Erika here with PrepScholar GMAT many students don't know how to study for the
GMAT this is a problem especially for students who are self studying without
the aid of an instructor or tutor they spend fifty sixty a hundred hours
studying and still see no significant improvement but this doesn't have to be
you in this video we'll go over your most important GMAT study tool the error
log and how you can use it to get more benefit out of reviewing one problem
than drilling 20 as always if you like this video please hit the button to
subscribe and feel free to check out our online program and tutoring options on
the PrepScholar website or head over to our blog for even more great GMAT
content as always links in the description to improve your score on the
GMAT you need to stop making the mistakes that you're currently making
that's pretty obvious but how do you do that the trick is to spend the bulk of
your study time on reviewing analyzing and addressing your mistakes the easiest
way to do that is by making an error log your error log should have at least four
components which what why and how I like to create a table where each row is an
error and each component is a column which is for which problem you missed
your error log isn't super useful if you don't know what problem you made the
error on so it's important to note which problems you struggled with if you're
handwriting an error log this can be writing down where the problem comes
from so that you can look it up later for example if you're using the
PrepScholar online program you might write exponent rules quiz April 3rd 2018
question 8 if you're doing a digital error log you can put a screenshot or
photo of the problem directly in the log document for ease of access what is for
what you did wrong this is the simple but specific identification of what
happened that caused you to get the question wrong now this could be an
honest-to-goodness mistake like a computation error or reading the
question wrong it could be something you just didn't know like a formula or a
grammar rule or it could be something bigger like not understanding a passage
or running out of time why is for why you made the error in the
what column this is where things get harder what caused you to make this
specific mistake so if you made a computation error is it because you
tried to do the math in your head instead of on scratch paper if you read
the question wrong is it because you were rushing and neglected to write down
key information if you didn't understand a passage is it because you didn't spend
enough time on an initial skim before jumping straight into the questions now
note it's important here not just to focus on why you picked the wrong answer
but also to focus on why you didn't pick the right answer did you rule it out
incorrectly did you not give it enough attention why is that
how is for how you can avoid this error next time if we've done a good job
identifying the why this step should be pretty straightforward maybe we need to
use our scratch paper more effectively maybe we need to rephrase critical
reasoning questions in our own words like we talked about in our recent video
maybe we need to focus on introduction and conclusion sentences as well as
sentences with transition words when skimming passages or maybe we just need
to memorize the combined work formula for quant
or recognize that lists equal parallelism on sentence correction well
okay now that you've put all the time into making this error log how can you
use it to improve your score first the act of making the error log itself
forces you to think through your mistakes when reviewing problems it's
really easy to stop after identifying what you did wrong the how and the why
steps are critical to understanding and preventing mistakes
second you can use the error log as a constantly up-to-date study guide if you
read straight down the how column you've got a list of the most important things
that you need to remember on practice tests and on test day itself finally it's
a great way to plan future study as it makes it easy to identify patterns in
your mistakes if you keep seeing the same thing in the why column you know that
it's something you particularly need to work on before test day on the other
hand if you stop seeing an entry in your why column you know that you've made
progress on that particular weakness and you can focus on
other things and that's how you can study for the GMAT effectively using an
error log if you have any questions of what we talked about today or
suggestions for future videos please leave a comment below thanks for
watching and happy GMAT studies