October 2010 Test Prep Forum

[2014]

The best way to stop yourself from panicking on the last part is to do the first part faster (in my opinion). Most of the time those first 10 questions are extremely straight forward, and in many cases if you spend time second guessing yourself, or ruling out other wrong answers after you have found the obviously correct one, you are only costing yourself later. I usually end up with 10-12 minutes for the last 5-6 problems, and it is really nice to be able to slow it down and take 2-3 minutes on a parallel reasoning problem or another particularly time draining one.

Also what do you do for 7-8 hours of review? That seems like quite a bit for someone getting 87-90% of the questions correct.

[Hedwig]

I'm beginning to think that reviewing past tests, even in the very comprehensive manner suggested above, can only take you so far. I've been following a very thorough schedule of reviewing after PTs (it takes me about 7-8 hours to review a full PT, usually spread over the two days after a PT), and seem to still be stuck in the 168-170 range (with current tests at least, I've gotten 168-170 on the 6 tests in the 50s I've taken, but have gotten numerous 171-174 in the 30s).

It seems like whenever I'm taking a test there's just so much time pressure and my mind just goes into "READ FAST!!!" mode in the final 6-8 problems of a section and I usually miss 2-3 of them. After the test when my reading pace is normal and unpressured, I immediately recognize past patterns from past test reviews, but I just choked in the heat of the moment. I'll say "well, duh" to about 3-4 questions after the test because its just so hard to simulate that time pressure unless you're actually in a test.

I'm hoping that these last 5 or so PTs before the exam can slow my brain down a bit and keep me from dropping those 3-4 problems, but its really hard to figure out how to not cause myself to rush in the last few problems.

Can you try thinking: "If I rush, I'm going to get these wrong anyways. If I slow down, maybe don't even get to the other two, I'll still be 2 for 4 instead of 0 for 4 if I had rushed."

You can always throw down guesses, like just put down answers on your bubble sheet so you have something written, then do the questions and correct as necessary. That might save you the rush fear?

I'm developing that rushing/fear at the end of RC, though, so I'm not sure what the best suggestion is.

P.S., I'm totally trying to set up a sleep routine for myself, and it definitely features reading a couple chapters of Harry Potter right before bed. Last night I tried this, and I dreamt that Professor Snape was my father. Although still slightly disturbing, I much preferred this to the LSAT nightmares where the bubble sheet numbers don't match the test, haha, and people are yelling at me to hurry up!

[Adjudicator]

And I thought I was taking the LSAT very seriously this time around... but eit, you are going to need to enter rehab after this LSAT, I fear.

[Hedwig]

And I thought I was taking the LSAT very seriously this time around... but eit, you are going to need to enter rehab after this LSAT, I fear.

Nah, I just like routines. And Harry Potter. I dreamt about HP way before I ever thought about law school, haha. Ranging from me having cancer and Snape making my chemo potions to Voldemort hanging out in my kitchen ordering all his Death Eaters (and me) around.

[almostthereee]

And I thought I was taking the LSAT very seriously this time around... but eit, you are going to need to enter rehab after this LSAT, I fear.

Nah, I just like routines. And Harry Potter. I dreamt about HP way before I ever thought about law school, haha. Ranging from me having cancer and Snape making my chemo potions to Voldemort hanging out in my kitchen ordering all his Death Eaters (and me) around.

Wow you have very vivid dreams On that note, I was telling my gf how I was dreaming of Must Be True questions and the usual panic in my head of "omg omg wtf HAS to be true... " and she got mad at me for not having a dream about her in the last two weeks instead

[silly101]

PT 55:

LR -0,
RC -3 (unusually poor for me)
LG -4 (totally froze up and bombed it -- nerves were killing me. Only got -4 because of lucky guessing.)

93 raw, 172 scaled. (172 is my goal for test day. Anything higher and I'll be happy.)

I'm also happy to note that I got -0 on the "experimental" LR section from one of the first 20 PT's, which I'd never taken before. So that's 75 LR Q's without an error (not even on sufficient assumption questions, which I HATE).

I think I am FINALLY getting to where I can consistently get -0 or -1 on LR, in a controlled fashion.

I have to tell you guys, for anyone who is still struggling, I think I made a bit of a breakthrough in the past week after bombing a PT and getting 164 for some reason. If anyone hasn't taken these steps with LR and is still having trouble, I highly, highly recommend that you do the following five things:


1. READ QUICKLY, BUT SLOW DOWN YOUR MIND
Before this breakthrough, found that I would read the passage extremely quickly while trying to guess the significance of every single word with regard to the other items in the stimulus. This is bad. Reading quickly is fine, but I've started trying to focus on each clause individually, so that I can ...

