in the order of difficulty can help you in a variety
of ways:
- On Individual Questions. If
you think you’ve got the answer to an easy question, don’t second-guess
yourself: You probably do. If you’re looking at a difficult question,
though, you might want to check your answer just to make sure you haven’t
fallen into a trap.
- Overall Strategy. Unless you’re going for
a 700 or above, you don’t have to worry about answering every question
on the test. You can use the order of difficulty to help you focus
on answering the questions that you can. You should, for instance,
answer every question in the first half of a timed math section.
But if you’re worried about time, you can probably get by without
spending any real time at all on the final two questions.
- Pacing. You can also use the order of difficulty
to manage your pacing. When you’re given 25 minutes to answer 20
math questions in a timed section, you shouldn’t just think to yourself
that for every five minutes you should answer four questions. It
takes more time to answer difficult problems than it does to answer
easy problems. So in the early questions, you should be going faster than
four questions answered per five minutes so you can save up time
to figure out the harder problems.
