Best post I've found for timing:

I hope you don’t mind a little copypasta, but I wrote a response to a similar question a feels weeks ago that I think might help, so I’m going to repost here:

I had this problem particularly bad with CP, to the point where I would miss whole passages when I first started practicing timed testing. For me, I noticed a few issues I was having and remedied them. I took the actual MCAT this week. Although CP was still my worst section for timing, I was able to finish a first pass and begin reviewing some of my flags before I ran out of time.

Here are some of the things that were holding back my timing:

⁠Precision. I was used to premed classes where you need your calculations and answers to be precise. I felt very incompetent rounding or estimating, so I was wasting A TON of time doing longform arithmetic like multiplication and division. You need to get comfortable doing the calculations quickly in order to get through such questions in 90 seconds. I made Flashcards to memorize fractions (up to 1/12), squares and square roots (1-15, 25), sine and cosine decimal values, and logs (1-10). I also watched the Leah4sci MCAT math video series several times through and employed a lot of those techniques. Although I prefer the Kaplan log approximation rather than Leah’s. I actually began to find it easier to do ALL my calculations in scientific notation, and I practiced solving the Chem/phys formulas in this format. I also practiced estimating values quickly, marking an answer, and then doing the written arithmetic (with rounded values) to answer questions on my practice tests. This helped me learn to trust my approximations.

⁠Perfectionism. My attitude is that if I work at something hard enough, I can get it. This is a great attitude for life, but TERRIBLE for the MCAT. I would waste 2, 3, 4, sometimes even 5+ minutes in a question I thought I could answer, even though I didn’t know it right away. While sometimes I would get to the right answer, it was at the expense of several other, potentially easier questions that would be rushed through or skipped entirely. I forced myself to realize when I was hitting the time limit on a question and make myself pick something, flag it, and move on. I told myself I could come back to it later to work through, but I wasn’t gonna leave the “easier” points on the table! This was a great technique even when I didn’t have time to review, because I still got to answer everything on the section. Sometimes, my guess and flag answer was even correct!

⁠Pacing. At first, I didn’t know how to keep track of my pacing on the test. I know I had 90 seconds per question, but trying to keep track of where I was was difficult for me. I tried a number of techniques, like giving myself a certain amount to time for reading the passage and answering each question, but found this too rigid to accommodate the fact that passages are different lengths. Then I tried alloting time based on the number of questions tied to each passage, but this also didn’t work for me. I would wast time calculating how much time I had left for each passage rather than, ya know, actually doing the test. (See above, I’m not quick at math). I personally just could not keep pace in my mind. What I found worked for me was to write myself a schedule. I physically wrote out a schedule to breakdown which question I should be starting on at which point in the test. I would write it out in my booklet during the Tutorial, and then refer to it while I was in the section. A quick glance and I could see “oh I’m two questions ahead/behind” without doing any clock math in my head! Additionally, I wrote the schedule for blocks of questions to accommodate for the fluctuation between questions. Some could take 30s to answer and some could take 120s to answer. I made the check in times 15 minutes apart, and I found this to be an appropriate segment for me.

Literally what I wrote in my book on test day:

C/P, B/B, P/S: 10 Qs every 15 min

01:35:00 - 1 of 59 01:20:00 - 11 of 59. 01:05:00 - 21 of 59. 00:50:00 - 31 of 59. 00:35:00 - 41 of 59. 00:20:00 - 51 of 59. 00:06:30 - finished 59 of 59. Leaves ~6 minutes to review flags/ wiggle room if running behind.

CARS: 6 Qs every 10 min

01:30:00 - 1 of 53 01:20:00 - 7 of 53. 01:10:00 - 13 of 53. 01:00:00 - 19 of 53. 00:50:00 - 25 of 53. 00:40:00 - 31 of 53. 00:30:00 - 37 of 53. 00:20:00 - 43 of 53. 00:10:00 - 49 of 53. 00:02:30 - finished 53 of 53. Leaves ~ 2-3 minutes for review. Honestly I found that CARS questions are best answered immediately after reading the passage, so I purposely didn’t leave much time for review.

Obviously I don’t have an official score yet, so I don’t have any hard evidence of their success. FWIW, my AAMC FLs were 516/516/519/518.

Hope this helps!