Re: 10 More days for GMAT!!! Please Help...
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20 Aug 2010, 08:31
A lot of test takers struggle with this particular phenomenon. I call it "going on tilt." It is a gambling term. When you lose big (miss a question) you start to get reckless (answering questions without really focusing on the solution, in particular on Data Sufficiency and Sentence Correction.)
Now, I am assuming you don't mean you "miss" a question, because you cannot know that on the test, but you mean you are stuck or confused by a question. This is common to the GMAT, and here are some of the things I personally use, as well as what I suggest to my students.
First of all, you need to remind yourself that roughly 25% of the questions do not count towards your score. In fact, there is a really good chance that you had a hard time on a particular questions because it is a BAD experimental question, or too difficult for your score range.
Secondly, as part of what I do with The Princeton Review, I took the GMATPrep software multiple times aiming for certain scores. On one of my tests, I missed 21 questions on the Quant, and scored a 37. In simpler terms, one individual question REALLY doesn't matter that much, even if that question is early. It is more important to do well on the whole, and not run into a string of missed questions. One doesn't matter.
I also suggest a little mind trick to relax yourself. Right after struggling on a question, take 5 seconds and go to your "happy place." Close your eyes and imagine some vivid and pleasing image. (I use carebears myself...stupid I know, but it works.) The idea is to blank your mind. You want to forget the past question and to focus on the question at hand, unadulterated by previous thoughts. (If you are computer science-y minded, think of it as the garbage collector for your mind.)
I frequently score 50's and 51's on the Quant section, and I am frequently overmatched by a handful of questions. It is just part of the GMAT! The real test is how you adapt to that adversity. Just as the other posters said, you have to put less emphasis on one question.