Avoiding Careless Mistakes on the SAT

pckeller
Sun, 07 Sep 2014 16:09:56 +0000

This is a question that comes up here quite often. I doubt that there is an easy answer but I will give two recommendations:


Don’t use the label “careless errors”. It’s not accurate or helpful. I’m pretty sure that you do care a lot! Instead, keep a notebook where you record specifically what went wrong with each of those questions that you feel you should have had right. Was it a concept that you forgot? A step that you skipped? An arithmetic error? Whatever it was, IDENTIFY it. If you do this for the 6 tests you have taken, patterns may emerge. And just identifying the error more specifically and descriptively may help you to avoid repeating it. When my physics students write lab reports, I don’t let them use the phrase “human error” – all of our errors are human! We have to try to diagnose what actually went wrong.
Stop worrying about running out of time. And do not try to go faster. Doing every problem twice is inefficient. There are only a handful of problems that need that second look. Why not try going slower so that the handful shrinks. After all, if you go slow enough to eliminate what you call “careless errors” but you don’t get to answer the very last question, you will probably be happy with the result.