Key Takeaways
- Reading an entry back is a different act from answering the question. In one lab study, students who re-read a passage felt surer of it, yet students who were tested on it remembered more after two days and a week.
- An entry earns its place when it comes back as a question. Write it in about two minutes, then re-solve it blind.
- Sort every wrong answer into one of four causes. Gap, misread, slip or choice. Each has a different fix.
- Keep the question, hide the solution. Coaches disagree on screenshots versus notebooks. The argument turns on whether the solution is in sight when you try again.
- Space the re-solves back from 29 November. Early passes sit about a week apart and later ones two to four days apart.
A post on r/CATpreparation in September 2026 puts the problem in one line.
"I am able to analyse what mistake I committed,but somehow not able to correct it in the following sectionals" A post on r/CATpreparation, September 2026
The log in that post exists. What it lacks is a step that turns a written entry into a question the aspirant can answer, alone, a week later. There are 61 days to CAT (the Common Admission Test) on Sunday 29 November 2026, with three 40-minute sections and no switching: VARC (Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension), DILR (Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning) and QA (Quantitative Ability). Why a saved item can fail to become a known one is set out in why you forget what you study for CAT. This page applies that to one notebook, the error log.
Why a log stops being opened
Filling in a log feels like the work, and reading it back feels like revision. In the test hall you meet a question cold and produce an answer. Reading an entry is recognition, and the section timer asks for recall.
Roediger and Karpicke tested this with prose passages in 2006. Students studied a passage, then either took free-recall tests without feedback or re-studied it. Five minutes later, re-studying gave better recall. After two days and after a week, the tested students remembered substantially more, even though re-studying had left the others more confident. That was one lab study with short passages, not error logs. The wider review by Dunlosky and colleagues in 2013 rated practice testing and distributed practice as high utility, and rereading as low utility.
The five-minute result describes how a log feels on the night you read it: it seems to work right then.
Another poster describes a plainer cost.
"I kept it up for maybe 8 mocks before it got exhausting to maintain by hand" A post on r/CATpreparation, September 2026
That is one poster's account, and this page makes no claim about how many aspirants stop. It points to two failures: upkeep that costs too much, and entries that never return as questions. The design below keeps each entry short and puts the effort into the re-solve.
What one entry holds
Each entry holds eight fields. Budget about two minutes per entry. That number is a suggestion: an entry that takes ten minutes to write is the one that stops being written.
- Mock and date. For example, "Mock 7, Sun 11 Oct". The date schedules the re-solve.
- Section and topic. VARC question type, DILR set type, or QA chapter.
- The question, cropped. A photo or screenshot of the question only, with the solution out of the frame.
- Sure or guess. Ticked during the mock, on your rough sheet, before you know whether you were right.
- Cause. One of the four in the next section.
- Reason in one line. In your own words, such as "read at least as at most".
- Next time in one line. What you will do differently when you meet that trigger again.
- Re-solve results. Date and pass or fail, in three slots.
A Cracku video in Hindi from September 2026, on mock strategy, adds an optional "blank moment" column: which question, which minute, and whether you were watching the timer.
Four causes of a wrong answer
These four causes are a working sort, not research. They match the four on the CAT notes page: a wrong formula, a misread condition, careless arithmetic, and a question you should have left. They also overlap with the sorts in Cracku's video of 25 September 2026 (attempted and wrong, left unattempted, correct but slow) and in the CAT preparation guide (concept gap, silly error, time management). A sort is useful when each cause needs a different re-solve.
| Cause | What it looks like | What the blind re-solve checks |
|---|---|---|
| Gap | You did not know the method, or had no way in. | Can you make a first move unaided? If not, learn the method from a source, then re-solve this question and one similar question blind. |
| Misread | You solved a question that was not the one asked: a missed word, a condition, a unit. | Read it aloud, underline the condition, solve. The fix is a reading habit. |
| Slip | Right method, wrong number: arithmetic, a copied value, a sign. | Find the exact line where it went wrong. The fix is a check at that line. |
| Choice | You should have skipped it, or attempted it, or spent too long. | Solve it untimed, then write the rule that would have told you when to move on. One coach's rule: leave any question that gives no approach within two minutes. |
The two-minute rule comes from Cracku's Hindi video. If an answer has two causes, pick the one you would fix first and move on. A log that spends minutes on classification is one more thing to abandon.
How to re-solve blind
Blind means the question is visible and everything that could help is covered: the solution, your earlier working, and the cause and next-time lines. The routine below is a suggestion built on the research after it.
- Open the entry. Cover the solution and the lines that name the cause.
- Solve on fresh paper. The first pass can be untimed. From the second pass on, time it against what you would give such a question in the section. Rodha's revision cycle, in his video of 29 May 2026, also moves from untimed work to timed tests.
- If you are stuck, write down the exact line where you stopped before you uncover anything.
