Pacing math: 100 questions, one break, no partial credit
Lesson 2 of 4 in Exam Mastery: Scenario Technique, Pacing, and the Credential Landscape.
The arithmetic is simple and worth doing once, precisely. The exam runs 2.75 hours — 165 minutes — including an optional 15-minute break, for 100 questions. Take the break (you should: attention measurably decays across a three-hour sitting) and you have 150 answering minutes: 90 seconds per question. Skip it and you buy nine extra seconds per question at the cost of a fatigued final third — a bad trade.
Ninety seconds is generous for recall items and tight for scenario items, so the budget is really an average you manage across question types: bank 30–60 seconds on every identify/define item and spend the surplus on the multi-paragraph scenarios. The instrument for managing it is the flag-and-return discipline: answer every question on the first pass — never leave one blank, there is no penalty for a wrong guess — flag anything below roughly 70% confidence, and spend whatever time remains on the flagged set.
| Checkpoint | Target clock (answering time) | If you are behind… |
|---|---|---|
Question 25 | ~37 minutes | Tighten scenario reads: stem first, hunt only for role + stage. Stop re-reading exhibits. |
Question 50 — break | ~75 minutes | More than 10 minutes behind: switch to answer-and-flag mode — first instinct, flag, move. Recover depth on the return pass. |
Question 75 | ~112 minutes | Protect the last 25 questions: they carry the same marks as the first 25. Guess-and-flag anything that stalls you past 2 minutes. |
Question 100 | ~140 minutes | Leave ~10 minutes for the flagged set. Change an answer only when you can name the error — first-instinct answers survive review more often than not. |
The 90-second decision: answer, flag, or move
Interactive decision tree — outcomes:
- Answer and move
Commit and go. Confident answers should cost 30–60 seconds; the surplus funds your scenario items and your return pass.
- Answer your lean, flag, return
Record your current best guess — never leave it blank — flag it, and move. On the return pass you will have context from later questions; exhibits and options elsewhere in the exam sometimes settle earlier doubts.
- Strategic guess, flagged
Elimination usually removes one or two options even on unknown material — a flagged 33–50% guess beats a blank. Ten unknown items handled this way cost five minutes; ten items agonised over cost thirty.
- The time sink
Four minutes rescuing one mark risks three rushed marks at the end. The last question is worth exactly as much as this one — protect the set, not the item.
Tool: AIGP Exam Simulator — Calibrate your personal seconds-per-question in timed mode — the simulator tracks your pace against the 90-second budget and replays where your time went.
Interactive checkpoint quiz (2 questions) — open this page in a browser to take it.