Hi Cinji,
I couldn't resist checking this one after reading the subject line - the answer is "nothing"! The GMAT is designed to get you to make mistakes that you shouldn't. They know that you're under pressure when it comes to the test - the pacing, the fact that each question is scored, the rapid succession of new questions, the duration of the entire test...they all add up to put you under enough stress and pressure that you'll make mistakes that you otherwise wouldn't. To a pretty large extent, that's the purpose of the test: as a manager with an MBA, you'll be called upon to frequently make good, logical decisions with some pressure on you. To combat this:
1) Know your likely mistakes before you make them. Like Jas said, it's better to make them now, in practice, because you can take note of them and be on the lookout for them on test day.
2) Get used to and overcome the pressure. If you've practiced pacing to the point where it's not an issue, the clock management component becomes much less of a factor. If you know which mistakes you're prone to making, you can trust your internal filter to help you catch them, and not worry about little things as much. And if you go in to the test knowing that it's designed to make you feel stress, you can also realize that, as I told myself repeatedly on test day, "if the questions themselves were so hard, they wouldn't need to rely on artificial stress to keep my score down".
3) Pay attention to the questions that are taking you longer than you'd like, and search your work on those to see if you can get faster (you'll probably find that it's taking you too long to find certain relationships, or that you're missing opportunities to cut down on the amount of work you're doing). More time means more confidence - it's more time to check your work to avoid mistakes, there's less pressure on you to work quickly (and therefore you'll make fewer mistakes in the first place), etc.
The fact that you're finding yourself held back by mistakes on things you should be getting right is a great thing - if you can position yourself to clean up those little mistakes, you're there!
Brian Galvin
GMAT Instructor
Chief Academic Officer
Veritas Prep
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