8.3 Pacing the 100-Minute Cognitive Section, Skipping & Guessing
Key Takeaways
- The cognitive section allows 100 minutes for 65 items, about 92 seconds each, which is enough time to read carefully rather than skim.
- Answer the questions you find easiest first, which banks time for the harder ones and secures points early.
- Skip any item you cannot make progress on, mark it, and return to it rather than spending several minutes on a single point.
- Because points are awarded only for correct answers and nothing is deducted for a wrong one, every item should be answered before time expires.
- Reserve about five minutes at the end of the section to answer everything you skipped.
8.3 Pacing the 100-Minute Cognitive Section, Skipping & Guessing
Time management is the difference between a candidate who knows the material and a candidate who scores well on it. This section covers the pacing model the publisher recommends, adapted to the section structure the examination actually uses.
1. Start From the Correct Time Budget
The single most common pacing mistake is dividing two hours by 150 items and concluding you have about 48 seconds each. That figure is wrong, and it produces a rushed, error-prone approach to items that deserve care.
The correct model:
| Section | Items | Time | Per item |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cognitive Ability | 65 | 100 minutes | ~92 seconds |
| Personality Attributes | 85 | 20 minutes | ~14 seconds |
The clocks are independent. Finishing the cognitive section early does not add time to the personality section, and vice versa.
Ninety-two seconds is a generous budget for most item types. A vocabulary synonym item takes twenty seconds; a grammar item takes thirty. That surplus is what funds the reading passages, the multi-witness inductive items, and the map traces — the items that genuinely need two or three minutes.
2. Answer Easy Questions First
The publisher's guidance is explicit:
"It is important that you answer the easy questions first on this exam. By doing so, you will afford yourself more time to spend on the difficult questions if necessary. Seek out questions you can answer. If there are particular kinds of questions that you feel most comfortable with, answer those questions first. For example, if you are particularly good at reading comprehension, find those items first and complete them."
This is not merely time-efficient; it is psychologically protective. Points banked early cannot be lost to a clock crisis later, and a stretch of successful items steadies you for the harder ones.
Know your own strengths before test day. After working the official 65-item practice test and scoring it by ability (section 8.4), you will know whether you are fastest at grammar, vocabulary, deductive reasoning or spatial orientation — and that knowledge tells you what to sweep for first.
One important exception: the memorization block. Those items follow a study period during which you view three photographs for six minutes. That material is in short-term memory and decays. Answer memorization items when they are presented, not later. Everything else on the examination stays on screen and can wait; the photographs cannot.
3. Skip and Return
"If you believe that you are not able to answer a question, then skip it. It is better to skip a difficult question than to spend a lot of time on it and not be able to complete other exam questions."
The rule to internalise: no single item is worth more than one point. A three-minute struggle with a hard inductive item costs you the two or three easy items you could have banked in the same time.
Set a personal trigger. If ninety seconds pass without visible progress on an item, mark it and move on. When you return to it later, two things will often have changed: you will be calmer, and you will have seen other items that clarify the format.
Mark skipped items using whatever flagging function the test interface provides, and keep your own tally on the note board as a backup. The publisher's guidance on marking skipped questions exists precisely so that "you have answered all of the questions by the time the examination period has ended."
4. Narrow by Elimination
For items you return to, elimination converts a stalled item into a favourable guess:
"If a situation presents itself where you are unable to answer a question, use a process of elimination to narrow your options. First, eliminate any answers that are clearly wrong. Then determine how you feel about the remaining choices."
Four options give you a 25% baseline. Removing one clearly wrong option lifts you to 33%; removing two lifts you to 50%. Across five or six items late in the section, that difference is worth real points on a ranked list.
When you eliminate, note which options you eliminated before moving on. Otherwise, returning to the item means redoing the analysis from scratch.
5. Guess Everything Before Time Expires
This follows from the scoring rule and admits no exceptions:
"Because there is no penalty (i.e., points deducted) for guessing or incorrect answers on this exam, you should try to answer every question."
An unanswered item is a guaranteed zero. A guess among four options has an expected value of a quarter point, and after elimination, more. There is no scenario in which leaving an item blank is correct.
The corollary is a scheduling requirement: reserve about five minutes at the end of the cognitive section to answer everything you skipped. The publisher makes this concrete in its error-analysis discussion: "Leave five minutes at the end of the exam so that you are able to go back to any unanswered questions and complete them."
6. A Workable Pacing Plan
| Elapsed | Target | What you should be doing |
|---|---|---|
| 0–5 min | — | Read instructions carefully; note when the section ends |
| 5–40 min | ~30 items answered | First sweep: memorization when presented, then your strong item types |
| 40–80 min | ~55 items answered | Second sweep: the remaining item types at normal pace |
| 80–95 min | ~65 attempted | Return to flagged items; eliminate and decide |
| 95–100 min | 65 of 65 answered | Fill every remaining blank with a best guess |
Adjust the middle rows to your own strengths, but keep the two ends fixed: careful instructions at the start, and a hard five-minute sweep at the end.
Note the section end time when it begins. The publisher advises making a note of when the test will actually begin and end. Knowing the wall-clock deadline is more reliable than tracking a mental countdown while you work.
7. Working Quickly Without Rushing
These are not the same thing, and the distinction runs through the official guidance. You are told to "work both quickly and efficiently" — and, in the reading section, to "slow down and read for understanding the first time," because rushing forces a second reading.
Reconciling them:
- Speed comes from method, not haste. Reading the question first, taking paragraph notes, marking option intersections, scanning one option at a time — each of these is faster than the unstructured alternative and more accurate.
- Haste comes from anxiety and costs accuracy. The publisher attributes the errors in flexibility of closure and pattern recognition directly to rushing.
- Remain calm. "There are going to be times when you are not going to know the answer, and neither will other individuals taking the exam." On a ranked list, an item everyone finds hard costs you little.
Finally: there is no bonus for finishing early. If you complete the cognitive section with time remaining, use it to review your work rather than sitting idle.
Eighty-five minutes into the cognitive section a candidate has answered 58 items and flagged 7 that he could not resolve. He is deciding whether to spend the remaining fifteen minutes working the flagged items in order or to first ensure none is left blank. What does the official guidance support?
Which item type should a candidate answer when it is presented rather than skipping it for later, and why?
A candidate has spent nearly three minutes on a single inductive reasoning item involving four witness accounts and is no closer to an answer. What is the recommended response?