I love the question and definitely agree with Ceilidh and the Matrix analogy. If I can just tack on a few things:
1) Not all 48s and 51s are created equal - for some people it's about minimizing mistakes; for others it's about seeing a little deeper into the test; for others it's about a smarter pacing strategy. So some of that improvement is bound to be personal - why are YOU getting questions wrong?
One of the reasons I wanted to jump on this thread is that the difference is seldom "chase more math rules" but I think that's what a lot of people do. They're trying to remember those next couple triangle ratios past 7-24-25, or they're scrounging the forums for shortcut tricks when really they need to do some self-analysis and figure out what 2-3 things are holding you back.
2) Probably the biggest difference is that Matrix-level understanding of the test that Ceilidh mentioned. And my favorite application of that is what we call the
Shrumbuster, named after one of my colleagues (who posts here under Scott@VeritasPrep). The Shrumbuster setup is pretty classic;
**Step One: the question satisfies your intellect with something you see as "hard"
**Step Two: you've let your guard down because you think you've found "what makes it hard" and that's where the question sneaks one last trick past you.
**Point Three: that last trick is usually something that you'd never, never miss under moderate-question circumstances (you forgot to consider a negative value, you answered in the wrong units, etc.), but because that "beware of traps" part of your mind has already been satisfied, it won't catch the trick.
Now, this is just one application of where higher-scorers tend to have that expert vision into what's *really* going on in the question, but I think it's an important one in that it doesn't really signify "harder material" in the sense that we've come to know it from Honors and AP classes - it's just a deeper test of reasoning. (and for more on Shrumbusters, I encourage you to check out this blog post:
https://www.veritasprep.com/blog/2012/12 ... difficult/)
3) Higher scorers tend to be more careful.
This cuts a couple ways - like Ceilidh mentioned, higher scorers make fewer silly mistakes, often because they have a sixth sense about which types of setups leave them prone to mistakes. So some of that comes from just being more thorough with calculations and that kind of thing.
Careful also comes from having that "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me" mentality - careful test-takers typically have a checklist, either mental or physical written right on their noteboard, of those mistakes they've made a few times on practice tests and homework questions, and they're just safeguarded against making them ever again.
And careful comes from a good feeling about when to be careful. And here's what I mean about that - if you're a high-40s scorer and you get the answer C to a Data Sufficiency question within 20-30 seconds, you should know that there's a high likelihood that C is not the answer. At that point, you have to know what to check for - are you making an assumption that you can't? Could you have gotten more value out of one of the statements? This article can shed a little more light on that:
https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2010/12/ ... knight-way
So...there are quite a few things that differentiate 48s from 51s, but hopefully these posts here are helpful in pointing you in the right direction to close that gap!
