Rendering in after effects

How long is the comp? What is the frame rate? What is the frame size? 

After Effects is not in any way a video editing application. It is a visual effect, motion graphics, and animation program designed to create shots. Most comps that pros work on are one shot and I would be surprised if many of the comps are longer than 10 seconds. I can count on one hand the number of comps I have made over the last six months that run longer than 10 seconds. 

The efficient workflow is to rough the movie, select which shots must be worked on in After Effects, make a comp from each of those shots, and render them to a visually lossless production format unless they will render at the rate of several frames a second. If the comp is simple enough to render quickly, you can add the comp directly to a Premiere Pro sequence.  

Before we can offer any meaningful suggestions we have to know what is going on in the comp, what effects you have applied, and you need to answer the first questions I asked. Rendering a 4K project takes about 4 times as long as an HD project. Rendering at 60 fps instead of 30 doubles your render time. Scaling down a comp in the Media Encoder also slows down the render. The Media Encoder is always slower than using the Render Queue in After Effects, especially if you keep After Effects open because the Media Encoder launches another copy of After Effects in the background and uses that to render the movie. Only Premiere Pro will render directly from inside the app. 

I'm afraid I didn't help very much. It's nearly midnight where I am and I have been working since 7 AM so I probably won't be up to offer any more suggestions before your deadline.

If possible please make sure that Hardware Acceleration is checked.