IR Timing Issues

[ZekeT]

Looking for advice on how to address timing issues in IR.

When I take the CATs (I, II and III) so far and even go back to retry the porblems, I'm going too slow -- and not for any particular reason: not using wrong strategy, not reading slowly, not making missteps, immediately see which concepts to apply.

If I rush, then I make careless errors.

MSR is allotted the longest (7:30, right?), but if we skip it we can't score over a 5, right? But maybe if we're going too slow and have to rush / make careless errors, a 5 isn't possible anyway.

I guess I have the best chance of doing charts and tables accurately within the 2:30 window. Maybe I should skip either/ors since there are (it feels like ) so many ways to get them wrong and just do dropdowns?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[RonPurewal]

yes, i know i'm contradicting some of the materials by saying this, but, i think ANY sort of "planned skipping" is a TERRIBLE idea.
there's no way to know whether a problem will be "easy" or "difficult" FOR YOU until you actually give it a shot -- and, moreover, "planned skipping" just reinforces bad time-management habits, by ENCOURAGING things like sitting there staring at the problems.

if the things you've written in this post are true, then, you've probably been READING / LOOKING AT WAY TOO MUCH of the information at the BEGINNING, when you're just getting oriented to what's there.

__

think about how you would apprehend a DATA TABLE before looking at the problems.

specifically:
• obviously (...well, i hope it's obvious, lol) you wouldn't LOOK AT THE DATA •IN• the table.
• you'd look at HEADINGS;
• you'd get a VERY GENERAL SENSE of how the table is ORGANIZED;
• you might look at the TYPES of quantitative data (fractions? percents? rounded? exact? etc), but you wouldn't try to "read" the data themselves.

right?

ok.

the point here is, this is how you should approach ALL IR problems, not just data tables.

AT THE BEGINNING:
• DON'T READ THE DETAILS! DON'T READ THE SPECIFIC INFORMATION!
Just:
• note what kind of information is presented
• note any organization (this comes after that; these things cause those things; X is a reaction to Y; etc)
• note where to find whatever specific type of information.

is this what you've been doing?

...because, remember, THE MAIN POINT OF THE IR SECTION is to give you LOTS OF EXCESS INFORMATION, and test your ability to FILTER WHAT'S RELEVANT AND IGNORE EVERYTHING ELSE.
in fact, this is WHY the IR section was even CREATED in the first place. (you'll notice that the quant and CR problems basically NEVER contain ANY extraneous information -- they pretty much just serve up what you need, and ONLY what you need, on a platter and present it to you.) if you're READING MOST OR ALL OF THE INFORMATION in an IR problem, that's a BIG MISTAKE.