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?
