<p>How long do you spend on each question? Even if it's an easy question, you can feel your mind saying, "I'm pretty sure I got it right, there's no way my logic is wrong, let's go to the next one." Even if you know how to get each question right, there's a good chance that there are 2-5 you got wrong because of careless mistakes. It really hurts when they're on easy questions as well. Are you very very cautious on easy questions, or do you start becoming careful starting on medium questions?</p>
<p>ha for me its the opposite. I try to get past the easy questions as quickly as possible but my mind keeps saying "WAIT, check it again and again, ure gonna mess up watch" .. .. errr i wish i could move through them quickly >_<</p>
<p>I try to do them all as fast as possible. If there is leftover time, I can go back to those that seemed fishy and redo them to make sure I was good.</p>
<p>lol yeah i think i got everything right but i always get a few wrong because of careless mistakes</p>
<p>That's the funny thing though that drives this dicussion. You think that you got everything right, but you really didn't. If you spend extra time on each question, you increase your chances of an 800. If you spend too much time on a handful of medium questions, you may not find yourself with enough time to deal with an extremely difficult HARD level question for which you think you may have gotten right had you had enough time.</p>
<p>Do them moderately fast, all the way through - by that I mean don't worry about checking over the first time through, but don't try to go 100 miles an hour on them either. Once you're done, go back through and recheck each one, easy or hard, in a different way than you did before. (Plug in the answer choice to make sure it works, or solve by a different method).</p>
<p>First 4 or 6 questions I go through with above moderate speed. Then, as I move into the medium and hard questions, I really read the questions carefully making sure that I don't miss a key word.</p>
<p>I do all if them quickly and go back and check them all a couple of times when I'm done...and even with all of that checking I always manage to check one wrong...</p>
<p>The easy ones I work through quickly, then slow down a little bit for medium and hard. I mark any that I'm not sure how to solve (or any that make my head swim looking at them) and then come back when I'm finished. When I'm finished with all of them, I can never decide wether to check the easy ones first, or the hard ones...</p>
<p>Take just enough time with each Math question (but never get stuck on a question) so that you finish a section with at most 30 seconds to a minute left. The best time to catch careless errors is WHILE you are working on a question or immediately afterwards, not 10 minutes later! It makes absolutely no sense to speed through a 25-minute Math question in, say, 15 minutes, and assume that you will catch and correct all of your errors when you revisit some of the questions in the remaining 10 minutes (you most likely will not). That is very inefficient, and you also never know which questions you might have made errors on. Move through the easy questions relatively fast, but NEVER, ever rush through any questions (unless there are only, say, 2 minutes left on the section and you want to strategically guess on the last few remaining questions) and ALWAYS take care to read each question carefully and correctly, even if it means reading a question two or three times, even the easy ones. Always re-read the actual question portion of the question (usually the last sentence) as a final step to ensure that you did not inadvertently solve for the wrong answer.</p>
<p>In my case, I rushed through them with the impatience and arrogance of a Math Nerd, fell asleep at the end, and ended up with a 780 because I didn't read a question carefully. </p>
<p>Don't do this.</p>
<p>One book I read told me to write out every step you do. It's painful, but you never get it wrong then. For example, add 95+35 in your head. During the SAT, you'll be thinking quickly and may simply see 90 and 30 because the 5 is in both of them and it tricks your mind into excluding them sometimes. If you write it out, you won't get it wrong. I always use my calculator though and I'm very good with it so I don't worry about those. Still, if you write out what you're doing, even if you do the process with a calculator, you won't get things wrong.</p>