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II
- Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts
- Posts: 400
- Joined: Mon Dec 10, 2007 1:35 pm
- Location: London, UK
- Thanked: 19 times
- GMAT Score:680
I have been seeing a common pattern to my mistakes on practice tests and practice OG questions: Making simple careless mistakes !
Making simple careless mistakes is what is letting me down at the moment. I believe I have a fairly good grasp of all the concepts in Quant ... but in practice tests or when I am doing practice questions in timed mode ... the questions I get wrong tend to be due to careless mistakes on some of the simpler problems !
Consider an example:
OG Quant DS question 31 (this is a very simple question). I correctly identify that I need to find the amount of work (capacity of pool) and the filling rate in order to find out how long it will take to fill the pool. Time = Work/Rate.
(1) provides me with the rate, but not the capacity. So INSUFF.
(2) provides me with the length and width of the pool. In my working I incorrectly assumed that this provides enough info for calculating capacity from the length and width, but still it didnt provide rate info. so insuff.
(1) and (2) together: I incorrectly assumed that I have the rate from (1) and the capacity from (2). Note: (2) Doesnt provide the depth which is required to find the true capacity of the pool ! So I guess I fell into the trap set by the GMAT here. I chose C, where as answer was E here.
What concerns me is that I understand the Quant concepts, and was going about answering the question in the right way ... I messed up with statement 2, thinking that I had enough info to calculate the capacity.
I suppose one way to go about this is to actually write things down on the scrap paper.
For example at the start of the Question write down Capacity = length*width*depth. So when I come to statement (2), I clearly know what I need to calculate the capacity, and can easily see (2) doesnt provide sufficient info to calculate this.
The GMAT test is designed to pick out holes in your knowledge ... so if you are making simple careless mistakes on 500-600 level type questions, then you see zero or very few 600+ level questions limiting your ability to score in the 600+ range.
Would appreciate some feedback on how others are dealing with eradicating silly careless mistakes such as these.
Thanks in advance for your input.
II
Making simple careless mistakes is what is letting me down at the moment. I believe I have a fairly good grasp of all the concepts in Quant ... but in practice tests or when I am doing practice questions in timed mode ... the questions I get wrong tend to be due to careless mistakes on some of the simpler problems !
Consider an example:
OG Quant DS question 31 (this is a very simple question). I correctly identify that I need to find the amount of work (capacity of pool) and the filling rate in order to find out how long it will take to fill the pool. Time = Work/Rate.
(1) provides me with the rate, but not the capacity. So INSUFF.
(2) provides me with the length and width of the pool. In my working I incorrectly assumed that this provides enough info for calculating capacity from the length and width, but still it didnt provide rate info. so insuff.
(1) and (2) together: I incorrectly assumed that I have the rate from (1) and the capacity from (2). Note: (2) Doesnt provide the depth which is required to find the true capacity of the pool ! So I guess I fell into the trap set by the GMAT here. I chose C, where as answer was E here.
What concerns me is that I understand the Quant concepts, and was going about answering the question in the right way ... I messed up with statement 2, thinking that I had enough info to calculate the capacity.
I suppose one way to go about this is to actually write things down on the scrap paper.
For example at the start of the Question write down Capacity = length*width*depth. So when I come to statement (2), I clearly know what I need to calculate the capacity, and can easily see (2) doesnt provide sufficient info to calculate this.
The GMAT test is designed to pick out holes in your knowledge ... so if you are making simple careless mistakes on 500-600 level type questions, then you see zero or very few 600+ level questions limiting your ability to score in the 600+ range.
Would appreciate some feedback on how others are dealing with eradicating silly careless mistakes such as these.
Thanks in advance for your input.
II
