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This post is for those who are struggling to understand the fluctuations in their scores and the unknown mistakes that they are not thinking hard enough about. Here, I have mentioned the mistakes that I have discovered during my preparation phase and am documenting it here, in hopes that it helps at least one soul in realizing that they need to re-engineer the way they prepare and understand their mistakes by throwing light on some of the examples from my own.
I was going through my official mock test 4 when I noticed that I was able to solve all the questions that I got wrong during the exam correctly. I looked back into the notes of my mocks 1, 2 and 3 and realized that in the second attempt on the questions(for Quant and for Verbal except SC), untimed, I was able to solve 95-100% of the questions. I found it odd. There was no issue from the knowledge perspective. It was more on the muddy application - from the GMAT perspective.
Below are a few of the issues that I found in my approach to the questions. I have not found solutions to all and am still struggling through it but these are just to give an idea of what the fractures look like so that you can go back to your wounds and try to find your own fix.
Quant:
1. I would often take 20 seconds to sort what the question said, in form of equations or relationships after having read the question and would often refer back to the question because some equation or relation seemed odd.
2. I would make calculation mistakes because of residual numbers in my head. Let me explain - let's say I was multiplying 1347 and 63, and start by multiplying 3 and 7 as 35 because in my brain I remembered 5 somewhere and hence multiplied 7 with 5 instead of 3.
3. I would skip through already recognised patterns. I would get to the point in the equation where the pattern of approaching further can be seen but instead, I would solve it further and confuse myself when my answer didn't match the provided options. I would panic and choose randomly.
4. I am very good at connecting information but am equally poor at keeping them in my mind. I have tried writing the relationship on paper but then I forget the established connection and have to re-read the question again.
Verbal - CR :
1. I used to think very logically and keep everything in perspective and context. In the real world - nothing's black and white, at times it's not even grey most of the time it’s a shade of many different colours. It took me some time to realise that GMAT, as a standardized test, cannot account for all the shades hence sticking as close to the text as possible was the best way to go. This proved challenging for me at first but I am getting the hang of it.
2. The approach provided in Powerscore CR Bible might work for people who can think mechanically but I found it difficult to approach questions by a particular type. So, I approach every CR question in the same way - reason it out. It works for me, but I am open to being more mechanical.
3. Too much information confuses me. When I have sufficient time, I can map out the questions and develop the reasoning more clearly. During the test, I usually had a muddled idea of the connections which resulted in my low scores.
4. Not reading or evaluating the choices correctly. One instance, I read the choice - saw the word "most" and quickly reasoned extreme and eliminated it. I read through all other choices - eliminated them all. Confused. I went back to that option. Read it again -this time with the purpose of evaluating it and reasoning it out. It was the perfect choice that I was looking for. This led me to spend 5mins on the question. I have started to evaluate each choice more carefully but it takes too much time to understand and evaluate each. I get 95-100% accuracy on official questions but it takes too much time.
Verbal -RC:
I am a very lazy reader and only read columns that interest me and only for the information that I am seeking and have not read a book cover to cover in the last two years. So, RC was a challenge because it wants you to care about what the author thinks.
1. The complex sentences that contain too much information and data related to different opinions and ideas, at times contrasting, are presented in form of a sequence of events with multiple stakeholders holding their own viewpoints, sometimes agreed and sometimes criticised by the author of the passage in a long non-ending sentence such as this one was difficult to understand. Soon I realised that I need to break the sentence into small parts. But that took time. (Read the earlier sentence again, if you didn't understand - trying to read in chunks of 5 words at a time).
2. I still take about 4-6mins to just read a short passage depending on the density and 6-8mins for a long passage. All the tips of reading for the main idea and skipping the examples, skipping the "fluff" makes me feel uneasy and out of control as I feel that I didn't understand the passage well. This is still preventing me from completing the Verbal section. Need to change my mindset, here.
3. I would not reason well before eliminating a choice and caught myself doing this for many of the questions where I read it mindlessly and skipped past it without evaluating it completely only to realise later, once I have eliminated everything, that the earlier eliminated choice, when reasoned, matches exactly to what I was looking for. Still trying to work on this.
4. Double negatives confuse me a bit - e.g. not incomplete, not incomprehensible. I have started to think of it as -ve *-ve makes it positive -> not incomplete becomes complete, not incomprehensible becomes comprehensible.
Verbal -SC:
English is a weird language. It has more exceptions than rules. So, I knew for some time, that learning rules was futile. But knowing them helps.