- Uncover the solution and read only as far as the next step. Cover it again and continue.
- When you have the fix, close the solution and solve the whole question again from the top.
- Record the date and pass or fail. A pass means correct, with no peek at the solution, in the time you would give it.
- Two passes on different days move the entry to the quiet list, which holds entries you sample once later and no longer re-solve on a schedule. Rodha's rule in the same video is to cross a question off only when you solve it later without looking at the solution.
Trying before being shown. In experiments by Kornell, Hays and Bjork, people tried to answer questions before seeing the answers. Even failed attempts improved later learning compared with reading question and answer together. Brown, Roediger and McDaniel, in Make It Stick, put it as "better to solve a problem than to memorize a solution." These were word-and-fact tasks, and the same benefit has not been shown for multi-step CAT questions. It supports the order of the steps and promises nothing about marks.
Confident errors. Butterfield and Metcalfe asked people general-knowledge questions, took a confidence rating for each answer, showed the right answer, and retested later. Errors made with high confidence were the most likely to be corrected. Carpenter and colleagues found the same in a classroom study of horticulture students. The "sure" tick in your entry marks where that lab pattern might apply, though it has not been tested on CAT questions.
The caveat matters as much as the finding. In a study with a one-week delay, Butler, Fazio and Marsh found that the correction weakened, and that high-confidence errors were more likely than low-confidence ones to be given again when the correct answer had been forgotten. Metcalfe and Miele tested a fix: a test straight after the corrective feedback greatly improved memory for the correct answers and blocked the return of the errors. That was a lab study of factual questions, with 49 participants after exclusions. Step 5 borrows the idea.
Screenshot or notebook
Aspirants ask whether to screenshot hard questions or write them out. Three coaches give three answers, each a creator's claim.
Rodha, in a video of 29 May 2026, says never to save a screenshot with the solution, because you will read instead of solving. He asks for a numbered Master Notebook of hard questions from mocks: write the question out, solve it by hand, and cross it off only when you later solve it without looking at the solution. iQuanta, on 23 September 2026, says you can bookmark a question, screenshot it, or note it in your notebook. Cracku, on 25 September 2026, says a sheet or notebook works for a mistake tracker.
The disagreement is narrower than it sounds. Rodha's objection is to the solution sitting in the picture, and the same video allows question-only images in a laptop folder for long arithmetic and geometry questions. All three can share one rule: keep the question, hide the solution, re-solve blind.
💡 Tip
Crop the screenshot to the question before you save it. If the review screen shows the explanation beside the question, crop it out, or cover it with paper before a photo. Keep any solution you want as a reference somewhere else.
The earlier CAT notes page suggests a screenshot or photo of the missed question plus a one-line voice note on the reason. That fits this rule when the picture holds the question only and the spoken line gives the cause, not the full working. No study compares screenshots with notebooks for CAT. Screenshots are also easy to pile up, and what to keep from WhatsApp and Telegram PDFs deals with the pile.
A revisit schedule counted back from 29 November
Spacing research gives the shape. A 2006 meta-analysis of 839 assessments on verbal recall found that the best gap between study sessions grew as the wait for the test grew. In a 2008 study, Cepeda and colleagues taught more than 1,350 people facts, reviewed them after a gap of up to 3.5 months, and tested them up to a year later. The best gap was longer for longer waits, but shorter as a share of the wait: about 20 to 40 percent of a one-week wait, and about 5 to 10 percent of a one-year wait.
Two months sits between those ends, pointing to a gap near a tenth to a fifth of the time left. That is an interpretation, since the study gives no figure for two months and used facts, not problems. The first re-solve at two or three days is student practice, not a research number. One commenter on r/CATpreparation in September 2026 wrote "Note down the steps you did wrong with right approachin a notebook and after 2-3 days revise those wrong steps".
| Window | Days left | What to do with the log |
|---|---|---|
| Tue 29 Sep to Sun 25 Oct | 61 to 35 | Re-solve each entry blind 2 to 3 days after its mock, and again about 7 to 10 days later. |
| Mon 26 Oct to Sat 14 Nov | 34 to 15 | Re-solve only entries that have failed at least once, with gaps of 2 to 4 days. Sample the quiet list once. |
| Wed 4 Nov | 25 | Admit cards open and stay available until 29 November. A good date to prune the log to entries that still fail. |
| Sun 15 Nov to Thu 26 Nov | 14 to 3 | Give each failing entry one more blind pass. Build the one-page pattern: count entries by section and cause. |
| Sat 28 Nov | 1 | Read the pattern page. iQuanta advises revising the error log the day before, without starting a mock or new topics. |
| Sun 29 Nov | 0 | CAT day, in three sessions, conducted by the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Indore. |
The dates come from the official CAT documents at iimcat.ac.in. The last-60-days revision system places the log inside the wider plan.