2. CIRCLE THE CONCLUSION, IF THERE IS ONE
3. CIRCLE THE PREMISES
4. FIGURE OUT WHICH OF THE PREMISES IS THE MOST IMPORTANT TO SUPPORT THE CONCLUSION AND HOW THEY RELATE

- In my earliest PT's, I started out getting -4 to -0 on each LR section, which made me think that I could just read the stimulus, understand it, and circle the answer through brute force. But after months of practice, I was still scoring -4 to -0 on each LR, with no consistency, and no idea what I was doing wrong. It wasn't till that 164 last week that I internalized the truth of what I had already read in the LRB: each question type is probing a different aspect of how the premises relate to the conclusion, and so this relationship will almost invariably determine the correct answer choice. I don't know why it took me so long to truly realize this.

5. AFTER THE PT, GO BACK AND ANALYZE EVERY DIFFICULT LR QUESTION IN THE TEST - WHETHER YOU GOT IT WRONG OR RIGHT.
- During analysis, write down each premise according to the order in which they relate to each other logically. Then put the conclusion at the bottom. Then analyze each answer choice. Do all of this in writing. It's very time consuming, but it's worth it.

- Before last week, I was simply checking my wrong answers, coming to understand why TCR was correct, and then moving on. But that is not enough. Simply going through one or two tests' worth of LR in the way I've just described, and truly analyzing the relationship of the premises to the conclusion in each question, gave me an enormous boost in confidence and certainty during the test.

Everything I just suggested has already been suggested by someone on the board -- it's nothing new. But for anyone who's still having trouble with LR, I want you to know that it's not too late to make improvement -- all of this has happened over the past couple of days.

Now, if only I could master my nerves when it comes to LG -- I'm still unable to tackle all 4 games in a section without compromising accuracy.

Good luck yall . . . .

Gonna give this a whirl... see how much I can improve this next week. Cautiously optimistic... Thanks for the advice.

me too

[The Gentleman]

I think I now hold the record for "The Most Lopsided Score Breakdown of All-Time"

PT 55
Experimental (PT 41 RC): -0
Sec I (LR): -0
Sec II (RC): -9 (lolwut?)
Sec III (LR): -1
Sec IV (LG): -1

89/100 = 168 (Yuck)

Chinese talk stories was brutal, but c'mon man! How does somebody do that?

[The Gentleman]

Does Kaplan offer any single-day test simulations? That don't entail a full class?
I just wanna show up and take a PT with a bunch of people.

Kaplan offers free proctored LSATs where they provide you with a PT (36 I believe), but make you sit through a sales pitch while they grade it. However you can bring your own PT to the event and skip out once the test is finished. (atleast this is what my local Kaplan center told me)

[Eugenie Danglars]

Does Kaplan offer any single-day test simulations? That don't entail a full class?
I just wanna show up and take a PT with a bunch of people.

Kaplan offers free proctored LSATs where they provide you with a PT (36 I believe), and then make you sit through a sales pitch while they grade it. However you can bring your own PT to the event and skip out once the test is finished. (atleast this is what my local Kaplan center told me)

There were only like 8 people there when I did this, so I felt bad skipping out. They weren't bad though, and they actually told me I didn't need there class once they graded my paper (and the score was only a 169).

[ND'10]

The best way to stop yourself from panicking on the last part is to do the first part faster (in my opinion). Most of the time those first 10 questions are extremely straight forward, and in many cases if you spend time second guessing yourself, or ruling out other wrong answers after you have found the obviously correct one, you are only costing yourself later. I usually end up with 10-12 minutes for the last 5-6 problems, and it is really nice to be able to slow it down and take 2-3 minutes on a parallel reasoning problem or another particularly time draining one.

Also what do you do for 7-8 hours of review? That seems like quite a bit for someone getting 87-90% of the questions correct.

Yeah, my goal is to get the first 10 in 10 minutes, but I'm usually in the 11-12 minute range because there's almost always one question that I take too long on for whatever reason in the first 10. I need to realize that if I don't get a problem in 1-10 immediately, I'm probably misreading it so I should do a few more problems then come back. Instead I'll stare at it for 2-3 minutes and cost myself a lot of time.