1. So, I learnt the basic rules and it helped improve my timing. As it helps the most, in the elimination process.
2. I have always tried to check the correctness of a sentence by understanding its stated meaning. But, your understanding of the meaning might be wrong. This was something that I realized last week. I have since then started to work on it.
So, that's it.
Hope this helps you in getting some idea about what kind of mistakes can occur. Now, remember this is a very personal thing. Your mistakes are a product of your years of practice. For example, my residual number mistake in quant is due to my anxiety coupled with a lack of focus. So, I have thought of adding a trigger whenever I do a calculation - "Careful, See what you are doing!" and have started meditating. Hope it helps. So, you are the best person to identify why you are making some mistakes and what can prevent them. You can always take help from experts if it helps but I would suggest do some soul-searching first. Identify it, acknowledge it and strategize to remove it.
Good Luck and Stay Safe.
I was going through my official mock test 4 when I noticed that I was able to solve all the questions that I got wrong during the exam correctly. I looked back into the notes of my mocks 1, 2 and 3 and realized that in the second attempt on the questions(for Quant and for Verbal except SC), untimed, I was able to solve 95-100% of the questions. I found it odd. There was no issue from the knowledge perspective. It was more on the muddy application - from the GMAT perspective.
Below are a few of the issues that I found in my approach to the questions. I have not found solutions to all and am still struggling through it but these are just to give an idea of what the fractures look like so that you can go back to your wounds and try to find your own fix.
Quant:
1. I would often take 20 seconds to sort what the question said, in form of equations or relationships after having read the question and would often refer back to the question because some equation or relation seemed odd.
2. I would make calculation mistakes because of residual numbers in my head. Let me explain - let's say I was multiplying 1347 and 63, and start by multiplying 3 and 7 as 35 because in my brain I remembered 5 somewhere and hence multiplied 7 with 5 instead of 3.
3. I would skip through already recognised patterns. I would get to the point in the equation where the pattern of approaching further can be seen but instead, I would solve it further and confuse myself when my answer didn't match the provided options. I would panic and choose randomly.
4. I am very good at connecting information but am equally poor at keeping them in my mind. I have tried writing the relationship on paper but then I forget the established connection and have to re-read the question again.
Verbal - CR :
1. I used to think very logically and keep everything in perspective and context. In the real world - nothing's black and white, at times it's not even grey most of the time it’s a shade of many different colours. It took me some time to realise that GMAT, as a standardized test, cannot account for all the shades hence sticking as close to the text as possible was the best way to go. This proved challenging for me at first but I am getting the hang of it.
2. The approach provided in Powerscore CR Bible might work for people who can think mechanically but I found it difficult to approach questions by a particular type. So, I approach every CR question in the same way - reason it out. It works for me, but I am open to being more mechanical.
3. Too much information confuses me. When I have sufficient time, I can map out the questions and develop the reasoning more clearly. During the test, I usually had a muddled idea of the connections which resulted in my low scores.
4. Not reading or evaluating the choices correctly. One instance, I read the choice - saw the word "most" and quickly reasoned extreme and eliminated it. I read through all other choices - eliminated them all. Confused. I went back to that option. Read it again -this time with the purpose of evaluating it and reasoning it out. It was the perfect choice that I was looking for. This led me to spend 5mins on the question. I have started to evaluate each choice more carefully but it takes too much time to understand and evaluate each. I get 95-100% accuracy on official questions but it takes too much time.
Verbal -RC:
I am a very lazy reader and only read columns that interest me and only for the information that I am seeking and have not read a book cover to cover in the last two years. So, RC was a challenge because it wants you to care about what the author thinks.
1. The complex sentences that contain too much information and data related to different opinions and ideas, at times contrasting, are presented in form of a sequence of events with multiple stakeholders holding their own viewpoints, sometimes agreed and sometimes criticised by the author of the passage in a long non-ending sentence such as this one was difficult to understand. Soon I realised that I need to break the sentence into small parts. But that took time. (Read the earlier sentence again, if you didn't understand - trying to read in chunks of 5 words at a time).
2. I still take about 4-6mins to just read a short passage depending on the density and 6-8mins for a long passage. All the tips of reading for the main idea and skipping the examples, skipping the "fluff" makes me feel uneasy and out of control as I feel that I didn't understand the passage well. This is still preventing me from completing the Verbal section. Need to change my mindset, here.
3. I would not reason well before eliminating a choice and caught myself doing this for many of the questions where I read it mindlessly and skipped past it without evaluating it completely only to realise later, once I have eliminated everything, that the earlier eliminated choice, when reasoned, matches exactly to what I was looking for. Still trying to work on this.
