When going over my practice exams...

[justhanging]

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When am going over my practice exams in the PS. I can usually answer 80% of the questions I get wrong either instantly or with a little bit of thought without looking at the explanation. So when I see that I have a question wrong, I instantly know why I got it wrong (usually a dumb mistake) or with a couple of seconds of thought I can see the right answer, all without looking at the explanation. Sometimes I go thorough almost the entire PS section without looking at the explanations just cause I can see my mistakes or the right way to do it.

I feel like I make alot of dumb mistakes, and calculation errors. Also I feel like their are alot of questions where I don't make the necessary connection but then when am going over the exam and I feel less stress I guess, I see the connection fairly quickly without going through the explanation.

What can I do to fix this? I feel like I know the concepts well but I just can't use what I know.

 

[feipar]

you just gotta be anal about not making silly mistakes. generally this consists of reading and rereading the question stem to make sure you interpret it correctly. Find the answer, then choose it, then read it over to make sure it makes sense, then keep it lingering in your mind when scrolling down, then come back to it if you are unsure at the end.

test taking skills.

 

[ModusProbandi]

I've made the same mistakes, but usually I'm doing the questions with music blasting in my headphones and looking outside the large library windows every 2 minutes.

 

[NickNaylor]

When am going over my practice exams in the PS. I can usually answer 80% of the questions I get wrong either instantly or with a little bit of thought without looking at the explanation. So when I see that I have a question wrong, I instantly know why I got it wrong (usually a dumb mistake) or with a couple of seconds of thought I can see the right answer, all without looking at the explanation. Sometimes I go thorough almost the entire PS section without looking at the explanations just cause I can see my mistakes or the right way to do it.

I feel like I make alot of dumb mistakes, and calculation errors. Also I feel like their are alot of questions where I don't make the necessary connection but then when am going over the exam and I feel less stress I guess, I see the connection fairly quickly without going through the explanation.

What can I do to fix this? I feel like I know the concepts well but I just can't use what I know.

I had this exact problem during my studying with the PS and BS sections. The only thing I can recommend is to slow down and be sure to double (if not triple) check your answers. I was usually able to finish fast enough so that I could essentially work the test twice. I reworked every question and reread every passage. That seemed to help quite a bit, but I still had careless mistakes regardless.

It's a mental thing that you've just gotta work through.