Running out of time is a different problem from not knowing the material
Some people who fail knew the material and spent eleven minutes on a question worth the same as one that takes ninety seconds. If your score report shows even, mediocre marks across the board, that may be you.
On this page
The arithmetic nobody does beforehand
Divide the time by the number of questions. That is your average, and it is smaller than it feels.
Now notice that theory questions take a fraction of that and load calculations take several times it. So the average is meaningless as a per-question target. What matters is the total.
The people who run out of time are almost never slow across the board. They are normal on most questions and catastrophic on three.
The two-pass method
- First pass: answer everything you can do quickly. Mark anything that needs a multi-step lookup and move on immediately.
- Do not start a load calculation on the first pass. Not one.
- Second pass: work the marked questions with the time you have banked.
- Third pass, if there is time: check the ones you guessed.
This works because the cheap questions are worth exactly as much as the expensive ones. Banking them first guarantees you collect every point you can collect fast.
The skip rule
Decide your abandon threshold before you sit down, and make it a clock reading rather than a feeling.
Something like: if I have been on this question for two minutes and I am not close, I mark it and go.
Fix it in advance because in the room, with a question you almost have, two minutes does not feel like two minutes. A rule you set while calm is the only one you will actually follow.
Guessing is not optional
There is no penalty for a wrong answer that there is not also for a blank one. A blank is a guaranteed zero and a guess is not.
So the last two minutes are for filling every blank, regardless. Do that before you go back to check anything.
People leave blanks because they intend to come back and then the time goes. Fill them as you skip, then improve them if you can.
What to practice
Practice under a clock from the beginning, not at the end of your preparation.
Untimed practice teaches you the material and teaches you nothing about the actual failure mode, which is the clock.