Improving Your Accuracy on the GMAT

During the years I have spent tutoring people for the GMAT, I have encountered many who are well-versed in GMAT concepts and have fairly strong GMAT-related skills. Yet, despite their knowledge and skills, they continue to answer an inordinately high percentage of GMAT questions incorrectly because they struggle with GMAT accuracy. This article will focus on techniques and tips for improving your accuracy on the GMAT.

When students ask how to improve accuracy on the GMAT, I ask for the work they have done on 50 GMAT practice questions. An analysis of such a student’s errors often reveals that the student either made a silly mistake or created a quagmire of disorganized calculations that led to an incorrect answer. In other words, these incorrect answers came from careless errors, a major problem for some test-takers.

In my eyes, careless errors are the worst mistakes a GMAT test-taker can make. Simply, it’s a shame not to get credit for a GMAT question that you know how to answer correctly. Careless mistakes can be maddening because these students know that they are capable of earning a high GMAT score: they are motivated, knowledgeable, and skilled. However, their GMAT scores don’t reflect their abilities, at least in part, because of the careless mistakes they make.

Fortunately, careless mistakes are avoidable and can be drastically reduced or even eliminated with focus, proper strategy, and practice. In this article, I’ll review common reasons people commit careless mistakes on the GMAT and outline steps that you can take to increase your GMAT accuracy.

Here are the topics we’ll cover:

• Slow Down and Work More Carefully
• Log Your Mistakes and Work to Reduce Them
• Compartmentalize and Focus
• Achieve a Fuller Understanding of the Material
• Address Your Psychology
• Throw Away All Fear of Failure
• Develop a Correct Answer-Focused Mindset
• Temporarily Reduce Your Workload
• Read More Carefully
• Improve the Neatness and Organization of Your Work
• Strengthen Your Pen-and-Paper Calculation Skills
• Consider Doing Less Math in Your Head
• Be More Cognizant of Unit Changes
• Be Aware of “Except” Problems
• Make Sure You Are Answering the Right Question
• Pay Attention to Restrictive Information
• Use Your Mind Instead of Technology
• The Bottom Line
• Key Takeaways
• What’s Next?

Let’s begin by discussing the importance of working slowly and carefully.

Slow Down and Work More Carefully

Time is a luxury that most GMAT test-takers don’t have. Between handling a demanding job, working on applications, volunteering, and spending time with family, your week disappears in a flash.

Unfortunately, these constraints can cause people to rush through their GMAT preparation. This rushing results in careless mistakes. When you try to calculate more quickly than your mind can process, you will undoubtedly make mistakes. And of course, how you perform on the GMAT reflects how you prepared for the exam.

To greatly reduce careless errors, go slowly. Take your time. Focus. It makes little sense to spend an hour rushing through 20 problems only to get 10 of them wrong. Instead, work at the fastest pace you can while approaching the problems methodically. Focus carefully on each problem. Remember, the goal is to learn how to reach correct answers, not to race through a bunch of problems. Slowing down and working more carefully is one of the most powerful ways to improve your accuracy on the GMAT.

You’ll have ample time later on in your prep to work on GMAT time management. To master GMAT content and develop high accuracy, you must work slowly and carefully.

TTP PRO TIP:

When answering practice questions, slow down and focus on understanding how to find correct answers.

Next, let’s discuss why you should track the mistakes you make on practice questions.

Log Your Mistakes and Work to Reduce Them

Many people preparing for the GMAT find that creating an error log helps them see more clearly what they need to do to improve their accuracy. If you decide to use such a log, track each time you make a certain type of mistake. The goal is to become fully aware of your common mistakes, and most importantly, avoid them in the future.

The best way to prevent careless mistakes is to catch yourself before you make them. If you are aware that you tend to make a certain type of error, you can learn to recognize when you are at risk and be extra careful at those times. For example, if you consistently make careless mistakes on “except” problems, be aware of that fact. The word “except” should set off alarms to be extra careful.

Overall, one of the most powerful things you can do to reduce the likelihood of careless errors is to become aware of the types you tend to make. Once you are aware of your patterns, you can:

• Take action to address the mistakes you tend to make
• Alert yourself before you make a certain type of mistake
• Even catch yourself in the act, averting a mistake before it has a chance to affect your score

By working to reduce your common mistakes, you’ll achieve higher accuracy on test day.

TTP PRO TIP:

As you practice, identify your common mistakes so you can work to prevent them on future questions.

