<p>My S is going to take SAT in Oct. When doing practice tests, he often misses one question in Math. I think it is his careless mistake. Can any one give advice how to overcome the last hurdle? Thanks.</p>
<p>The same thing happens to me. </p>
<p>He needs to slow down and use all 25 minutes. He also needs to check.</p>
<p>Have you taken your SAT yet? Did slowdown work for you?</p>
<p>It works on the practice tests. I’m a rising junior so I’ll be taking the test in Oct.</p>
<p>Slowing down is necessary for all the sections. Finishing 5-10 minutes early and just moving on to the next sections isn’t helping anything.</p>
<p>There is really no sure way to reduce stupid mistakes. The only thing he can do is to be more careful.</p>
<p>There is no answer to this question.</p>
<p>Only use the blue book!</p>
<p>^CCer’s need to stop misinterpreting xiggi’s advice. The blue book is good for general practice, but when you need to actually learn material, it’s terrible.</p>
<p>^In the case of the OP, learning new material is not the issue</p>
<p>^lol I understand that. XD.</p>
<p>It just annoys me to no end when people respond “BB” without giving any other advice. I think that anyone who spend even 10 min on this forum knows to use BB. No need to just repeat the same thing again.</p>
<p>If you have taken a couple of tests and only missed one or two questions, you clearly know the material and have talent. It’s easy to tell someone to “be careful” or “stop making mistakes” but as advice to be followed, that’s kind of useless (no offense). After all, if you knew you were doing it, you wouldn’t do it!</p>
<p>I think the best plan is (as is often the case) to go through the entire blue book, timed. Then go back to each test and disect not just what you got wrong, which is after all only a few questions, but also what you could have done more quickly or more insightfully. Doing this will allow you to increase your speed on easy and medium questions without ever actually trying to go faster. (TRYING to go faster is a good way to make MORE silly mistakes.) Then you wil have more time available to puzzle over those one or two questions that had been stumping you.</p>
<p>^That’s generally pretty good advice, but I think is somewhat off-target.</p>
<p>Silly mistakes are usually mistakes that are random(add instead of subtract, misread handwriting, mislabel). Going and figuring what stupid mistake you did isn’t really going to help.</p>
<p>^^
It might help if you start to see a pattern in the types of mistakes you make. I know this will seem silly, but I think of it sometimes on the SAT: there is a scene from “My cousin Vinnie” (if you have not seen it, you are missing a very funny movie) – the kid is explaining to his friend why he wants Vinnie to be his lawyer. He describes how a magician tried to fool Vinnie but couldn’t do it – Vinnie was on to every trick, watching like a hawk. Sometimes I recommend that students try to channel Vinnie on the SAT. They ARE out to trick you and the details matter. You have to watch them like a hawk…</p>
<p>EVEN, not POSITIVE…damn
DISTINCT integers…damn
Less than or EQUAL…damn
From 0 to 50 INCLUSIVE…damn
how many are NOT…damn
oh, there’s a chart…damn</p>
<p>I could go on, but the point is to discover your own personal list</p>