What’s an Exam Progress Schedule?

The Exam Progress Schedule is something that tells you which question you need to be up to by a certain time, so you can know when you’re on-track, and when to move faster (or move on from the current question).

The Exam Progress Schedule is a plan – a plan to finish the exam early (so you have extra time to boot).

Why Bother?

As the saying goes: “Failing to plan is planning to fail”.

Don’t plan to fail: Have a schedule.

The Short Version

For you TL;DR, time-poor, poor souls out there, just do the following:

Section 1

• Values
  • Total writing time: 100min
  • Total questions: 75Qs
  • Assumed extra time required: 25min
• Calculation
  • Aim for: 10Qs every 10min (1min/Q)
  • Result: 75Qs done in 75min
    • You have 25min to check your work
• Labelling
  • Before Q1: Label the exam start time – from when Writing Time starts (e.g. 9:00)
  • Label at the time at every 10Qs, adding 10min each time
    • Q10: 9:10
    • Q20: 9:20
    • Q30: 9:30
    • Etc.
    • …Q75: 10:15
• Do It
  • Do 10Qs every 10min
  • Move on if you fall behind

Section 3

• Values
  • Total writing time: 170min
  • Total questions: 110Qs
  • Assumed extra time required: 30min
• Calculation
  • Aim for: 15Qs every 20min (1min 20sec/Q)
  • Result: 105Qs done in 140min
    • You have 30min to finish the last 5Qs, and check your work
• Labelling
  • Before Q1: Label the exam start time – from when Writing Time starts  (e.g. 1:30)
  • Label at the time at every 15Qs, adding 20min each time
    • Q15: 1:50
    • Q30: 2:10
    • Q45: 2:30
    • Etc.
    • …Q105: 3:40
• Do It
  • Do 15Qs every 20min
  • Move on if you fall behind

The Long Version

For these interested in the reasoning behind calculation (such as, if you wanted to work out the Progress Schedule for other exams), read on!

The Gym Analogy

If you’ve never done calculations for exam time management, it might be a bit hard to wrap your head around at first. Thus, I’ll use a gym analogy to make the calculation factors make sense.

Think of:

• The exam arena as a “gym”. 
  • Gym gear is totally in right now too.
    

    

• Individual questions as a “rep”. 
  • We’re basing our calculations on the number of Questions, not Units. 
  • In fact, Units won’t even feature into the calculation or the gym analogy.
    • Ok ok! If it did, different Units would probably be different gym exercises.
    • We’re not basing calculations on Units, because different Units contain different numbers of questions – and you can’t perform accurate calculations if the – ahem – units keep changing values.
    • So, for the purpose of the the analogy, assume you’re doing reps for a single exercise for your whole gym session (Like, for hours).
      • No, I don’t care if it’s boring – listen to podcasts or something. Not comedy* though – you’ll hurt yourself.
        • *(There also an even more hilarious Polish version.)
• Number of chunks as “sets”.
  • The point of the calculation is to divide time and questions into manageable chunks – and for simplicity’s sake, we’ll call each chunk (not Chuck) by the more conceptually-familiar gym term of “sets”.
  • E.g. There are 7 sets, each lasting 20min, and in each set you do 15 reps.

We’ll be Using Section 3 as the Example Calculation

For the following calculation, we’ll use Section 3 as the example, as it has the most questions and time, and is the easiest to mess up without proper time management.

Steps to Working Out the Exam Progress Schedule

Step 1: KNOW these things first

• Total Time (TT)
  • Section 1 is 100min of writing time.
    • Writing time is used as the TT.
    • “Reading time”, or perusal time, is 10min on top of the writing time, for a total of 110mins
    • But because you’re not free to do everything in this time (mark the answer sheet, take notes, make calculations on paper), this perusal time isn’t included in the TT.
  • Section 3 is 170min.
    • Also has 10min extra perusal time, as with Section 1.
• Total Number of Questions (TQ)
  • Section 1 has 75Qs.
  • Section 3 has 110Qs.
• Review/Derping Time (RT)
  • You should already have a good idea how long it takes you to:
    • Work out skipped questions.
    • Double-check all your answers on the question booklet.
    • Double-check all your answers on the MCQ sheet.
    • Fill in all relevant info, like personal details.
      • Some MCQs require full names written on all pages of the question booklet – that takes time.
    • Final-check everything.
    • Generally hang out and feel good about yourself.
  • If you don’t have an estimate, think back to your past MCQs, or do more practice exams.

Step 2: CALCULATE

• Test-Taking Time (TTT)
  • Total Time (TT) – Review Time (RT) = Test-Taking Time (TTT).
  • TTT is what you need to time-manage, and is the value we’ll be using to divide into chunks.
  • Why we’re not just using TT:
    • TT includes RT, which you don’t need to time-manage (since it’s assumed you’ve gone through all questions already; it’s also known as “extra time” for a reason) – thus TT is meaningless to divide up.
  • Pro Tip #1: Mould the RT to give yourself a nice TTT (multiple of 10 is usually best) for convenient mental arithmetic later.
    • E.g. If there’s 170min of TTT, don’t go full OCD and “estimate” that you need “approximately 33min” for review: 137 is a prime number. You do realise that you’re going to be looking for a denominator for this number later, right? You do know prime numbers have no integer denominators? Why are you making things difficult for yourself? What’s wrong with you?
• Divide up TTT and TQ into chunks.
  • Here comes the gym analogy: The TTT is total time spent at the gym, and TQ is the total number of reps of the only exercise you want to train for.
  • We want to divide these two things into sets: A small chunk of time in which you aim to smash out a certain number of reps.
• Find a suitable common denominator of TTT and TQ (AKA the number of sets)
  • TTT is 140min, TQ is 110Qs.
    • Let’s choose 20min chunks: 140 is divisible by 20 (into 7 sets) — nice and neat.
  • When considering denominators, prioritise TTT: You want to end up with chunks of 10mins, 15mins, or 20mins, so you can immediately know if you’re on schedule with a quick glance at the watch/clock.
    • That’s because in terms of fractions of the clock-dial, 10min is ⅙, 15min is ¼, and 20min is ⅓ – it’s just neat.
      • Dials of clock-face divide into these fractions.
        