Let’s now talk about the importance of focusing on each step of answering a GMAT question.

Compartmentalize and Focus

It’s imperative that you be alert and focused when attempting to answer a GMAT question. Two issues can negatively impact accuracy.

The first issue is distraction. Sometimes, a person’s mind is clearly someplace other than on the GMAT question in front of her. Perhaps she had a bad day at work, or a big presentation is on the horizon. Perhaps she is worried that she didn’t answer the previous question correctly.

Avoiding these distractions requires developing the skill of compartmentalization. In simple terms, to compartmentalize is simply to stop yourself from thinking about anything except the present moment. Compartmentalization allows you to fully focus on the task at hand. When you allow full immersion in whatever you are doing at that moment, your accuracy will increase.

The second issue is the lack of focus. A person may be focused intently on the GMAT question in front of him. However, his pen is not in sync with his mind. For example, he may be writing a line of a solution while his mind is already visualizing the next step. It would be great to always be three steps ahead, but doing that is just not practical for most people. It’s difficult to be accurate if the pen and mind are out of sync.

To fix this problem, focus intensely on your current step. In fact, you should watch carefully as you write. Focus on each letter, number, and variable. Extreme focus allows you to catch simple score-eroding errors. If you’re thinking 1-2 steps ahead, you can easily make mistakes on the task at hand. Keep your pen, eyes, and brain in sync.

TTP PRO TIP:

When answering a GMAT question, avoid distractions and focus on each step you take.

Achieve a Fuller Understanding of the Material

The better you understand the material tested on the GMAT, the more accurate you’ll become. Deep knowledge is a powerful driver of accuracy.

Let’s say you are answering a probability question involving a team that does the same type of job every day. To start, you determined that the probability of completing a job on time on any day is 25/52. In the final step, you must determine the probability of the team finishing on time three days in a row. However, you start to multiply by 52/25, rather than correctly multiplying by 25/52, for a final answer of 25/52.

Here’s the thing: if you truly understand probability, before even starting to make that final calculation, you would understand that if the probability of finishing on time on any day is 25/52, the probability of finishing on time three days in a row must be less than 25/52. So, it’s unlikely that you would make the mistake of choosing 25/52 as your answer.

The point is that the more you understand why you are taking each step in answering a GMAT question, the more likely you are to do it correctly. So, to reduce the probability of careless errors and increase your accuracy, seek to go beyond merely learning formulas and strategies to understanding what underlies them. Make fully understanding the conceptual basis and other aspects of what you do to find correct answers a key part of your GMAT preparation.

TTP PRO TIP:

The more thoroughly you understand the material, the more likely you are to find correct answers.

Let’s now address a key psychological factor that can affect your GMAT accuracy.

Address Your Psychology

Psychological factors can affect your performance on the GMAT in various ways. One key psychological factor to consider is your level of self-confidence. Can someone’s level of self-confidence lead to careless errors? You bet it can. Here’s how.

Getting a correct answer to a GMAT question requires paying attention, organizing your work, and putting care into what you do. If a person is not confident that he can hit his GMAT score goal, on some level that person may not feel like putting in the energy necessary for getting correct answers. So, perhaps without being aware, a person with that mindset may not give his GMAT-related work his best effort. As a result, he may consistently make little mistakes.

If that description fits you in any way, understand that you can achieve anything you want to achieve and that skills you don’t currently have are skills that you can develop. It also helps to realize that people who seem to effortlessly score high on the GMAT have likely worked diligently to develop their skills.

If necessary, deploy a “fake it ‘til you make it” strategy. Even if you are not confident about your current abilities, tell yourself that you’re going to master GMAT material and earn an awesome score. Tell yourself that you can’t lose: you have the GMAT’s number and you’re going to dominate on test day. Positive self-talk has been shown to help people perform better in all areas of life. Imagine what you could do—would do—if you believed that you could not lose.

TTP PRO TIP:

Work to develop your self-confidence: believe that you can earn an awesome GMAT score!

Next, let’s examine another psychological factor that can harm your accuracy.

Throw Away All Fear of Failure

Another psychology-related reason for careless errors is fear of failure. When a person is terrified of disappointment, many things that person does can be colored by that fear.

For instance, sometimes test-takers are so afraid of not hitting their goals that they actually sabotage their own progress. One way in which this kind of self-fulfilling prophecy can manifest is via careless errors.