If your evenings are one or two hours, hold the number of entries you re-solve, not the number of mocks you analyse. Misread and slip entries take minutes, and gap entries take longer.
Paper, sheet or app
Three formats are in use, and each fails in a different place.
| Format | Good for | Watch for |
|---|---|---|
| Numbered notebook | Writing the question out forces a first attempt, and the solution cannot come along. Rodha's Master Notebook has a contents page and page ranges per module. | You cannot search it or count causes, and copying takes time. |
| Sheet | Filtering by cause and section. One commenter on r/CATpreparation in September 2026 suggested "Keep one sheet for topics/resources with status, last-practised date and a notes link". | Many columns kept by hand raise the upkeep cost described earlier. |
| Photos and screenshots | The quickest capture, from the phone you already hold. | Piles, the solution in the frame, and no due dates. |
A split works: keep the question on paper or as a cropped image, and the counts and dates in a sheet. On handwriting, a 2019 replication by Morehead, Dunlosky and Rawson found that performance did not consistently differ between longhand and laptop note-taking, or a group taking no notes, and called a verdict on which is better "premature". That study was about class notes, not error logs. Choose the format you will still be using in November.
A template to copy
The first table is the log. The second is the one-page pattern for the day before.
| Mock and date | Section, topic | Question (photo or page no.) | Sure or guess | Cause | Reason and next time | Re-solve 1 | Re-solve 2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Example row, made up to show the format: Mock 7, Sun 11 Oct | QA, percentages | Photo 7-14, question only | Sure | Misread | Read "at least" as "at most". Underline the condition. | 14 Oct, pass | 22 Oct, pass |
| Section | Gap | Misread | Slip | Choice |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| VARC | ||||
| DILR | ||||
| QA |
Tally the entries from the first table into the second. If one square is much larger than the rest, start there. The log makes no promise about your mock score.
Misconceptions
A more detailed log is a better log. Views differ. One comment in a July 2026 thread on r/CATpreparation said:
"Bro don't waste time writing a analysis of each question, just write down the topic of overall paper." A comment on r/CATpreparation, July 2026
Detail that changes nothing at re-solve time can be dropped.
Once I have solved it, it is done. Dr. Anuj Pachhel, a creator for the NEET PG medical entrance, claimed in a video of 6 June 2026 that a question you get wrong now you will likely get wrong again in three months unless you force spaced repetition or active recall. That is his claim, not tested here. The lab result is narrower: in the Butler study above, corrections weakened over a week.
A good log ends a plateau. A poster on r/IIMCATPreparation in September 2026 wrote "i analyse each and every mock but still stuck". Mock scores move for many reasons, and mock score swings and comparison has the fuller picture. The log is a record and a routine. It cannot predict or lift a score.
Where Rehearsal fits
This page is published by Rehearsal, so weigh this section with that in mind. A notebook and a sheet are enough for everything above, and if they are working for you, you do not need another app.
Rehearsal is a capture-and-recall habit, and it does not coach. It holds what you collect: screenshots, PDFs, links, and voice notes that are transcribed. You choose what to send, including selected screenshots and files forwarded from WhatsApp or Telegram; it does not sync your chats. The cropped question images, a spoken one-line reason and the mock screenshots can sit in one place, and you can ask for them back in plain language. Ask and the connector for ChatGPT and Claude (MCP, the Model Context Protocol) are part of the Unlimited plan, and the free plan covers recording, transcription and playback.
It has no CAT mocks, does not solve the question and does not check your answer. The blind re-solve happens on paper or on a screen, in your hands. The app comparison is on the CAT notes page, and connector setup is at /rehearsal-mcp.
Questions aspirants ask
What is a CAT error log?
It is a running record of questions you got wrong or could not attempt in mocks, with a cause for each and a date for the next attempt. Coaches also call it a mistake tracker or mistake book.
Which questions go into the log?
Cracku's three-way sort is a good start: attempted and wrong, unattempted but solvable, and correct but slow. Begin with the first two. If a mock gives you more entries than you can re-solve before the next one, write fewer and keep the fields whole.
How long should mock analysis take?
Coaches disagree. Cracku (25 September 2026) advised two and a half to three hours for a two-hour mock, and iQuanta (23 September 2026) about an hour. A commenter on r/CATpreparation in July 2026 said never more than 30 minutes. Set your limit by the number of entries you can re-solve.
Should I log a question I got right by guessing?
Yes, with the guess tag. A guess that landed is a question you cannot yet solve.
Can ChatGPT analyse my mock for me?
A commenter on r/CATpreparation in September 2026 wrote "Ask it to analyze what is repeatedly wrong and suggest remedies." A chatbot can count and sort the table you give it. The cause column comes from what was in your head at the time, so that part is yours. Accuracy of chatbot mock analysis is unproven here, and the re-solve still needs your hands.