Items Ordered by Increasing Difficulty

The math section places its most approachable items first and its toughest ones last. This is deliberate: it lets every student bank points fast at the start before running into the items that take more thought. Knowing this ordering exists changes how you should spend your fifty minutes. Early on, if an item is eating too much time, something is off, since it was built to be gettable quickly. Later, slower going is expected, so you can budget more seconds per item without panicking.

That budgeting is the real payoff of knowing the order. Since difficulty climbs as you move through the 45 items, your pacing shouldn't be flat. Treat the first third as a chance to move briskly and save time, then let that saved time flow toward the back third, where items take longer to read and solve. A rigid 67-seconds-per-item plan ignores this shape and either rushes easy points or starves hard ones.

The order is an average trend, not a guarantee. Item 40 is harder than item 4 on the whole, but that doesn't mean a given late item is beyond you. Skipping on sight just because of position throws away items that might be well within reach. The honest move is to glance at any item, late or early, before deciding it is worth your time. Pair this with the bigger pacing strategy: track minutes against item number throughout, not just at the end.