The Two-Pass Method for a 150-Question Paper
Most candidates run out of time around question 118. The fix is not reading faster — it is refusing to spend a minute on a question worth the same as the easy one you never reached.
The problem is not speed
Look at where an unfinished paper actually stops and you usually find the candidate reached question 115 to 120 with the time gone. They did not read slowly. They spent ninety seconds each on eleven questions they were never going to get, and those stretches are the thirty questions at the end they never saw.
Every question pays the same. A hard one and an easy one are worth identical marks, so time spent on a hard one early is taken from an easy one later. That is the entire argument for the method.
The two passes
First pass: go from question one to the last and answer only what you can settle in under about forty seconds. Anything slower gets marked and left. Do not argue with a question on the first pass — the point is to reach the end with every cheap mark collected.
Second pass: return to the marked ones with the time that remains, in any order. You are now spending time on hard questions knowing no easy one is still sitting unread behind them.
What to expect the first few times
It feels wrong. Leaving a question you nearly have is uncomfortable, and the first two or three attempts under this method usually feel worse than they score. Check the score rather than the feeling.
Our report shows unattempted questions as their own figure for exactly this reason. A high unattempted count with time left over is a pacing problem, and a pacing problem is far cheaper to fix than a knowledge one.
The fastest way to know whether any of this applies to you is one timed test.
Take a free test