Data Insights Timing Suggestions

Improving Data Insights Time Management (and Scoring)

Data Insights (DI) combines the best of the quant and verbal sections in a dense format that often leaves you gasping for time.

Are the questions exceptionally challenging? Not really. I’d say on average they are easier than verbal or quant questions.  Also, once you have quant and verbal dialed in then there isn’t much (if any) additional content that you need to excel on the DI. 

What makes the section tough is the amount of information that you need to sort through and often there are no shortcuts (besides reading carefully, focusing on setup, having a step-by-step follow through that reduces mistakes)

So what can you do?????

Be a Data Sufficiency Wiz

Data Sufficiency (DS) can initially feel very foreign as it is unique to the GMAT. That said, it is completely conquerable and part of being consistently excellent on the Data Insights is getting perfect at Data Sufficiency not only boosting your effectiveness but also your efficiency. You should be able to mow down many DS questions relatively quickly (with the right approach).

And: there are a ton of official Data Sufficiency questions to practice on so there is no excuse for any DS sloppiness:) Yes, there may only be 6-7 DS questions in your DI section but let’s really nail those. In the tutoring program we do a boat-load of Data Sufficiency strategy and practice.

Make sure your fundamental reading skills are sharp

There is a ton of reading on the DI section so it follows that improvements in your reading will help you excel there. Go ahead and dive into challenging/dense non-test prep reading. Two things you can do:

  1. Read two Economist articles per day (for one of them pick a topic that you are not comfortable with or find un-interesting)
  2. Read a novel. Fiction challenges you in a different way. Some examples that would be great: 1984, The Brothers Karamazov, The Wind Up Bird Chronicle…

We have a lot of feedback from tutoring students saying: the reading is incredibly helpful and the Economist is very GMAT-like. Do it!

Skip 2 Two Part Analysis questions

Why skip TPA?

  1. Multi Source Reasoning (MSR) has three questions so it is better to invest and aim for 100% on those. If you skip MSR then you are putting three questions in jeopardy.
  2. Most people find the Graphs easier.
  3. Data Sufficiency usually takes less time to get through and there is a ton of DS practice available so more opportunity to perfect it.

I would try skipping two TPA questions after the first 7. Why? It is better to have a strong start not only in terms of your mental game but also potentially in terms of the scoring algorithm. 

Hopefully you will find with some mixture of the above that DI is easier to get through. Remember that you don’t need to aim for 100% and it is better to be thorough and step-by-step on a smaller sub-set of questions than to try to spread your time thinly over the whole section.

Happy GMAT studies!