Topic Drills vs. Mixed Sets: You Need BOTH

Say you spend a whole week on percents. You do 40 percent questions and get 37 right. You feel GREAT. Then you sit down for a practice Quant section. Question 6 is a percent question, and you miss it. Not a hard one, either. A gettable one.

What happened? Stop reading and think about it. You should be able to name at least one reason before you go on.

Here's mine. In your drill, you KNEW every question was about percents before you read a single word. The drill did half the work for you. It picked the tool. On test day, nobody hands you the tool. The GRE never tells you what's coming next.

So which is better, topic drills or mixed sets? Wrong question. You need BOTH, in the right order. Most people get the order or the balance wrong, and it costs them points they already know how to earn.

What the GRE actually throws at you

Each Quant section on the GRE gives you 20 questions in 35 minutes. Those 20 questions jump around: arithmetic, algebra, geometry and data analysis (charts, tables, averages), in no set order. They also come in four formats. There's multiple choice with one answer, multiple choice where you pick every answer that works, numeric entry (you type a number into a box), and Quantitative Comparison, where you decide which of two quantities is bigger. Each Verbal section gives you 20 questions in 30 minutes, mixing text completion, sentence equivalence and reading comprehension. ETS lays out the full list on its page of sections and question types.

So in one Quant section you might go percent, triangle, exponents, chart, percent again. That's about 1 minute 45 seconds per question on average, and some of that time goes to a job your drills never trained: figuring out WHAT the question is before you solve it.

One more detail. The GRE is adaptive section by section. That means how you do on your first Quant section decides how hard your second Quant section will be. Dropping gettable questions early doesn't just cost you those points. It can keep you out of the harder second section, and that harder section is where the top scores live.

Topic drills build the tool

Think about a basketball player shooting 200 free throws in a row. Same spot, same shot, over and over. That's a topic drill. It's how you build a clean motion you can repeat without thinking. Nobody learns a jump shot in the middle of a game.

Topic drills are where you learn the rules and the tactics. How to TEST VALUES on a question full of variables. How to start with a price of 100 on percent questions. How to TEST THE ANSWERS when the choices are numbers. Go slowly at first. Take notes on paper for every question, even the easy ones. Redo the questions you missed until you can explain the fastest route out loud.

Not sure which topics need drilling? Start with a diagnostic test, not a textbook. It shows you where the holes are, so you don't spend a week drilling something you already own.

Mixed sets build the skill of picking the tool

That same player still has to scrimmage. In a game the ball shows up in a new spot every time, and she has to decide in a split second: shoot, pass or drive. Free throws never taught her that decision.

Mixed sets are your scrimmage. They train three things drills can't. First, spotting the topic from the wording alone. Second, switching tactics fast from one question to the next. Third, pacing across questions that take very different amounts of time. They also expose the topics you only "know" when someone warns you they're coming.

The order that works

Early in your training, most of your work is topic drills. Once a topic is solid in drills, it goes into the mix and it STAYS there. As the weeks go by, the mix grows and the drills shrink. By your last few weeks, most of your work should be mixed sets, with drills only for the topics the mixed sets expose as weak.

A simple test for "solid": can you get that topic right, with notes, close to test pace, on questions you haven't seen in a week? If yes, it goes in the mix. If no, back to drills.

5 mistakes I see every week

1. Drilling a topic until it's "perfect." Some people won't touch a mixed set until every topic is flawless. That day never comes, but the test date does. INSTEAD: Move a topic into the mix as soon as it's solid, not perfect. The mix will show you what still needs work.
2. Using full practice tests as your mixed sets. A full practice test is a measuring device. It gives you an approximate score and points out weak spots. It does NOT make you a better test taker on its own. ETS's free POWERPREP practice tests are great for measuring, and there aren't many of them, so don't burn them as homework. INSTEAD: Build small mixed sets of 10 to 20 questions for training. Save full tests for checking progress, one per week at most.
3. Trusting your drill accuracy. 37 out of 40 on a percent drill is 37 out of 40 when you were TOLD it was percents. INSTEAD: Judge each topic by how you do on it inside mixed sets. That's the number that matches test day.
4. Reviewing only the questions you got wrong. I'll bet some of your right answers took 4 minutes and a lucky guess. INSTEAD: Review every question in a mixed set. For each one ask: Did I spot the topic fast? Did I pick the fastest tactic? Did I write it down?
5. Doing mixed sets with no clock and no skipping. On the real test you can skip, mark and change answers inside a section. If you never practice that, you'll sit on a monster question while three easy ones wait at the end. INSTEAD: Time every mixed set. Practice skipping a long question, marking it, and coming back once the gettable ones are done.

Try a mini mixed set

Your move

Today, pull 12 questions you've already done in drills, from at least 3 different topics. Shuffle them. Set a timer for 21 minutes, which is the GRE's Quant pace for 12 questions. Before each one, write the topic and the tactic on paper. When time's up, review all 12, right and wrong. The questions you miss are the ones your drills were hiding from you. Go find them.