In other words, if you were afraid of not hitting your score goal, you might take comfort in making careless errors. As long as you were making careless errors, you could use them as an excuse for not reaching your goal. So, perhaps part of the reason you allow yourself to make careless errors is to protect yourself from disappointment.

One cause of fear of disappointment is tying one’s self-image or sense of self-worth to one’s GMAT score. When people do this, the importance of a GMAT score becomes huge in their minds. It’s not surprising that people putting that kind of pressure on themselves might make careless errors to avoid disappointment.

Here’s the thing: all a GMAT score represents is a person’s skill level at a point in time. If you adopt that outlook, then self-doubt and concerns about self-image become irrelevant. What matters is pulling as many levers as possible to drive your score as high as possible. One of those levers is getting into the habit of being careful rather than careless in how you answer questions.

Check out this article for more tips on how to conquer your fears and GMAT test anxiety.

TTP PRO TIP:

Don’t let fear of failure prevent you from reaching your GMAT goals.

Let’s now discuss a mindset that will help you achieve greater GMAT accuracy.

Develop a Correct Answer-Focused Mindset

Many tests give you partial credit for showing that you at least know how to get a correct answer. In some cases, you don’t get credit unless you show the work you did.

Conversely, the GMAT only cares about correct answers. When preparing for the GMAT, you may have to develop a correct answer-focused mentality. Naturally, becoming more focused on getting correct answers will result in increased accuracy.

One way to hone that focus is to practice by doing questions slowly, taking as much time as necessary to answer correctly. You can be somewhat relaxed about the time per question, and you can be flexible in choosing approaches. Your focus is simply to find the correct answer.

Two metrics to keep in mind are hit rate and streak length. Both metrics are powerful tools for improving GMAT accuracy (as well as your number of questions correct).

Your hit rate is the percentage of questions you answer correctly. Keeping your hit rate in mind will keep your eye on the prize: the correct answers necessary to reach your score goal. Seek to drive your hit rate as high as possible.

Even more motivating than hit rate can be streak length. By focusing on getting correct answers in ever-longer streaks, you show that you have mastered the concepts tested in those questions. You will also be motivating yourself to consistently get correct answers to questions that you know how to answer. When you shoot for longer streaks, a careless error goes from being merely unfortunate to breaking your streak!

TTP PRO TIP:

Become focused on finding the correct answer by any means necessary.

Many people preparing for the GMAT think that simply answering more questions will improve their accuracy. Let’s discuss why that is not always the best approach.

Temporarily Reduce Your Workload

Decreased accuracy can result from a lack of sleep or an overworked mind. To illustrate, how accurate can you be after getting 4 hours of sleep, running 5 miles, and working 10 hours? (For help creating a GMAT study plan that fits your schedule, check out this article about studying for the GMAT while working full-time.)

If you’re overworked when study time comes around, consider changing your GMAT study schedule, even if only temporarily. Some of my busiest students have found success in getting up early to study for 2 hours each weekday morning before work. By taking this step, they made focused GMAT prep a priority. Of course, an added benefit is that this early studying can force an earlier bedtime.

The research on the importance of restful sleep is overwhelming and cannot be overstated. If you’re too tired to consistently find your way to correct answers, consider getting more sleep. Not only is adequate sleep instrumental in maintaining good health, but it’s also vital for learning. If you can’t seem to get enough sleep, you may need to reprioritize your time.

Also, use your weekend time to do some serious studying. Get up on Saturday, go for a run or do some yoga, and eat a healthy breakfast. Then, spend 3 or 4 hours hitting your GMAT study materials when you are fresh. Of course, in the days before your actual GMAT, make getting sufficient sleep a top priority, curtailing activities if necessary.

TTP PRO TIP:

Adjust your workload when needed so that you can give your GMAT prep your best effort.

Next, let’s discuss the importance of reading carefully.

Read More Carefully

Strong reading skills will help you significantly in every section of the GMAT. Strive to read everything carefully and methodically. Focus when you read. Make sure that you understand the main point of each sentence and the key concepts in each problem. It’s not unusual to reread GMAT questions. If you don’t fully understand what you have just read, read it again. Your goal is to become a careful, active, and engaged reader.

Visualization can help you read more carefully. When you read, imagine that what you are reading is unfolding as if you were watching a movie. Picture what you read. Visualization will help you better assimilate and connect information.

