DIM Bakalavr Group I common mistakes
DIM Bakalavr Group I · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Starting the multiple-choice section by reading every question and its options in order before answering any, so the first 20 minutes pass with almost nothing marked on the answer sheet.
Candidates transfer habits from school tests where time pressure is mild, and they fear skipping a question will lose them easy points. On a timed, high-volume admissions paper this front-loading leaves the hardest questions for the exhausted final minutes.
What to do instead
Adopt a two-pass routine: on pass one, answer only questions you can resolve in under a minute, mark the rest with a dot, and never spend more than 90 seconds on any single item; on pass two, return to dotted items with the remaining time. Practise this with a stopwatch so the split becomes automatic.
Leaving blanks on the answer sheet instead of guessing, because of a belief that a wrong answer is penalised more than an omitted one.
Many candidates carry over a rule from olympiad or university entrance formats that they half-remember, and they never verify the actual scoring rule for this exam. Anxiety reinforces the cautious choice.
What to do instead
Confirm the official scoring rule from the exam regulations before test day. If there is no negative marking, commit to answering every question, and rehearse a fast elimination habit: strike two impossible options, then choose between the remaining two.
Misreading the stem's qualifier words such as 'not', 'except', 'always', 'only', or 'most likely', and then selecting the option that is true but does not answer the question asked.
Under time pressure the eye fixates on the content words and skips short function words. Familiar option wording also creates a recognition illusion that feels like understanding.
What to do instead
Underline or circle the qualifier in the stem before looking at the options, and for negative stems restate the question in your head as 'which one is false'. Build a personal checklist of the five qualifier words and apply it during practice sets.
Choosing an answer because an option repeats a term from the stem or sounds scientifically sophisticated, without checking whether the causal or quantitative relationship actually holds.
Distractor writers exploit surface familiarity and impressive vocabulary; recognition memory fires before reasoning does, especially for candidates whose subject vocabulary is strong but whose analytical practice is thin.
What to do instead
For each option, state silently why it is right or wrong in one clause before marking it. If you cannot articulate the reason, treat the option as unverified and move on. Review wrong answers by labelling the distractor type (term repeat, reversed cause, plausible but out of scope).
Attempting multi-step numerical problems without writing intermediate values, then losing the thread and restarting the calculation from scratch.
Candidates who are used to short classroom exercises underestimate the working-memory load of a three-step problem under time pressure, and they believe mental arithmetic saves time.
What to do instead
Write each intermediate result with its unit on the scratch sheet, and check the order of magnitude before matching to an option. If two options differ only by a power of ten, the question is testing unit handling, so recheck conversions explicitly.
Rushing the final 10 minutes to fill remaining bubbles, producing misaligned answers where the mark for question 34 sits in row 35.
Answer-sheet transfer is treated as clerical work and postponed, so a block of answers is copied while the invigilator is announcing the last five minutes.
What to do instead
Transfer answers in small batches (every five questions) and keep a finger on the question number while marking. At the end, verify alignment by spot-checking three known answers against their rows rather than re-reading the whole sheet.
Preparing only from one textbook or one teacher's notes and never working through official-format sample items under exam timing.
School assessment rewards faithful reproduction of the taught text, so candidates assume coverage equals readiness and skip timed rehearsal, which is the skill the admissions test actually measures.
What to do instead
Allocate at least a third of study time to full-length timed practice under exam conditions, then analyse errors by topic and by error type. Keep an error log with the date, topic, cause, and the corrected reasoning.
Spending weeks on a favourite subject while avoiding the weakest topic until the last days, so the weakest topic stays weakest on exam day.
Studying a strong subject produces quick fluency and a pleasant sense of progress, while the weak topic produces discomfort; without an external schedule the avoidance is self-reinforcing.
What to do instead
Rank topics by expected marks gained per hour of study, not by enjoyment, and schedule the two weakest topics in the first two hours of each study day when attention is highest. Track completion weekly on a simple table.
Memorising formulas and definitions as isolated strings without being able to state when each applies or what its symbols mean.
Rote rehearsal feels productive because recall of the string is easy to self-test, whereas conditional knowledge ('use this when the process is adiabatic') is harder to rehearse and rarely taught explicitly.
What to do instead
For every formula, write a one-line applicability condition and the unit of each symbol on the same card, and solve at least two problems that require choosing between similar formulas. Self-test by explaining to an imagined classmate why the alternative formula fails.
Changing a first answer during review without a concrete reason, or conversely refusing to correct an answer even after finding clear evidence of an error.
Both behaviours come from a folk belief that first instincts are usually right; candidates remember the few times a change hurt and forget the times it helped.
What to do instead
Adopt an evidence rule: change an answer only if you can name the specific fact, calculation, or misread word that invalidates the original choice. Otherwise leave it. Log every change and its outcome for a month to calibrate trust in your own review.