TYT Basic Mathematics has 40 questions and for many students the real problem is running out of time rather than lacking knowledge. Time management is a learnable skill; you build it by practicing on purpose in practice exams.
Measure your own speed first
While taking a practice exam, write down the start and finish time and see how long you take for every 10 questions. If you see which question type (problems, geometry, functions, numbers and so on) eats up your time, you can shift your studying toward that type.
Solve the questions in three rounds
- Round 1: Solve the questions you can do right away. Skip a question you get stuck on and put a small mark next to its number.
- Round 2: Go back to the marked questions; finish the ones that can be solved in a few minutes.
- Round 3: For the rest, decide whether to guess. Remember that wrong answers lower your net.
This method protects you from a common mistake: spending too long on one question and leaving easy ones to the end.
What to do when you are stuck
If you have spent more than two minutes on a question and have no clear idea of the solution path, mark it and move on. Moving to other questions refreshes your mind; when you return the path often looks easier.
Reduce calculation errors
- Write your operations out one by one; do not skip steps in your head.
- After finding the result, read the question once more: is this really what is asked?
- If your result is not among the options, suspect a calculation error or a misreading of the question.
Use the time like the real exam
Take the practice exam with the exam's time limit, in a quiet place and with your phone away. Getting used to time pressure reduces nerves on exam day.
You can photograph questions you cannot solve and upload them to sınavlab to see the answer key, then write the method in your mistake notebook. The goal is to learn the reasoning of the solution, not just the answer.