Also, remember that to read more carefully, you may need to slow down. It’s hard for most people to read quickly and carefully at the same time.

TTP PRO TIP:

Avoid careless comprehension mistakes by becoming a careful, active, and engaged reader.

Another way to improve your accuracy is to improve the neatness and organization of your work. Let’s discuss.

Improve the Neatness and Organization of Your Work

It’s easy to make mistakes when your writing is illegible. For example, if your numeral 2 has a funny habit of morphing into the letter Z, you’re likely to make mistakes.

To avoid these mistakes, write carefully. This is not a small point. Fuzzy writing is a product of fuzzy thinking. It can also be a product of anxiety, lack of interest, hastily solving a problem, or wanting to be elsewhere. Don’t hide behind a veil of messy, disorganized writing. Fix your writing. Tell yourself that you are going to solve the problem at hand in a neat, orderly, clear manner. Be confident that your writing can serve as an asset to your GMAT performance. Let your penmanship serve as a barometer of your knowledge, confidence, and abilities.

In addition to writing neatly, it’s important to organize your work thoughtfully. Don’t just spray your work all over your paper. A disorganized workflow is a clear sign of a disorganized mind and brain. Instead, get in the habit of using well-defined regions for each question and making the steps you take clear. The better organized your work is, the more likely you are to find the correct answer.

TTP PRO TIP:

Solve practice questions in a neat, orderly, clear manner.

Next, let’s examine a way to improve your Quant accuracy: getting better at calculating by hand.

Strengthen Your Pen-and-Paper Calculation Skills

Many people taking the GMAT are far removed from the days when they solved problems with a pen and paper. Countless times, I’ve seen students elegantly power through a tough GMAT Quant problem, only to make a basic calculation error. People who are rusty with a pen and paper predictably make calculation mistakes when dividing a fraction by a fraction, subtracting a negative number, and taking the square root of a number, to name just a few scenarios.

You must spend time perfecting the art of solving problems with a pen and paper. It’s a shame to get through the tough logical component of a question just to make a calculation mistake. The more you hone your ability to solve problems by hand, the less frequently you’ll make careless mistakes.

TTP PRO TIP:

Improve your ability to do math by hand.

As you get more comfortable doing math by hand, you may want to do less mental math. Let’s discuss why.

Consider Doing Less Math in Your Head

Performing mental math can be a path to making a mistake. So, in some instances, calculating in your head may be a bad move. By working on paper, you may more easily keep track of what you are doing to find an answer. Of course, much of what is integral to getting the correct answer will still be going on in your mind. So, practicing using your mind is also important for improving your accuracy.

TTP PRO TIP:

If mental math gives you trouble, do more math on paper.

Next, let’s discuss a common reason for answering Quant questions incorrectly: unit changes.

Be More Cognizant of Unit Changes

Many GMAT Quant problems contain unit conversions. For example, a rate may be presented in miles per hour, but the answers may be in miles per minute. So, it’s easy to choose an answer that looks correct but is based on the wrong units.

As a result, you missed a question that you knew how to solve. It would be wise to expect problems to contain changes in units. If you’re looking out for these changes, you’ll be less likely to miss them.

TTP PRO TIP:

Pay attention to the units presented in a Quant problem.

Let’s now discuss the wording of questions that can trick you into looking for an incorrect answer.

Be Aware of “Except” Problems

Some GMAT Quant and Verbal questions present information in a familiar way but include the word “except” at the end. For example, a Critical Reasoning question might ask:

All of the following, if true, would weaken the argument, EXCEPT:

In such a question, the correct answer is the one that does not weaken the argument. If you miss the “except,” you are likely to incorrectly select an answer that weakens the argument.

Similarly, a Quant question might ask:

n is divisible by all of the following, EXCEPT:

Once again, if you miss the “except,” you may end up selecting an answer that evenly divides into n. To answer this question correctly, you must find the one choice that does not evenly divide into n.

Pay close attention to the specific language given in the question. It stinks to do all of the work properly, only to forget that the question was asking for “all of the following, except…”

TTP PRO TIP:

Be careful when you see “except” in the wording of a question.

Of course, GMAT writers have other tricks up their sleeves to get you to answer the wrong question. Let’s discuss.

Make Sure You Are Answering the Right Question

Many GMAT Quant and Data Insights questions will provide you with the opportunity to find an answer to the wrong question. For example, imagine a complicated word problem involving two Shiba Inus, Blaze and Molly. You carefully and elegantly solve for Molly’s age, which happens to be an answer choice. However, the question is actually asking for Blaze’s age, so you do not receive credit for the work you did.

