Beating silly mistakes in GRE Quant

[Opticflash]

Yesterday I took a Manhattan MST as prep. I got 9 out of 40 questions wrong in total for the Quant sections. At least 5-6 can be attributed to silly mistakes.

Here are some examples:

1. Did the following calculation (even whilst writing it down): 87 - 70 = 13 ... oops
2. In the graph question, I read the legends the wrong way so I got a question wrong.
3. One question could be simplified to 3 variables, N, H, and M. The question asked for N / M, found H / N .. oops. The phrasing of the question I believe caught me off guard.
4. One question asked for the equation of a perpendicular line. I accidentally read as parallel, so I chose the parallel one.

Other mistakes include reading "total white marbles in bags A and B" as "total marbles in bags A and B", "(Person) walks 5 miles from A to B in one hour" as "(Person) walked 5 miles per hour from A to B", etc. and sometimes realising that I had made calculation or reading comprehension errors eats up my time significantly.

I can't have this on test day as my Quant score will suffer tremendously if I continue to make such egregious mistakes during the test. The thing is I don't know how to overcome this. Has anyone faced the same issue? If so how did you improve? Are there any tips on how to prevent calculation or reading comprehension errors? How exactly should I lay out my working on the scratch paper? On the practise tests I write things down but if I write too much I become short on time, but if I write too little it leaves me susceptible to making careless errors. Any help is appreciated.

[GREMasterEMPOWERRichC]

Hi Opticflash,

The silliest mistakes that you will ever make on the GRE will occur when YOU choose to not take notes. Every time you decide to do work 'in your head', then you're opening yourself up to this type of error... so you should STOP doing work in your head. Every 'step' needs to be done 'on the pad.' The good news is that the work is usually pretty easy AND it's actually faster to do the work on the pad than do it in your head. Ultimately, this is an issue of 'precision', NOT intelligence. Don't let your pride get in the way of doing quality work. The GRE will always give you the score that you've EARNED, so make sure that you're doing the necessary work to earn those points. If you're running into a pacing issue, then it's likely because you keep rereading the prompt or staring at the screen, NOT because you're taking too many notes.

GRE Masters aren't born, they're made,

Rich

[ClassicalEducator]

5 hours ago, Opticflash said:

Yesterday I took a Manhattan MST as prep. I got 9 out of 40 questions wrong in total for the Quant sections. At least 5-6 can be attributed to silly mistakes.

Here are some examples:

1. Did the following calculation (even whilst writing it down): 87 - 70 = 13 ... oops
2. In the graph question, I read the legends the wrong way so I got a question wrong.
3. One question could be simplified to 3 variables, N, H, and M. The question asked for N / M, found H / N .. oops. The phrasing of the question I believe caught me off guard.
4. One question asked for the equation of a perpendicular line. I accidentally read as parallel, so I chose the parallel one.

Other mistakes include reading "total white marbles in bags A and B" as "total marbles in bags A and B", "(Person) walks 5 miles from A to B in one hour" as "(Person) walked 5 miles per hour from A to B", etc. and sometimes realising that I had made calculation or reading comprehension errors eats up my time significantly.

I can't have this on test day as my Quant score will suffer tremendously if I continue to make such egregious mistakes during the test. The thing is I don't know how to overcome this. Has anyone faced the same issue? If so how did you improve? Are there any tips on how to prevent calculation or reading comprehension errors? How exactly should I lay out my working on the scratch paper? On the practise tests I write things down but if I write too much I become short on time, but if I write too little it leaves me susceptible to making careless errors. Any help is appreciated.

Honestly I've just been practicing/doing homework (enrolled in a GRE prep class and have more resources than a GRE tutor) and my silly mistakes have decreased with practice, time and training. It's frustrating, annoying, draining, and insanely maddening but I find that with diligence and time things have been improving. I'm using/have used Manhattan Prep (all books and class), Magoosh, Kaplan and may slowly be going insane because of this stupid test. But my scores are increasing and I generally feel more confident - even when I make errors now (usually during homework) I have the fundamentals down so it isn't too scary. 

Good luck!