        

    • You can be like “It’s been 10 minutes – have I finished this set yet?”
  • Stay away from:
    • Weird, messy (and sassy) chunks.

    • 

      • If you choose chunks of, say, 25mins, you’ll have to be like “Is it 1:25pm yet? 1:50pm yet? 2:15pm yet? 2:40pm? 3:05pm?”
      • You don’t need that kind of mental arithmetic baggage in Section 3 — there’s already a ton of necessary calculations for your pleasure.
    • Micro-managing tiny chunks.
      • 5min is too short, and even 10min is pushing it a bit.
      • Time management exists for you to concentrate on blazing through questions, NOT on worrying about when you need to check your schedule next.
    • Unwieldingly large chunks
      • If you do 30min or even 60min chunks, you can too easily fall behind on too many questions.
      • E.g.
        1. In 20min chunks (aiming for 15Qs), you might fall behind on 3-5Qs.
        2. In 60min chunks(aiming for 45Qs), you might fall behind on 9-15Qs.
      • The reality is that you might fall behind on even more questions: If you’re checking your progress – and reminding yourself with labels – this infrequently, you can easily forget you have a schedule, and happily spend 10min on a single trap-question (explained in a future exam time management post).
• Dividing up TQ
  • So, we’ve worked out “There’s 7 sets of 20mins in 140mins”.
  • Now we need “There’s 7 sets of ____Qs in 110Qs”.
  • So, we need to divide 110Q by 7.
  • But notice the awkwardness:
    • 110 / 7 = 15.714
    • The division isn’t exact.
  • So, something’s gotta give:
    • Sets: Shotgun Not.
      • The 7 sets are already associated with time chunks, so we can’t change it without backtracking.
    • Q Chunks: Um, sure.
      • You can’t do 15.714Qs in 20mins.
      • You can do 15Qs though.
    • TQ: I guess.
      • Since we changed Q Chunks, TQ has to change too.
      • 15 x 7 = 105
      • That’s 5 questions left at the end – but you’ve put aside 30min of revision time, so that’s enough time to cover things
• What does it all mean?
  • So, we have Time Chunk (20min), the number of Sets/Chunks (7), and Q Chunks (15Qs).
  • That means, you should be aiming to complete 15 questions each 20 minutes, and to do this 7 times.
  • That way, you’ll have completed 105 out of 110 questions in 140min, with 30min left over for finishing questions, checking everything, and staring vaguely in a general direction.

Step 2B: Calculate Speed (optional)

• If you want to know exactly how long (on average) you have to solve each question:
  • Divide Time Chunk by Q Chunk
    • 20 / 15 = 1.33min/Q = 1min 20sec per question
    • Remember, 0.33 = ⅓, and ⅓ of 1min = 20sec
• The sensible / long / non-Asian way
  • Convert Time Chunk to seconds first
    • 20min x 60 = 1200sec
  • Divide
    • 1200 / 15 = 80
  • Convert Time Chunk back to minutes (and seconds)
    • 80sec = 60sec + 20sec = 1min 20sec

Step 3: Label checkpoints

• Now that you know how many questions (15) to do in how many minutes (20), go and mark this on the question booklet.
  • Write “20” at Q15, “40” at Q30, “60” at Q45, and so on.
    • These number markings help you easily keep tabs of where you should be up to.
  • To make things even easier, label the time corresponding to the question you should be up to.
    • E.g. If the exam writing time starts at 1:30pm, write “1:50” at Q15, “2:10” at Q30, “2:30” at Q45, and so on.

Step 4: Stick to the schedule

• This is crucial:
  • Letting yourself fall behind, when you have a schedule, is like not having a schedule at all.
  • You’ll also feel extra dumb if you don’t finish on time. It’s like taking your shoes to a dodgy park, yet choosing not to wear them, then stepping on a syringe.
• Work at a rate of 1min 20sec per question.
• When the current 20min chunk is up, take an educated guess on the rest of the 15 questions in that Q chunk, and move onto the next 15 questions.
  • You can easily tell where the current 15 questions end: Right before the next labelled time
    • E.g. If you’re finishing up the 2:10 chunk, the last question of this chunk would be at Q44 – right before the “2:30” label (which is labelled at Q45)
    • That’s what those labels are there for.

Pro Tip: Bring An Analogue Watch

No one knows where you’ll be sitting, or if you’ll be able to see the clock clearly – or at all.

So bring a watch – and during before the exam starts, take it off, stand it on the desk in front of you, so you can quickly glance at it when you need to.

By the way, you can only bring an analogue watch – it specifies this on “What to bring on test day” in ACER’s GAMSAT Info Booklet.

But this works out for us anyway, because an analogue watch makes it easier to do time management anyway:

As mentioned before, certain time-chunks neatly break into fractions on a clock-face (10min = 1/6, 15min = 1/4, 20min = 1/3) – and since analogue watches have a clock-face, you can easily tell how much time is left in your time-chunk.

Ask The Reader

How do you schedule your time?

Want Loads More Tips and Strategies? Check out the FastGAMSAT ebook pack on the homepage! (Yes, that’s Snarksy on the cover) ( ^ΦдΦ^) Draw me like one of your French girls, Willeo.