4. Double negatives confuse me a bit - e.g. not incomplete, not incomprehensible. I have started to think of it as -ve *-ve makes it positive -> not incomplete becomes complete, not incomprehensible becomes comprehensible.
Verbal -SC:
English is a weird language. It has more exceptions than rules. So, I knew for some time, that learning rules was futile. But knowing them helps.
1. So, I learnt the basic rules and it helped improve my timing. As it helps the most, in the elimination process.
2. I have always tried to check the correctness of a sentence by understanding its stated meaning. But, your understanding of the meaning might be wrong. This was something that I realized last week. I have since then started to work on it.
So, that's it.
Hope this helps you in getting some idea about what kind of mistakes can occur. Now, remember this is a very personal thing. Your mistakes are a product of your years of practice. For example, my residual number mistake in quant is due to my anxiety coupled with a lack of focus. So, I have thought of adding a trigger whenever I do a calculation - "Careful, See what you are doing!" and have started meditating. Hope it helps. So, you are the best person to identify why you are making some mistakes and what can prevent them. You can always take help from experts if it helps but I would suggest do some soul-searching first. Identify it, acknowledge it and strategize to remove it.
Good Luck and Stay Safe.
26 Aug 2021, 07:20
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Thanks so much for putting this post together!
I have had similar challenges with multiplication, Multiplying the wrong numbers and sabotaging the solution. What is the result, I forced myself to take five or 10 second break between each quant question. Despite my best attempts, and trying to do a quick check at the end of each question to make sure that my answer actually made sense, I still have two questions on my Quant Where are the answer I came up with was not in the list of choices.
My other issue was carrying over information for DS from one question to another. It was lesser of an issue but I cut myself several times when doing multiple DS questions in a row.
Hope this helps!
Posted from my mobile device
I have had similar challenges with multiplication, Multiplying the wrong numbers and sabotaging the solution. What is the result, I forced myself to take five or 10 second break between each quant question. Despite my best attempts, and trying to do a quick check at the end of each question to make sure that my answer actually made sense, I still have two questions on my Quant Where are the answer I came up with was not in the list of choices.
My other issue was carrying over information for DS from one question to another. It was lesser of an issue but I cut myself several times when doing multiple DS questions in a row.
Hope this helps!
Posted from my mobile device
Oh boy! Thank you for writing this post L0S3R
I gave my Mock-4 today, and yes, there is HUGE fluctuation. The second paragraph of your post ABSOLUTELY resonates with what I am going through right now!
For Quant, I use to make calculation mistakes. They are silly, but I call them 'NOT-silly but a HUGE mistake.' This was in Manhattan or TTP post 😅. Anyways, so I am applying bb 's trick of taking a 5 to 10-sec pause between questions. And it is way effective
For Verbal-CR, I am facing exactly the problem you mentioned. Can you share how you will take things forward for CR? I already did a lot of soul-searching, but I falter badly!
For Verbal-SC sometimes I get sub-600 level questions wrong. Now that is really, really bad but it's the time anxiety that makes me panic. Untimed, for sub-600 and 600-700 level questions, my accuracy is 90%, but during practice exams, under time pressure, things don't go as planned. Now that makes me doubt whether I have a knowledge gap or an application gap in my preparation? Thin line there!!
Anyways thank you for writing this post! Atta boy🙌
Let us know in your next post what solutions you have found.
-Romil
I gave my Mock-4 today, and yes, there is HUGE fluctuation. The second paragraph of your post ABSOLUTELY resonates with what I am going through right now!
For Quant, I use to make calculation mistakes. They are silly, but I call them 'NOT-silly but a HUGE mistake.' This was in Manhattan or TTP post 😅. Anyways, so I am applying bb 's trick of taking a 5 to 10-sec pause between questions. And it is way effective
For Verbal-CR, I am facing exactly the problem you mentioned. Can you share how you will take things forward for CR? I already did a lot of soul-searching, but I falter badly!
For Verbal-SC sometimes I get sub-600 level questions wrong. Now that is really, really bad but it's the time anxiety that makes me panic. Untimed, for sub-600 and 600-700 level questions, my accuracy is 90%, but during practice exams, under time pressure, things don't go as planned. Now that makes me doubt whether I have a knowledge gap or an application gap in my preparation? Thin line there!!
Anyways thank you for writing this post! Atta boy🙌
Let us know in your next post what solutions you have found.
-Romil
