I struggle with timing on RC and tend to spend way too much time on the passages that trip me up. I've read online that some people will take the first minute or so to skim the passages, prioritize them from easiest to hardest, and tackle the easier ones first. I'm curious as to how many people actually employ this strategy and if they've found it to be helpful in improving their RC score or if I'd be wasting even more precious time trying this.
Do you use this strategy? How well does it work?
Have you tried it and found it to be a time suck?
I know this probably comes down to personal preference, but I'm willing to try anything for RC!
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in my opinion this strat sounds like little gain for a big time suck, its hard to gauge difficulty just off a skim and also u dont know how difficult the questions will be. ive seen people say they complete passages in order of most questions but ive never tried it personally
@Jdunni appreciate the honesty, that's what I was thinking too. also, I see you are in the process of applying to Penn. I am currently doing my masters at Penn and have lived in the Philadelphia area (both city and suburbs) for 3 years. You might already be from around the area, but if you have any questions about the area, let me know!
I think it makes sense to just do it in the order provided because you're going to have to read all of it anyway, and passages tend to get more difficult as the section progresses. Something that might help is trying to be more comfortable with uncertainty. When feeling lost or confused, reading the sentence a bunch of times can be less clarifying than just accepting that it was confusing, coming up with some low res summary, and continuing through the passage. I would recommend watching a bunch of J.Y.'s read-throughs of difficult passages bc he does a great job of showing the benefits of not racking your brain over difficult language and knowing when it is ok to rely on broad-stroke understanding
@EzraG I'll look at those - thank you so much!
I always do the passages with the most amount of questions first, regardless of passage difficulty.
I could only see myself doing that if I assumed that there's a good chance I won't get through all the passages or all the questions. However, I've only heard of people doing it in reference to this.
I could see it maybe making a marginal difference to deal with a 4th passage fatigue by front load the hardest section but then I'm letting myself sink time into doing something that's taking away from my goal of getting through the whole section.