Reply To: Fluctuating Scores

July 20, 2018 at 6:30 pm #136206
Mike Kim
Keymaster

Hi Romina,

Sorry for the slight delay and wish you the best on Monday —

Not quite sure if there is a lot to be done about score fluctuations right before the exam, but here are some suggestions for ways to strengthen the odds that you score toward the top of that scale —

1) Do whatever you can to put yourself in an aggressive mindset, and try to get off to a quick strong start in each section. Especially if you feel a lot of nerves, I think that trying to channel that into excitement (as opposed to trying to calm yourself down) tends to work better (generally) for this type of exam/situation.

2) Don’t let the hardest problems drag down your score.

For most students in your score range, this will likely be the biggest determinant of overall success — be very careful about overinvesting time in the hardest q’s, games, passages — and don’t let them distract you from getting right all those q’s that you can and should get right with the proper focus and attention.

3) Invest time as necessary to confirm answers.

Aggressive doesn’t mean rushed — especially with slightly more difficult LR q’s and RC q’s, giving yourself that few seconds extra to confirm is almost always worth it.

4) When you feel lost, get literal.

Especially with LR and RC, try to focus down on exactly the text in the answers, the text in the passage, and the text in the question, and try to be as literal as possible.

Those are the tips that come to mind for now — you know yourself best, so please feel free to utilize or ignore as you see fit — and again, good luck on Monday!

— Mike