Part of learning a topic is making sure that you’ve actually learned it, and if you haven’t, studying that topic further until you have. So, when you complete GRE practice questions, you must review any questions you answer incorrectly, and if necessary, go back to your study materials to review concepts related to those questions. In many cases, simply reading the solutions to the practice questions won’t be sufficient for mastering concepts that you didn’t fully understand. Answer explanations can show you what you failed to see or grasp in a particular question, but they generally don’t explain concepts in much detail.

Additionally, as you review your wrong answers, note the reasons why you answered the questions incorrectly. Did you make a careless mistake? Forget to complete the last step in solving the problem? Solve for X when you should’ve solved for Y? By determining why you’re getting questions wrong, you can not only target your weak areas and fill gaps in your knowledge, but also uncover patterns in the mistakes you’re making that could hold you back if you don’t correct them before test day.

Another thing you can do in your GRE practice in order to eliminate weak areas is to review the solutions and return to your study materials for questions that you guessed correct answers to. Many GRE students skip this important work, but for the purposes of mastering the GRE, an answer that you guessed correctly is really no better than an incorrect answer. After all, you’re not doing practice questions just to pat yourself on the back; you want to actually master the material. So, you have to be very honest with yourself when evaluating your performance on practice GRE questions. You wouldn’t want to leave your GRE score up to luck on test day, so you shouldn’t be satisfied with getting correct answers by guessing during your GRE practice.