dilemmar Forum

[eharmony]

so i have a dilemma. i took a testmasters course where i got all of the books of all the problems reprinted. but i didn't really work too hard during the course so i didn't improve at all (not even 1 point). i bought the lg bible to improve my score and get serious about the lsat. i am thinking of taking the advice of this forum to heart by actually taking the real preptests in a timed setting. the only problem is i don't really know where to begin. should i be taking preptests and reviewing the questions i got wrong and later tackle the testmasters material (there are literally hundreds of thousands of problems)? i don't want those resources to go to waste because i did spend lots of money on the course, and it seems pretty useful (divides problems up by question type, etc.). any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Eugenie Danglars]

Start here. Good luck!

http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... =6&t=41657

[eharmony]

thanks eugenie, but i think i wasn't clear enough about what i was really concerned about. i want to know if i should be solving the testmasters problems that come in chunks of 100 questions of the same type -- and review the ones i got wrong until i fully understand them. i'm worried that if i do that, i will get to the point where i've memorized the answers and so id just gloss over them if i see them in a preptest and get them right (inflating my overall score) but not really doing anything for me in terms of actual improvements.

[Eugenie Danglars]

Which test are you taking? If you have the time, I'd advise going a section at a time (LG, then LR/RC, then RC/LR) and working on improving your accuracy. Then start taking timed sections and PT's.

If you are doing 100's of questions, I think you'll find that, while you might remember the existence of a question, you often won't remember the correct answer.

If you give more info on your score and trouble areas, we can probably help more.

[calilaw]

I think you should worry less about keeping track of how you're scoring (whether a score on a self-administered exam was "influenced" or not due to seeing some of the problems before in a collection of LSAT questions compiled in a test prep book, as you mentioned), and more on simply learning the test format and mastering the types of problems. If you've done so many questions, and truly studied them to the point of near-memorization, I would say that you've done a pretty good job of preparing and that should give you confidence going into the real test. As for timing concerns, I think you'll find that vaguely recalling a handful of questions in a section will not greatly influence your speed. If you happen to remember a particular question while doing timed practice, force yourself to go through it as if it were new to you.

[mchuynh]

Are you only focusing on logic game or logical reasoning too?

Anyway, I took the course and I have both books. I suggest you read chapters 1,2,3 and 4/6Logical reasoning bible) and chapters read Chapter 1 and 6. Then do testmasters lesson 1.

Review chapter 4 (must be true) and then do testmasters lesson 2. Do half of it UNTIMED and half of it timed. Also, review your mistakes.. and yeah continue until you are done with the lessons and the logical reasoning/game bible.

When you are done, you can find preptests in one of your testmasters books. If i remember correctly, they give you 6 preptests total (not including the ones on their website)

Hope this helps

[TLSanders]

Doing questions of a certain type repetitively until you learn the approach to that question type and your own personal pitfalls and repetitive mistakes is an important part of the process. But you want to take prep tests made up of questions you haven't seen before. I'm not familiar with the Testmasters materials, but if I'm understanding you correctly that they are made up of actual released questions, you should break them up and save some complete tests that you haven't worked any of the questions from in practice. If the questions aren't labeled as far as which test they came from, you have a problem...the ideal approach is to learn the question types, practice them, and then do 35-minute timed sections and full length tests of fresh material.