GRE Timing is Your Friend

In a recent online class, I asked my students, “How would you feel if the test makers added 15 extra minutes to each section?”

The chat lit up with excitement. I was expecting a positive response, but there was so much enthusiasm that I was taken aback. One student called it “a blessing.” Many others agreed that if they had 15 extra minutes per section, it would be just about the greatest thing that’s ever happened to them: they’d be less stressed, get more problems right, have a higher score; the sun would shine brighter and longer and warmer; a cavalcade of parachuting puppies would rain down from the sky and deliver every child in the world a cupcake made of love and hope; a cadre of unicorns would …

“HANG ON, HANG ON!” I said. “If you had more time to work on each section … what else would happen?”

And then there was silence. For a moment, the class was confused. Nobody saw what I was getting at. I prodded a little more, and finally one student said, “… other people would have more time too?”

Another student caught on. “And the scoring scale would be harder.”

Right. If you had 15 extra minutes per section, that would be terrible! Your competition would get the same bonus you would, so it’d be exactly as hard to get any particular score as it is now, except the test would be 75 minutes longer. Because every student’s score depends entirely on her performance relative to everyone else, a feature that benefits everyone actually benefits no one.

Don’t rail against the strict time limits of the GRE. Don’t fume, saying, “This is stupid. If I had infinite time, I could get all these questions right!” The thing is, if you had infinite time, so would your competition, and you wouldn’t be any better off. Learn to love the clock — it’s an opportunity for you to succeed where others fail.