tips for addressing overconfidence errors in RC?

audrey1004

hi all! i'm struggling with overconfidence errors in RC – my range for timed RC goes from -3 to -6, and during BR, i usually only manage to catch half of the errors. today i took preptest 71, got 5 wrong in timed RC, and didn't catch any of them in BR, so i'm a bit concerned.

most of my mistakes stem from falling into trap ACs, while the others seem to be coming from, oddly enough, some level of underconfidence (?) i.e. i look at an answer, think "no way that's it," and pick another answer after overanalyzing, only to find out my initial guess was right. in any case, i finish RC with around 2-3 minutes to spare, so i think i'm having some serious issues with accuracy. i've tried using the remaining time to come back to flagged questions and review the stimulus again, but i still get them wrong. that, or the questions i get wrong aren't ones i flagged.

any advice on how to study would be appreciated; for what it's worth, i'm taking the august test. thanks so much!

edit: forgot to mention i write out VIEWSTAMP for each passage on scratchpaper, if that's helpful.

circular seasoning

do some untimed passages and try asking yourself how could this answer be wrong and really really try to prove it wrong. If you get to the point where you are making outrageous leaps to disprove then you've probably got your right answer.