Don’t think you’d ever do this? Answering the wrong question occurs more often than you may think, especially when the question involves multiple unknown values. Fortunately, there is an easy way to avoid this issue. After you’ve solved a question, confirm that you’re answering the question being asked.

TTP PRO TIP:

Double-check that the question being asked is the one you’re answering.

Next, let’s discuss other wording issues to pay attention to when reading a question.

Pay Attention to Restrictive Information

Quite often, particularly in Data Sufficiency questions, restrictive information is provided in the stem. For example, we may be told that “k is an integer” or that “0 < m < 1.” Pay close attention to such information: it is very likely to be important in finding the correct answer. In the heat of solving a problem, it’s easy to forget about a small but crucial piece of information that will change the outcome. Sometimes, writing this information down can help it stick in your mind.

TTP PRO TIP:

Account for any restrictive information given in the question.

Use Your Mind Instead of Technology

Most of you readers are in your 20s or 30s. Many in this age group, myself included, have become overly reliant on technology. The good news is that if this reliance has been a culprit in your diminishing cognitive skills, the solution is simple. Stop using technology for everyday problems that could be solved in your head!

At a restaurant, don’t use your smartphone to calculate the tip. Learn how to do this fifth-grade math, or at least use simple estimation. At a shop, mentally calculate a 20 percent discount. You’ll be amazed at how easy these calculations become with practice.

When you’re cooking a meal, don’t use the internet to calculate one-half of three-fourths of a cup. Learn to do these things in your head.

Stop relying on search engines as your proxy memory. Instead, memorize key facts such as the slope-intercept equation and the exponential growth formula.

When someone gives you a telephone number, try remembering it. Later, transfer the number to your contacts. With practice, you can easily remember a 10-digit number.

Know your multiplication tables! If necessary, buy and review a pack of flashcards. Once you can run through the deck effortlessly, with 100% accuracy, go over it again.

Of course, you should never use a calculator to answer GMAT Quant questions. You won’t have one on test day, so don’t use one during practice sessions or GMAT practice tests. Force yourself to learn to calculate accurately by hand.

Train yourself each day to become better at the simple stuff. The more you rely on yourself, the more accurate and efficient you’ll become.

TTP PRO TIP:

Find ways to do more mental problem-solving in your daily life.

Let’s wrap up by examining how much of a difference improved accuracy can make in your GMAT score.

The Bottom Line

In many cases, people miss 2+ questions in each section of the GMAT by making silly little mistakes. Because of the way the GMAT scoring system works, 6+ more correct answers could increase your GMAT total score by 30-50 more points. In other words, your degree of accuracy can have a huge effect on your GMAT performance.

Don’t let careless errors hold you back from hitting your GMAT score goal. Implement some of these simple GMAT prep tips, and watch your accuracy and your score increase!

Key Takeaways

• When answering practice questions, slow down and focus on understanding how to find correct answers.
• As you practice, identify your common mistakes so you can work to prevent them on future questions.
• When answering a GMAT question, avoid distractions and focus on each step you take.
• The more thoroughly you understand the material, the more likely you are to find correct answers.
• Work to develop your self-confidence: believe that you can earn an awesome GMAT score!
• Don’t let fear of failure prevent you from reaching your GMAT goals.
• Become focused on finding the correct answer by any means necessary.
• Adjust your workload when needed so that you can give your GMAT prep your best effort.
• Avoid careless comprehension mistakes by becoming a careful, active, and engaged reader.
• Solve practice questions in a neat, orderly, and clear manner.
• Improve your ability to do math by hand.
• If mental math gives you trouble, do more math on paper.
• Pay attention to the units presented in a Quant problem.
• Be careful when you see “except” in the wording of a question.
• Double-check that the question being asked is the one you’re answering.
• Account for any restrictive information given in the question.
• Find ways to do more mental problem-solving in your daily life.

What’s Next?

For some additional ways to maximize your accuracy on the GMAT, check out these 25 GMAT test day tips.

Looking for information about how to improve accuracy in GMAT Verbal? Check out these 10 steps to reach your Verbal score goal.

Looking for expert GMAT tutoring? Sign up for a free consultation to learn how working with a TTP tutor can help you reach your GMAT goals.

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