I faced a lot of struggles on Quant. I knew I had the ability to do well at quant because I had done well in the past (decent SAT/ AP scores). But I was super rusty and in some areas just had gaps. You want to be really fluid with it so that all your brainpower is focused on the tricky aspects of questions. You need to be able to breakdown numbers to their primes really quickly and to really have a super deep understanding of number properties. If you’re struggling with it I really recommend doing the
Target Test Prep course. Or some other course that requires you to do a lot of practice across levels. In the beginning I was missing “easy” questions a lot. The lower difficulty questions aren’t that low difficulty if you don’t know the content— what makes them easier is that they require less reasoning. A big motivator for me was proving to myself that I was not an idiot. I couldn’t except 50th percentile on quant, which was about what I started with.
I think a lot of people just don’t study enough and think they did. I think that is key for quant unless you have a strong background in it(e.g. went to the national university of Singapore or something like that). You need to hit 1500-2000 questions and really review all wrong answers and understand why you got them wrong. That’s a lot of hours and a lot of effort. I didn’t do it the first time and I did it the second, and that’s why my score went up.
For anxiety, I definitely had some. It helped for me that I took the test in the afternoon, which is a better time for me. Also utilize the official tests well. Those can be a huge confidence boost if used late in studying. If you can save them to close to the end. My last one I got a 760 so I knew I was in the ball park
Honestly if you do enough practice questions it just become so natural. The variations in questions stop surprising you as much. This helps get in the zone much better on the real test.
Before test
— do a light Workout
- do some easy questions to get warmed up (like 10-15). Not a lot, it’s a warm up.
-avoid carbs and sugary foods. These can spike blood pressure and throw you off.
- try and get pumped up for it somehow
- if you have a bad day you can always cancel the score and redo it. It’s not the end of the world. Don’t put so much pressure on yourself.
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