Learning from Your Mistakes: How to Get the Most Out of Your Practice Tests
You’ve just finished a practice test. Now what?
At Test Innovators, we talk about test prep in three steps: (1) take a practice test, (2) review your results, and (3) do targeted practice. This post is about step two.
Going through a completed practice test carefully is one of the most valuable but overlooked parts of test prep. This post walks you through how to review your results step by step, and while we’ll point to some tools inside Test Innovators along the way, this process works no matter what materials you’re using to prepare.
Start With the Big Picture, Then Zoom In
Before you dive into individual questions, take a step back and look at your results from the top down.
Start with your overall scores. How did you do on the test as a whole? Which section was your strongest? Which needs the most work?
Then look at each section individually to see how you did by content area. Once again, make note of both your strengths and your weaknesses. Knowing what you’re already doing well is just as useful as knowing where you need to improve.
Once you have your bearings, it’s time to dive in and go question by question. As you do, you’re looking for three categories of questions to review:
- Questions you missed
- Questions you skipped
- Questions you flagged, even if you ended up getting them right
That last category is easy to overlook. You may have ultimately guessed correctly, but that doesn’t mean you’d actually know how to solve a similar question on the real test. Those questions belong in your review too.
Reread the Question and Figure Out Why You Missed It
Start by rereading the question. Do you remember what tripped you up? Do you see how to solve it now that the pressure of the test is over? Or is it still giving you trouble?
It helps to think about missed questions in two broad categories:
Execution Errors
Execution errors are mistakes that have nothing to do with your understanding of the content. Perhaps you misread the question. Or you meant to bubble in C but filled in D instead. Or you ran out of time and had to guess randomly. Or you skipped a line on your answer sheet and threw off everything that followed. These happen to everyone, and they’re frustrating precisely because you know the material.
Knowledge Gaps
On admissions tests, you may run into questions where you genuinely aren’t sure how to approach the problem. Perhaps you haven’t studied the material in school yet, or it has been a while and you need to refresh your memory.
To determine whether a question is a knowledge gap or execution error ask yourself: “would I have known how to solve this with no time pressure and no stakes?” Better yet, try it now. Cover the answer and work through the question again from scratch. If you can get there on your own, it was likely an execution error. If you still can’t, you have a knowledge gap.
As you go, jot down what you think went wrong for each question. If you identify a knowledge gap, note the specific topic (e.g. right triangles, comma splices, reading inference questions, etc). That list will help you determine where to focus your targeted practice.
Read the Answer Explanation
Once you’ve thought through why you missed the question, read the answer explanation. Does the solution make sense to you now? If so, great. You’ve got a clearer picture of what happened and you’re ready to move on to targeted practice.
If the explanation doesn’t fully click, that’s useful information too.
Talk Through the Problem if You're Still Stuck
If you’re still stuck after reading the explanation, try working through the problem out loud with a tutor, parent/guardian, or a study partner. Explaining your reasoning forces you to slow down and can help you identify exactly where your thinking breaks down.
If you’re using Test Innovators, you can also try Wild Zebra, an AI study buddy, by clicking the zebra icon in the lower left corner of the screen. Wild Zebra uses Socratic conversation to guide your reasoning, asking questions and checking your understanding rather than just handing you the answer. Working through a problem this way can either help the solution click or confirm that there’s a knowledge gap that needs some dedicated study time. All Test Innovators accounts include 10 free Wild Zebra conversations.
Do Targeted Practice
Now that you know where to focus, it’s time for step three: targeted practice.
For execution errors, or any question where the explanation made the problem click, go straight to similar practice problems. The goal is to apply what you just learned while it’s fresh to new questions. That will help reinforce the material and build confidence that you’re ready for similar problems on the real test.
If you’re using Test Innovators, you’ll notice that every question has a recommended follow-up exercise. Click the link and you’ll get a set of similar practice questions to work through right away.
For knowledge gaps, study the underlying content first, then come back and do the practice problems. Drilling practice questions on a concept you haven’t learned yet isn’t the best use of your time.
One More Thing: Missing Questions Is Part of the Process
It’s easy to feel discouraged when you see mistakes on a practice test. But we’d invite you to think about it differently: the questions you miss are problems you caught before they mattered. If you discover a knowledge gap now, you have time to fill it. If you find out you have a habit of misreading questions under pressure, you can work on it. And if you bubbled in an entire section offset by one line, you can be sure you’ll double-check your answer sheet on test day.
Mistakes show you how to be better, and that’s what practice is for.
Sara Laszlo
Sara Laszlo has nearly ten years of experience in private tutoring. An opera singer by training, Sara is especially interested in exploring better ways to practice and improve skills, whether musical or test-related. She holds a B.A. in Classical Civilization from Duke University and a Certificate of Merit in Voice from the New England Conservatory of Music.
