I have always been surprised how many people let their mistakes just slide, go away, and disappear, only to make them again. If you have allowed your mistakes to not bother you, this post is for you!

Introduction:

There are 2 primary ways we learn and prepare for the GMAT: 1)by studying theory and 2)by taking tests/quizzes. What we learn in those two approaches actually differs. Often when we read a book or watch a lesson, we observe and soak in - we see the big picture. Think of someone explaining you how to drive a stick shift - they tell you how to release the clutch and give gas to the car. Then the quiz part is when you actually sit down to drive the car and realize you don't know how to shift gears, you don't know which gar comes first, how quickly to release the clutch and all other questions you forgot to ask during the "big picture" overview. Thus to soak in the most from each lesson, you need to combine the passive learning with the active testing/quizzing... just one or the other does not work.

How to Analyze Your Mistakes:

1. Always time yourself. If you are not timing yourself, don't bother reading further.
2. Save every question you miss/get wrong/guess - my suggestion would be to print every one of them out and build a binder you can grab at any time. You can also look into using an online solution of sorts or an error log and expand it.
3. For every test/quiz question that you miss or guess, you should ask yourself the following questions:
   
   
   
   • Why did I make this mistake?
     Write a reason for making a mistake - figure out exactly what it is! For example:
     
     • Is it not knowing something?
     • Forgetting a formula?
     • Confusing concepts?
     • Not reading the question carefully?
     • Not following a strategy?
     • Not recognizing a correct choice A in SC?
     • Making a silly mistake?
     • Rushing?
     
     
   • What did it teach me? What did I learn from it?
     Each error is a learning opportunity - use it. Don't just say - it was a silly mistake or I made a calculation error but turn it into something more meaningful. Here are a few examples:
     
     • You learned that you tend to make calculation mistakes when you do math in your mind or you tend to miss some important words in PS or CR questions
     • You forgot not know the Triangle area formula
     • You learned a shortcut for arithmetic
     • You understand inference and assumptions now and see the difference
     • You hate RC
     
     
   • What do I need to do so that I never make it again?
     The next step is to turn it into an action item. Here are some examples:
     • How do you ensure that you never make that silly calculation mistake? Well - you always do all math by hand.
     • Still does not help? You double-check your math when doing word problems or you backsolve to make sure.
     • Are you skipping important words in CR? You should make a rule to always check for keywords in questions on your CR.
     • Are you not sure why C or D answer choice in CR? Don't leave the question until you know - most likely that question is discussed in the forum - find it and figure it out. If you can't tell a difference in a CR or RC question answers - that's a sign of a much bigger problem that you need to address ASAP

Other Suggestions For Mistake Review:

• Periodically go back to the questions you got wrong, esp the hard mean ones that you did not know how to even approach and make sure you can solve them and know the path to solve them and the key to the solution.
• Most likely you know there is a dark little secret about your mistakes, for example, you always miss DS questons or struggle with geometry - that's where you need to camp out and dig until your hand bleed.
• Don't get overwhelmed. You may have a lot of ground to cover; try to stick in one area as much as possible before moving on

:!: Next Steps:

After you have done analysis of your recent CAT or Quiz mistakes, it is a good idea to test if you have really learned what you think you have learned. In a day or two, go out and find similar questions and practice them! It is quite easy - find the question that cause you pain in the forum. Then, click "Find Similar Topics" link and you will have a collection of questions to work with. Be careful practicing GMAT Prep questions if you are still taking GMAT Prep as that may inflate your scores. Here is a screenshot how to do this:

What do people usually do wrong:

1. Some will do questions only and skip theory/tips/lessons. It is definitely possible to learn how to drive a car without anyone telling you which pedal does what, but it sure is not a very pleasant one. Why not let someone give you a tour and overview first? Not only it is faster, it will also save you from missing a lot of questions since learning solely from questions/quizzes is only good enough when you encounter similar/same questions. When you meet a new question, you will be stuck.
2. Taking too many questions - taking thousands of questions and becoming a machine at pattern recognition (waste of time frankly - i believe that doing 1000 or questions total including quizzes and tests is sufficient). More is not always better. Do you really need to solve 400 of the same arithmetic or geometry questions? probably not, it would probably be much more useful if you were able to solve 40 word problems questions.
3. Not doing the mistake analysis on the questions and that's what the focus of this post is on. Many will classify their mistakes in a pretty error log and stop right there. That's not enough!

What mistakes are you making?

Report what mistakes you make and what worked for you in the past! OR let me know if something is not working and where I can help you - post your specific issues here and I will be happy to provide my recommendations
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Founder of GMAT Club

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Co-author of the GMAT Club tests

This is so true. The hard part is accepting the fact that it's okay to make mistakes probably because it gets scary if we make a lot of mistakes, and it also hurts your ego. When I took my practice exams, I would search for the explanations on this forum for difficult questions before answering them, so that I get the questions right. This was a wrong move because I didn't learn the real way. I learned some strategies, yes, but only temporarily. I didn't know where I actually stand on my own (and in real test conditions) and where I needed to focus my energies on. Unfortunately, I had to learn this the hard way (GMAT 520). Planning to retake now, and make use of a good error log. Saw Saruba's error log and might make use of that. This time I will make mistakes and accept them, and learn from them until I don't make any.

