“If I come to a difficult question, should I skip it and flag it for later, or should I spend more time to answer it and risk running out of time?”
This is a question I hear often, and the short answer is, neither!
First and foremost, don’t skip any questions. When you skip difficult questions, you run the risk of saving all the hard ones for the end, when you’re most fatigued. You risk running out of time, so all of those flagged questions will go unanswered, which makes it an automatic zero. If you at least answer and flag, you have a chance of getting the question right vs. no chance if it’s blank.
As for spending too much time on a difficult question, you’ll want to practice the strategy of answering, flagging, and moving on. Meaning, you don’t want to linger on any particular question. Try to get into the habit of narrowing your choices down to 50/50, making an educated guess/going with your gut to choose an answer, and then flag it. If you have time later, you can review the question, but be very careful about changing your answers! In general, it’s best not to change your answer – for more information on what to look for when considering changing answers check out this post.