HAHA exactly. Those silly arithmetical mistakes have been my mortal nemesis since elementary school. I took pure math as my undergrad yet cannot do multiplications or divisions correctly and consistently
I guess I'm trying to take in more questions to reduce test anxiety and panic? I'm still panicking often during mock tests and those ruins my focus terribly, not to mention time management.
The worst kind is, I do all of my calculations on-paper. Learnt the hard way at some other exams not belief in my mental calculations. Yet still making 3x4=36
.
The only thing I can possibly think is to double and triple check my calculations, given I catch the mistake, which is EXTREMELY time consuming especially on a time-is-essential test like the GMAT.
Hi and welcome to GMAT Club.
So, what is the specific reason you’re trying to take more questions? Is it just to practice not making silly mistakes?
If that’s the case, I don’t think you can expect that one day you will just suddenly stop making them. 😂 I can tell you from experience, while experience helps, you need to think deeper and harder about how do you proactively not to make them. They will not go away by themselves. It Hass to be a focused effort. For example, I took a five second break between questions because I noticed that doing them so fast one after another would bleed certain information from one question to another. Sometimes I would make silliest calculation mistakes by multiplying numbers wrong or multiple times so I forced myself to do all calculations on paper. Similarly, I stopped and looked at the answers to evaluate if they made sense and if it was logical to assume that that would’ve been the answer. Basically, I put safeguards in place to try to catch and prevent calculation mistakes. You should do more active safeguards rather than passive.
I would also say that after you cover a certain number of questions, each incremental question delivers a reduced benefit. It is usually more beneficial to study a group of rules or a chapter within the book then taking some diverse questions. It is even more valuable to study chapter in the book or in the course and then followed up with targeted and focused topics.
PS. We have a ton of questions posted in GMAT Club. As you’re practicing more quantitative questions, those are easier to follow the guidelines and I would say most sources would be quite good for practice. Kaplan would be great. I have use their math workbook and it was very helpful.
Here are a few topics to help you get started with questions:
r_putra_rp wrote:
Hi all!
I will be having my first test attempt in roughly 3 weeks from this date and have been studying for roughly a year. Generally, I'm able to study for 1-3 hours on most weekdays and 6-7 hours on weekends (realistically incl goofing around on my phone
). My target score is >700. I have a background in software engineering.
I've worked through the
OG books TWICE (I own a copy of both the 2022 and 2020 editions) and took both of the free mock exams, scoring 680 and 740 respectively. I also had taken a GMAT prep class at a local university. Also took some of the mock tests from the old GMATPrep CAT app probably 6 times, with scores ranging from 660 to 730.
My last official practice test result was 740 with Q47 (57 percentile) and V46 (99 percentile). Granted, there were some repeated questions that I had seen in my earlier tests and in the books so the scores, especially verbal, may be biased. I personally think that I need to work a bit more on the quants since I am still prone to make small, silly mistakes esp on data sufficiency and mental arithmetics, ie I'm so used to using calculators I have trouble doing fast calculations in my head.
Now that I've pretty much exhausted all the basic materials, what would be the best course forward for the next weeks? I tried to re-run the OGs and practice exams this week but I'm seeing more and more repeated questions that they're getting more memorized. Are the other sources (eg Kaplan) worth studying in 3 weeks? Or Maybe I should purchase the Advanced Question Bank and the 3 & 4 exam sets?
Thank you!
close
03 May 2023, 20:56
, so I guess purchasing the 3 & 4 tests are my best way at the moment
