Seen-before questions in PTs Forum

[jmjm]

Many prep books (PS, Manhattan in LG, LR, RC) have questions from actual LSATs that one would see again when doing timed PTs.

If one does PTs after studying these prepbooks, then that makes PTs much easier than they would be if one were seeing those questions the first time -- most LR, RC, LG questions become much easier if you reviewed them in detail when you did them first.

That makes PT scores biased and less of a indicative of a real lsat experience. Any informed suggestions?

[05062014]

I think that is why it is key to getting about 5 points above your target score for the real thing on PTs. I think once you hit a certain level of proficiency, even with a few Q's you have come across before, you can probably score at that rate on completely fresh exams. It is annoying though how nearly every new exam I take has 2-3 Q's I have done before. I get re-do Q's wrong more often than completely new questions though -- so there is some food for thought lol

[heebie-jeebies]

Many prep books (PS, Manhattan in LG, LR, RC) have questions from actual LSATs that one would see again when doing timed PTs.

If one does PTs after studying these prepbooks, then that makes PTs much easier than they would be if one were seeing those questions the first time -- most LR, RC, LG questions become much easier if you reviewed them in detail when you did them first.

That makes PT scores biased and less of a indicative of a real lsat experience. Any informed suggestions?

You are assuming that all PTs that one uses to gauge one's performance contain questions that were reviewed as part of a test preparation regimen. However, this is not necessarily the case, and it can, in fact, be avoided if one keeps track of the PrepTests that are used in the materials that were used for test preparation. Many test prep books provide an indication of which PrepTests the materials were drawn from. For example, PowerScore bibles typically have a "Question Use Tracker" section at the back of the book; Kaplan Mastery and Timing Practice books have a blurb at the beginning of the book indicating which PrepTests the questions in the books came from, and Manhattan provide PrepTest, Section, and Question references in-line. So, one has the resources available to be able to set aside PrepTests from which no questions were encountered during one's test preparation, and can, therefore, take steps to ensure that PT scores are not biased as a result of encountering the same questions during test preparation.

[cc.celina]

I wouldn't worry about it. There are not enough questions in the Bibles to significantly affect your average PT score. If you take 10 PTs, even if you have done a handful of the questions already, you will generally know whether you are scoring how you want to score and which sections you need to work on. As heebie-jeebies suggested, you can keep track of which PTs contain questions you have done before. But you will be taking so many preptests that the questions will all start to run together and it will be incredibly difficult to remember any specific answers from questions in the Bibles a few weeks from now. So I definitely wouldn't say it would make those sections "much" easier, unless it's something like an entire game you had just done the day before or something.

Completely unbiased PT scores are definitely nice and you should ensure you have more than a few of them leading up to test day. But tests with questions you've seen before -- heck, even entire tests you have done before -- can still be very effective prep. The point of a PT is not just to see where you are. So don't stress.

[VasaVasori]

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