Very important post here. I would add that when reviewing a Quant problem it is often helpful to rework the problem, while keeping in mind that on the challenging problems, seeing through to what makes the problem challenging is important. Are you asked to be creative in a specific way with basic knowledge? Is there a less common number property at play here that tests the breadth of your knowledge? etc.

When reviewing a Verbal problem, it is very helpful to analyze the incorrect choices deeply. On a Critical Reasoning problem, figure out why the choice you selected (or considered selecting) is incorrect. Use the stimulus to help you see why that choice does not do the task at hand. This will help you work the choices on similar problems more effectively.

www.gmatclarity.com
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Thomas Hall

I always attempt those question first which i have answer correctly. Those question which i have some doubt or confusing i read that question again and answer them according to my knowledge not books words.

I seem to make the following mistakes regularly. I don't know to get rid of them. Can someone help please.

SC
1. I see long sentences, get anxious and tend to freak out, resulting in spending a lot of time re-reading.


CR
1. After reviewing the incorrect answers I always realize that I hadn't read the question/passage properly. I know the straight forward solution is to read properly, but however much I try to do that, this error is still responsible for 2-3 mistakes per mock.
2. I'm totally unable to solve bold faces.
3. Can strengther/weakener question strengthen/weaken any thing else except the conclusion?


Quant:

1. get scared by equations
2. uncomfortable with testing numbers


Thanks,
Ars

I would recommend splitting sentence into parts and using a check-list to evaluate/find a mistake.
I would also recommend reading long sentences in fiction - Faulkner comes to mind.


Study bold face and practice
I am not sure i get your question about strengthen/weaken - it is important to understand the assumptions. That's what this mostly is.



Study numbers
_________________

Founder of GMAT Club

Just starting out with GMAT? Start here... or use our Daily Study Plan


Co-author of the GMAT Club tests

Hi,
I have been preparing for the GMAT for about a year. I have improved in Quant, but not in Verbal. I always come down to 2 options and end up marking the wrong option. When I read the explanations, the reason for having marked a wrong answer is this - Oh! I missed that. I didn't strike me. When I redo the question without reading the explanation I get the question right. This happens across difficulty levels and types of questions - RC, CR and SC. Whenever I take a Verbal test, I end up screwing one section for sure and there isn't a pattern. Sometimes its RC, sometimes its CR and rarely SC. I do have an error log, but honestly, at this point, I have exhausted the official material and I do not know what to do. I got a 31 in my recent GMAT exam. Please help!

Even I went through the same situation before I understood my mistakes and improved on them, specially RC and CR.

Most mistakes happen in CR and RC because of
1) Over obsessing about the content and hunting for details.
2) Rushing through without understanding the content or missing key words.

You will find these things mentioned in every prep books available in market. Its always about identifying the pattern and that comes through practice and evaluating error logs.

Hope that this helps somewhat.

Thanks
I have 1 more query..Now that i have completed Manhattan,Offical guide and Power score,should i go for Online courses such as e gmat prep or revisit these books again.

Whenever a student comes to us asking for more material because he has exhausted all the available GMAT prep material, we have an "Uh oh!" moment.

The OG has ~900 questions. The Verbal and Quant Reviews put together have ~600 questions. Plus, we give our students a collection of ~2000 official GMATPrep questions to practice from. This itself comes to about 3500+ official GMAT questions. So if you have solved all of this, and still your performance is not improving, then more practice is NOT the solution.

Analysis is.

You need to go through the questions you have solved and track where you are going wrong, what sort of mistakes you are making, why, what happens to you as you solve questions in a timed environment...

This discussion is much-needed and some excellent points have been made. So I thought I'd share the Error Log that we recommend to our students. (Attached with this post) If you use a notebook or diary to keep track of the questions you solve, it maybe difficult to review later. At the same time, you don't want to overcomplicate things by capturing too many details.

So it is best to keep an online tracker that captures the following:

Question details
Your answer and the OA
The concept being tested
A tag to understand what sort of mistake it was
A takeaway from the question.

For e.g. let's say you solved CR #11 from the Verbal Review. You picked E while the OA is B. You then tag this question as one of the following: N, M, G, T or S.

Nailed it (N) - Yes, you got it right. Good work! Make sure that you got it right for the right reasons, that you know exactly how to tackle it.

Missed it (M) - Aargh, made a silly mistake. Knock yourself on the head and tell yourself to be more mindful!

Guessed it (G) - Had to guess this question. On a good day, the guess would have paid off, but on a bad day, it need not. So make sure you understand the question thoroughly now.

Timed it (T) - Spent far too much time on the question! Remember, it doesn't matter whether you got a question right if you have spent more than 2.5 minutes on it!

Screwed it (S) - Didn't know what hit you when you saw this question. That means there could be something basic that you don't know about such questions.

Since you got this question wrong, it is not going to be tagged "N".

The advantage of having such a tracker is that you can sort the sheet by concept or by type of mistake to see which specific topic/area you need to work on.

Another important aspect of keeping such an error log is writing down a takeaway for each question. Ideally, the takeaway should be not just for that one question but for all similar questions. These notes you make will come in handy when you are on the last leg of your prep or in the last week before your test date.

Hope you find this useful!

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