As for PT review, I usually spend 5 minutes on each LR problem (whether I got it, missed it, easy, hard, whatever). I mark up all my PTs pretty heavily by identifying each premise, the conclusion, and then trying to write a short summary of the key point to each stimulus to the left(for example, for a flaw question, I might write "Well, he considers ____, but he's definitely isn't considering ____ as a possibility"). Usually takes about 2 hours or so for each LR section. I might be over-doing it, but I have always felt that putting something in writing helps me to internalize it a lot better. Then for games I'll re-do them and try to look for inferences I missed, and for CR I'll re-read each passage and try to understand what/why I missed something. So maybe 5-6 hours total, but its helped me get to this range, now I need to just come up with a way to stop these time errors- I've got the fundamentals down.

[2014]

Does Kaplan offer any single-day test simulations? That don't entail a full class?
I just wanna show up and take a PT with a bunch of people.

Kaplan offers free proctored LSATs where they provide you with a PT (36 I believe), but make you sit through a sales pitch while they grade it. However you can bring your own PT to the event and skip out once the test is finished. (atleast this is what my local Kaplan center told me)

They held all of our answer sheets from yesterday hostage and are emailing us the scores by like Tuesday. There were 5 people there, you would think they could just grade it and let us know...

Good thing they let me keep the test booklet though, I just graded it myself with an answer sheet from someone on TLS.

[CGI Fridays]

The best way to stop yourself from panicking on the last part is to do the first part faster...it is really nice to be able to slow it down and take 2-3 minutes on a parallel reasoning problem...

+1,000
My policy is also to destroy the first ten or so, moving on the moment i spot the answer if it's straightforward (i.e. "which of the following cannot be true"), even if it's the first answer. Then I skip all (generally two) the parallel reasoning and "which of the following is most similar in its flawed reasoning" questions. If it works out, I generally have about five minutes to go back and do those two questions. Before I'd be down to the last second every time and it was a hassle. This way, if it comes to it, I can guess on the "last" question if need be, and I haven't sacrificed anything. But, interestingly enough, I maintain more cool because of it, so I almost never run out of time on LR anymore (except when I use it as my go to the bathroom section).

[CGI Fridays]

Does Kaplan offer any single-day test simulations? That don't entail a full class?
I just wanna show up and take a PT with a bunch of people.

Kaplan offers free proctored LSATs where they provide you with a PT (36 I believe), but make you sit through a sales pitch while they grade it. However you can bring your own PT to the event and skip out once the test is finished. (atleast this is what my local Kaplan center told me)

Wow, thank you so much. I had no idea this existed.
I'm signed up for next Sunday (and they said it was fine to bring in my own PT).
Taking the test with everyone else scribbling and erasing and turning pages was my one source of uncertainty. I am happy now.

[Hedwig]

I'm signed up to do a mock LSAT on the 2nd with the Princeton Review on my campus, does anyone know if they use a particular test? I asked the guy at the station where they were advertising it, but he didn't know. I figure even if I've already done the test, it'll be good to simulate doing a prep test with other people in the room scribbling away and not having control over the time/situation at all.

[The Gentleman]

There were only like 8 people there when I did this, so I felt bad skipping out. They weren't bad though, and they actually told me I didn't need there class once they graded my paper (and the score was only a 169).

Did they add an experimental section to the PT? Or did they just stick with four sections? I will be bringing my own PT, so I need to know whether or not to bring an extra section.

[CGI Fridays]

There were only like 8 people there when I did this, so I felt bad skipping out. They weren't bad though, and they actually told me I didn't need there class once they graded my paper (and the score was only a 169).

Did they add an experimental section to the PT? Or did they just stick with four sections? I will be bringing my own PT, so I need to know whether or not to bring an extra section.

The one I'm going to on Sunday will have an experimental. Not sure if it's universal. I suppose you could call.

[CGI Fridays]

I'm signed up to do a mock LSAT on the 2nd with the Princeton Review on my campus...

I just called to see if I could do this as well as the Kaplan. Apparently in my area the next mock test is on October 16th... yes, Princeton Review, holding a mock test exactly one week AFTER the test is stellar timing.

[2014]

I'm signed up to do a mock LSAT on the 2nd with the Princeton Review on my campus...

I just called to see if I could do this as well as the Kaplan. Apparently in my area the next mock test is on October 16th... yes, Princeton Review, holding a mock test exactly one week AFTER the test is stellar timing.

Kaplan has one at my UG the week after too, that's why yesterday I had to drive an hour away.

The Gentleman, Kaplan's have an experimental in them.

[CGI Fridays]

Anyone other than Kaplan & Princeton Review offer mock test days?

