Unusual situation in quants

Question

Hello GMATClub family, 
I am having a situation with the quants section which should not have ideally happened.

So quants is my strongest section and having already prepared for CAT in past, it has been a cake walk for me. When I started preparing for GMAT I was scoring consistently in the range of 87-90. But since some time my performance has dipped and now I'm scoring in the range of 82-85. Most mistakes are just silly errors and the more I try to practice now, more it seems to get bad. I don't understand what to do now. Should I just stop practicing quants and focus on other sections or is there something I am doing wrong?

gchandana · Answer

Hi PlacidSoyabean , When it comes to silly or careless errors, it is always helpful to have a process that you apply to every question. For example, start by reading the question, think of a solution path or your approach, then note down the information, box that quantity that needs to be answered, solve, then before marking the answer, do a sanity check for 10-15 secs, to verify your calculations and also to make sure you are marking the answer for the right term. You could have your own process, but having that 10-15 secs sanity check at the end could greatly help. Once you have a process of your own, start by applying it to each question strictly during your practice, and over time, it will become second nature to you. You could track your progress to check if it is working for you; if not, change it. Always do what works for you. And also, you could mix up your practice with other section questions, so that you don't get burned out solving only one section, or leave a section untouched for too long. P.S. When practicing, you might get questions wrong, which could lead to frustration. When it does, calm yourself before continuing the practice; without a calm mind, one will only make more mistakes. Hope this helps! All the best!

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

One way to reduce careless errors is to adopt the strategy of reading the question, deriving an answer, and then re-reading the question before submitting your response. This strategy can prove useful since, while solving the question, you identify the key components of the prompt, so when you re-read the question later, key information such as  x is an INTEGER  or  y is POSITIVE  will pop out at you if you neglected to consider that information in your solution.

For calculation errors, practice with an error log where you record and review your mistakes to identify patterns or frequent errors. This method not only helps in correcting repeated mistakes but also sharpens your attention to detail.

Also, check out these articles: 
 -  Improving Your Accuracy on the GMAT  
 -  GMAT Error Log: Do I Need One?

pintukr · Answer

Forum Quiz is a good resource to practice quat questions (topic wise). A topic-wise practice will help to find out the weak areas.

Edskore · Answer

This actually makes a lot of sense given how quant prep goes after a certain point. You hit a ceiling where raw practice stops helping, and mistakes don't come from lack of knowledge anymore.

What you're describing sounds less like a skill problem and more like an execution problem. You know the content -- the CAT prep made sure of that. But somewhere in the GMAT Focus environment, something is slipping: maybe rushing in the final 5-6 questions, maybe misreading the question stem, maybe solving for the wrong thing.

When I was prepping, I hit a similar wall around the 85th percentile. What actually fixed it wasn't more practice questions. It was spending a week doing slower, more deliberate review of my error log. Every wrong answer had a root cause -- and for me, most "silly errors" were actually the same two patterns: not re-reading what the question asked before marking the answer, and doing arithmetic without writing intermediate steps.

For GMAT Focus specifically, the Problem Solving section can punish careless reading hard. The questions are constructed so that if you solve almost the right thing, you'll see your "wrong" answer in the choices. So you feel confident and move on.

One concrete thing that helped me: after solving each quant question, I'd ask "did I answer the actual question, not just solve the math?" That one habit knocked out a surprising number of errors.

Don't stop practicing quants entirely, but maybe shift from high-volume practice to slower, annotated practice for a week or two. Quality over quantity at this stage.

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Unusual situation in quants

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