Perfection is a risky plan for test day

Perfection is fragile and expensive

The test will not go perfectly...

• There will be something you haven't seen before.
• There will be something you don't understand.
• Time will seem to pass faster (or slower).

Perfectionism...

• Makes you doubt yourself even when you're right.
• Wastes time you don't have.

You will not perfectly understand everything on test day or in practice. That's OK. I don't either.

The only thing you can make perfect is your process

Another way to say this is: make a plan you can reasonably accomplish within the time constraints of the test, and stick to it.

A perfect process means knowing what your job is at every moment of the test and smoothly executing it.

If you don't know what your job is then either...

1. you need to learn more about the test from a guide like this, or
2. you aren't creatively adapting the basic tools you already have.

Example

You see this question while doing a Reading section:

"Which of the following statements is the author most likely to agree with?"

You have no idea what type of question it is.

Option 1: Go read about the reading question types. You'll learn how to approach a MEDIUM questions like this.

Option 2: Think about what's similar. Maybe this reminds you of the infer question family from the Reasoning section. Try to adapt that approach for this different context. It will work, imperfectly.