[Cromartie]

I think I now hold the record for "The Most Lopsided Score Breakdown of All-Time"

PT 55
Experimental (PT 41 RC): -0
Sec I (LR): -0
Sec II (RC): -9 (lolwut?)
Sec III (LR): -1
Sec IV (LG): -1

89/100 = 168 (Yuck)

Chinese talk stories was brutal, but c'mon man! How does somebody do that?

My PT 50 performance was similarly lopsided. -8 in RC (-6 in riddled basins) and -0 in all other sections for a 172.

[ly2010]

Hey guys, I need some advice!

I started studying in mid-August. Based on my diagnostic score, I decided to prioritze LR since it's weighted the most (maybe not the best idea, but too late now). I spent the first month reading the LR Bible, drilling, and doing timed LR/RC sections. When I got my LR score down to -1 or -2 consistently, I started going through the LGB and Reading Comprehension Bible. My RC didn't improve much but I did all the games in the LGB so I decided to finally start taking whole timed test Sept 15th. I completely bombed the Games section! Discouraged, I decided to stop doing timed PTs and instead focus on games. Since then, I've done about 50 games but I still not comfortable with it.

Do you guys recommend me focusing on Games for another week or so or just strictly do timed PTs until Oct 7-8th? I'm not shooting for anything super high. I'll be satisfied with 160+ but I want around a 164.

Thanks!

[yabuddy]

Hey guys, I need some advice!

I started studying in mid-August. Based on my diagnostic score, I decided to prioritze LR since it's weighted the most (maybe not the best idea, but too late now). I spent the first month reading the LR Bible, drilling, and doing timed LR/RC sections. When I got my LR score down to -1 or -2 consistently, I started going through the LGB and Reading Comprehension Bible. My RC didn't improve much but I did all the games in the LGB so I decided to finally start taking whole timed test Sept 15th. I completely bombed the Games section! Discouraged, I decided to stop doing timed PTs and instead focus on games. Since then, I've done about 50 games but I still not comfortable with it.

Do you guys recommend me focusing on Games for another week or so or just strictly do timed PTs until Oct 7-8th? I'm not shooting for anything super high. I'll be satisfied with 160+ but I want around a 164.

Thanks!

If I was in your spot I'd probably do both. You should be doing full length timed test by now to at least get more comfortable with taking the full thing. But on the other hand you might not want to do one everyday because you have to work on your games.

You could always set up a schedule of days that you're going to do a full length test and days that you're just going to focus on games. This way you'll be able to work get better at LG and be more comfortable with the whole test.

But this is just my recommendation, who knows what the best thing to do really is, just do whatever works best for you.

[Hedwig]

I just did my most properly simulated test to date. It was a tiring experience, but I'm glad I stuck to it. Since I usually finish LR and RC early, I've been skipping ahead and not waiting it out. It's difficult to wait it out. Of course I anticipate finishing later than I do on practice tests (i.e. with like five minutes left instead of 10 or 15), it's just difficult to sit still that long. I also sat and waited out the break and ate my Clif bar and banana, haha.

I think it was good because I looked back and ended up fixing two wrong answers, one in LR and one in LG.

Anyways, results - PT 56 with Logic Games from PT 3 as an experimental. LG Experimental -0, -0LG, -2LR, -1LR, -0RC. 97 raw, 179 scaled.

I really need to work on LR, I think. LG, as long as I maintain my cool, is probably as far up to snuff as I should expect. I'll have done pretty much every game (with maybe like 3 PT's worth of games not done) by the actual test. Reading Comprehension... once I actually focus and don't worry so much about the time, I'm alright. I finished with 8 minutes left for RC today.

I've found the Difficult Questions set from CambridgeLSAT to be helpful - I sucked at the first ones I tried so I"m going to make sure to do all of them and review them.

[s0ph1e2007]

I've taken an LSAT every day for two weeks now (after studying a lot previously) and I've gotten to a point where my brain feels like it starts to hemorrhage when I see another LSAT cover
high scores though! I think I'll finish the lat 5 of them and then let my brain recover for a few days before gently reviewing every day until the test (saving last one though for a timed group LSAT- mimicking session on next Saturday morning)

[2014]

I've taken an LSAT every day for two weeks now (after studying a lot previously) and I've gotten to a point where my brain feels like it starts to hemorrhage when I see another LSAT cover
high scores though! I think I'll finish the lat 5 of them and then let my brain recover for a few days before gently reviewing every day until the test (saving last one though for a timed group LSAT- mimicking session on next Saturday morning)

Wow nice!
I had taken one 4 days in a row through today and had to take a break. Now I almost feel guilty