Sometimes you can be easily misled during a test. There is one particular mistake, however, that almost all veteran test takers make when it comes to GMAT sentence correction.

In this video, Brian Galvin from Veritas Prep explains how to avoid being tricked by the authors of the test into choosing the wrong answer.

Galvin shows an example of how the authors of the GMAT test could give quite misleading answer choices. He points to the 5 answer choices of a multiple choice question, suggesting that most people would choose answer “C”. The aspect that most people miss, he says, is to look more deeply into the meaning of the sentence and check if everything is correctly structured in terms of grammar. In this case, most test takers will choose the wrong answer, not realising that the verb tense in this answer choice does not correctly correspond to the tense in the sentence.

Check out: GMAT Sentence Correction Lesson (Video)

If there is no logic in using past tense, then just eliminate all the answer choices with the past verb tense, and you will be left with the correct answer. You may not have expected to see this idiomatic construction in the correct answer choice and you may have not studied it, but it is a valid way of expressing this idea.

And here is where the authors of this test are masters of their craft. They know that if they give you a correct answer, which is hidden behind an idiom that you don't expect to see, you will probably not select it.

Watch the video to learn more about this particular sentence correction mistake and, of course, good luck on your GMAT!