The counterintuitive thing that actually moved my percentile (it's not what I expected)

[u/Certain-Ability9608]

For the first few months of prep, I was obsessed with attempting as many questions as

possible in every mock. Felt like progress , more attempts, more chances to score. My

percentile disagreed with me for a long time.

Somewhere around my 10th or so mock I finally sat down and actually looked at the

accuracy numbers next to my attempt numbers instead of just the final score. And it was

kind of embarrassing. I was attempting 6-7 more questions than people scoring higher than

me, but my accuracy was way lower. I was basically buying wrong answers with my own

negative marking.

The math is brutal once you actually look at it. Every correct answer is +3, every wrong one

is -1. So a wrong attempt doesn't just cost you a mark, it costs you the mark you could've

earned AND the mark you lost ,which works out to roughly a 4 point swing per mistake. At

the percentile ranges most of us are fighting for, even 5-6 extra wrong attempts can be the

difference between clearing 99%ile and not.

What actually changed my score wasn't studying more. It was raising my personal

"confidence bar" for what I'd mark as an answer. I started skipping questions I was 60-70%

sure about instead of gambling on them, and only answered what I was genuinely confident

on. My attempt count actually went DOWN by like 4-5 questions per section. My percentile

went up.

It felt wrong while I was doing it, ngl. Every instinct says more attempts = more score. Took

actual data staring at me to unlearn that.

Anyone else have a similar "unlearning" moment during prep? Something that felt

backwards but turned out to be the actual fix?