How to Review GMAT Practice Questions
I got a really interesting question from one of my students this week: “What do you look for in our GMAT review logs?”
Backing up a bit: I teach GMAT classes. Every week, my students do GMAT practice questions for homework. Instead of asking them to turn in their scratch paper, I ask my students to create a spreadsheet where they log every one of these practice questions, which I call a “review log.” In addition to logging the quantitative data (problem number, time spent, right vs. wrong, etc.), I ask my students to write notes in three different categories: (a) “What went well?,” (b) “What didn’t go well?,” and (c) “What do I want to remember for next time?” I also tell them that any discussion of accuracy or time is irrelevant unless it’s tied to content, so for example, “I got this problem right” is not an acceptable answer to “What went well?” On the other hand, “Noticing that I could divide both sides by x since I was told x≠0 allowed me to get this problem right” is a very good answer.
There’s one other thing I look for too though, and it’s a little less obvious. I look for future applicability of the notes. This is probably best demonstrated through example, so let me give you a fairly straightforward example of a sentence correction problem that I’ve pared down to two choices instead of the usual five:
GMAT Practice Question 1:
Xavier drove to the store and bought the last bunch of bananas in the produce section.
(A) store and bought
(B) store, buying
Not much suspense here: (A) is the superior option. And because you likely came up with that answer quickly, you may be tempted to also make your notes quickly and be done with it. But before you move on, remember to think about future applicability. To help explain what I mean, I asked some of my students to write a review log entry on this problem. Here were their notes:
Student #1: “I noticed the difference between using ‘and’ and just using a comma, and the ‘and’ was better. I have definitely seen differences like this before, so I will make sure to keep an eye out for and vs. comma in the future, since it was helpful in this problem.”
Student #2: “I correctly thought about meaning while doing this problem. The word ‘and’ in the first choice is creating a list of things that Xavier did, while the word ‘buying’ starts a modifier. I know that comma + -ing modifiers are usually adverbial. So I tried to figure out whether this is a list of things that Xavier did, or whether buying bananas describes how Xavier drove. It’s definitely the first, not the second, so (A) is correct. Next time I see “and” vs. comma + -ing, I will check whether the list or the modifier makes more sense to use in that situation.
A couple comments: first, Student #2 did not just pull all of this info directly from her brain. She actually asked for a copy of the “All the Verbal” book that we provide our course students while she was working so that she could look up the “Modifiers” subchapter where -ing modifiers are discussed, a subchapter that she had clearly seen before. She wanted to make sure she was remembering the rule correctly before committing it to her spreadsheet. Second, there’s nothing incorrect about student #1’s notes: everything he wrote is true, and he is right to say that this kind of difference between answer choices will probably show up again.
All that said, you can probably see where I’m going with all of this. The last thing I did as part of this exercise was give each student a second problem:
GMAT Practice Question 2:
Yvonne kicked the football and launched it 50 meters down the pitch.
(A) football and launched
(B) football, launching
Which student do you think got it right?
Go read student #1’s notes; nothing there prepared him for this second problem. In fact, he got this one wrong, because he just figured that the version with “and” was right the first time, so he just went for that one again. Student #2, on the other hand, thought about the meaning being created by each choice, and noticed that the phrase “launching it 50 meters” actually is additional info about Yvonne’s kick, and is not just an additional item in a list of things that Yvonne did. And by the way, if you’re an American like I am, you might not know that much about this kind of football, so that phrase after the comma is helpful because it makes it clear that 50 meters is a very strong kick (i.e. a “launch”). So (B) is the better choice here, which student #2 realized because her notes from the first problem had more future applicability.
The takeaway here is that every GMAT problem you study needs to prepare you in some way, however small, for a future problem that you’ll actually see on the real test, and if it doesn’t, you’ve wasted your time. I won’t lie to you: creating notes with future applicability takes extra work. You have to read problem explanations multiple times. You will have to use your books as reference tools. You will probably spend 5 times as long reviewing the problem as doing the problem in the first place. You won’t get through nearly as many problems each day. But the future applicability of your review process is what really makes a difference on test day, and it’s what I look for in my students’ review logs every single time.
NEXT: Getting Past a GMAT Score Plateau
You can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GMAT courses absolutely free! We’re not kidding. Check out our upcoming courses here.
Ryan Jacobs is a Manhattan Prep instructor based in San Francisco, California. He has an MBA from UC San Diego, a 780 on the GMAT, and years of GMAT teaching experience. His other interests include music, photography, and hockey. Check out Ryan’s upcoming GMAT prep offerings here.