Better to drill specific sections or do PTs?? Forum

[blair27]

I have done a few PTs in the last few weeks with varying results. I have had some scores I would be happy with and others that I would not be happy with. I feel like just writing PTs may be a little bull headed especially considering my scores are all over the map. Do you think it would be better to take the next two days and work on the two sections that get me the most, RC and LR, or should I stick the PTs?

[kpuc]

I feel like PTs are more useful as assessments of your current level of understanding, as opposed to a method of learning.

What I mean is that if you're trying to solidify your foundations, it's better to do drills than PTs. The danger in doing too many PTs while neglecting drills is that one or two fluky scores can give you a false sense of understanding.

[youknowryan]

I personally think doing drill until you are pretty much scoring well in whatever area you're drilling makes the most sense before moving on to full PTs. For example, I used the old green book of PTS for drilling. I did every section by itself, and then graded it. THe review process takes longer than doing the sections!

If I bombed the section I did it over and over until I could get the answer by seeing the relationships the evidence construct. After that when I do full PTs, my scores are pretty good and when I run across something I bomb, I just redo it until it makes sense. It's less fun this way, but moving slowly and reviewing a lot will yield the best results.

[DasBoot]

The area I wanted to improve most in was LR, and so I was doing section drills from mid-august until about two weeks ago. After I did a section, I put all my incorrect answers and their associated answer type into a single (now very long) word document and wrote out why my answer was incorrect and why the correct answer was correct. After that, I used an excel spreadsheet to track what question types I was missing. I discovered that I was mainly missing parallel reasoning, logical flaw, and formal logic sections. So, I spent a good time studying and restudying the associated chapters in the LR Bible. Additionally, I bought the Cambridge formal logic question set and worked through those. Now I am much more comfortable with the entire section and scoring better.

I guess my suggestion is to try and find the question types you are really having trouble with and go after those as hard as possible at this point. If you have mastered other types of questions, there isn't a lot of need to spend a ton of time going over them still.