Need an advice of an expert ... GMAT exam in 10 days.

Thanks a lot Rich for your help . I did a thorough review of my CAT. And following are the responses of your questions:

ANSWER TO QUESTION 1

Quant (Total: 16 incorrect q48 (78 percentile)):

It's very sad for me to convey this but, I made atleast 7 TRAGIC MISTAKES (SILLY ONES) in quant such as:
1.) reading the number 6 integer 1/8 as 6/8.
2.) reading the number 225 instead of 255.
3.) if 1st number is x with constant difference of 4, then writing the 10th term as "x + 40" instead of "x + 36"
4.) doing a simple percentage based question wrong (Formula application and logic application correct, did mistake in arithmetic calculation )
5.) Didnt noticed a sensitive word "EACH".
6.) interpreting 40% discount on Selling price as 0.4*SP instead of 0.6*SP
7.) not considering that if u add 4 in an integer with non zero units digit, then its tens digit may change or may not change.


In all of the above questions, my approach, logic and formula application were correct. But i have no idea what should i do to avoid mistakes such as these that i made
Also, I was super nervous because the last GMAT PREP CAT #4 (Q 47, V 31) that i gave was about 3 months ago.

During these 3 months my MAJOR focus was on verbal, while also doing MATH in between. But for the last 4 CATS, I never made mistakes such as these ones.

Verbal ( Total: 16 incorrect, v35 74 ppercentile Last 9 out of 11 questions incorrect)

I had significantly improved on verbal compared to my last official Cat.

But as I was approaching the end of test, I was getting more and more nervous. I was doing okay till question #32. I had about 12 mins and some seconds when I was attempting #32. So I had this strategy of attempting alternate questions. But on #33, a short but a very hard RC Passage came by. And I wasted a good amount of time on it, getting all 3 incorrect since I was not able to think and therefore, guessed.

Then after 1 CR question, another RC passage came ! I was completely horrified, but then I thought the only way to handle this is to give a cursory reading and attempt, I just gave a quick reading to it and got 2 of them correct. But then I had about 100 seconds to attempt 3 questions.

I prayed that atleast 1 SC question should come and the last one was SC. But made A TRAGIC SUBJECT VERB Mistake in anxiety and time pressure and chose the wrong option.

in the End, I scored v42 on SC, and still I made a that stupid subject verb mistake in the End.

ANSWER TO QUESTION 2 and QUESTION 3

In Quant, there was no such question in which I thought that I forgot any concept, or formula. However, I did wasted a good little time by trying to solve a question in which I knew I did some arithmetic mistake but is a simple question.

In verbal, I was able to hande Sentence correction questions. There was this 1 question which I got incorect (Total 3 SC Q's incorrect, 1 this and the other 2 guessed). But I did wasted a few minutes on 1 extremly hard CR question in the beginning due to which I had to guess in between couple of medlium level quesitons in between that I could have gotten correct if attempted.

Also, During the End of verbal, I also got so much nervous that I was literally listening my "heart beat" . Looking at 2 RC passages in last 10 questions made it worse.

Thanks a lot for this Chelsey !

I have always done timed practice since the beginning of my preparation. But this time in quant, my main time killer were quesitons that involved arithmetic part. in about 3 questions, I knew my approach is correct, but made some tragic mistakes in calculations such that even my answer was not there among the given five choices. Letting go a medium level question which I know how to do but did wrong in calculation made it tough for me to let it go, eventually making me lose time in the End

Maybe my calculation skills got affected because of my verbal focused approach that I took for the past 3 months , the best that I could do for now is to do questions from Official source and hope that I do less such Tragic mistakes .

I have already incorporated your scratch pad technique and would make sure that i stick to it on the D day.

Anyways thanks a lot for your feedback
Devansh

Hi Devansh,

Your analysis of this CAT gives us exactly what we need to know - little mistakes kept you from scoring higher. The 'line' between a 680 and a 700 is remarkably thin, but you cannot absorb that many little mistakes and still hit your goal score. Considering the high number of little mistakes that you admit to, I would have to assume that one of your big 'issues' is that you just don't take enough notes. The process of note-taking is actually remarkably simple - and it should help you to speed up and answer more questions correctly in BOTH the Quant and Verbal sections. Thus, you should stop doing work 'in your head' and demand a higher level of precision from yourself (which requires 'documenting' your work).

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich

I think that your assumption is spot-on correct ! (Especially for the quant section). I might have avoided more than half of the mistakes that I made on quant if I had made a further effort of jotting them on paper.

I'd definitely keep this in my mind and would make sure that I dont do such mistakes on the real thing. Would let you know how it goes

Again, thanks a lot for your valuable feedback.
Devansh.