qhoc
You said it -- careless mistakes. enemy #1 for all test takers.
You will learn a lot of new things on test day too.
I am sure you will. Does that mean you are not prepared? No, its just that you see new stuff and you come with new ways of solving the problems.
You will experience this for as long as you prep. So how do you know you are prepared? -- here are some metrics... I tutor a student and i asked him to follow these things to a T.
1. Are you making the same mistakes over and over again? --- your
error log will help you here
2. Are you getting consecutive problems wrong? --- you may find that you are weak at some concepts OR that your performance is affected under timed conditions
3. What did i learn today? ---- Keep track of new things that you learnt. Read these notes everyday. Update them everyday. you will be glad you did.
4. On your computer practise tests, did you concentrate totally on the problem on the computer screen or were you thinking about how have you done on the test? --- This is very important. One problem at a time... practise it.. I am sure it will help.
qhoc, you and everyone else is NEVER going to get all the problems right all the time. What we do hope is we can track our performance to eliminate as many problems as we can.
I recommend that you have a learning attitude towards your prep. If you are not taking notes about what you learned every day, its not going to help. You may just be getting problems right or wrong without actually learning anything. Practise is important, but more important are the lessons you take away.
The point is that you will need a good , strong concept base from where you can solve unlimited number of problems with a few concepts. will you be able to solve every single problem? I dont think so. But what you can do is reduce your errors by building a feedback mechanism in the form of error logs, clear notes etc...
Dont trust statistics to tell you about your performance. I would ask that you forget about keep stats. Keep a learning attitude always.
Never say never with problems like these. go find what hurts in verbal. attack the problems you have. post them here. discuss ways to eliminate them. If you want a special score, it needs special effort and i dont mean working hard. we all do that. I stress again. get feedback from your prep everyday. incorporate the lessons you learn to the next days' prep.
On your practise tests, make sure that you practise "letting go " of a problem. Getting every problem right is a good objective, but you should be prepared to make a compromise when a problem looks too weird to comprehend. Give it your best shot and move on. This single thing has affected many guys. Its better than guessing on the relatively easier problems towards the end. Remember, getting a hard problem wrong does affect your score, but getting an easy problem wrong is even worse.We are always told that we should get as many problems right as we can in the first 15 and its very good advice. But if our test score was to be decided by the first 15 questions, the test would only have 15 questions.
I hope this helps
Praetorian
qhoc0010 wrote:
I have studied hard for the last three months. Until now, I still feel no confident at all. My percentage of correct questions from SC and CR was always 60% - 70%, never higher than 80%. And you know what, I learned something new everyday. How could it be possible? 700-score people, did you face the same thing? Did you learn something new everyday even a week before the test?
I always made careless mistake in math, usually 6 wrong questions per test. How many wrong math questions did you guys usually get during practice? I need to get at least 49 on Quan because I know my verbal will never be higher than 34.