22 PT's with no significant improvement

[uvandy]

I read all the Bible books and took 22 PT's between July and now and my score has constantly remained around 155. I just took the Dec LSAT and think I'll be lucky to break 150. With the lack of significant improvement over 22 PT's and possibly a worse actual score, this seems to be a sign that law school is not my future, but when I review wrong answers and go over questions I skipped, they seem so obvious. I think the timing pressure is what gets me.

Clearly I am doing (or not doing) something wrong and picked up terrible habits that will be hard to break. I'm thinking of skipping this cycle and retaking in October. I feel like I have the potential for a minimum 160, but history clearly says otherwise. Do yall think this is realistic? Good news is the GI Bill should cover most of my education, so debt is not major issue.

[meegee]

You took 22 PTs total, or you took 22 full-length timed PTs not including material used for drilling? I say this because there's a big difference. A lot of people use PTs 1-38 strictly for drilling, before moving on to taking full-length timed PTs.

Buy a new set of prep books. Look into picking up the Manhattan books or the Trainer. Drill appropriate sections after each chapter. Spend a lot of time on review. This might be the source of your issues: lack of adequate review.

Skip this cycle if you want, but if you do, aim to take it in June. This will allow you to apply as soon as possible. Additionally, you should have enough time to study by June. You can always change it to October, but I think it would help you to keep a "I'm preparing to take it in June" mentality.

[Archangel]

http://7sage.com/the-blind-review-how-t ... at-part-1/

This may help you with your review.

[Sirs_LMNOPQRS]

I think you can reasonably expect to improve your LG score to perfect or near-perfect if you drill enough.

I was worried about the time pressure too. One method I used was to drill LG's individually, which helped to take the pressure off. If I finished under 8:45 and got everything right, I moved on to the next LG. Otherwise, I drilled that game again.

Have you tried taking a test untimed?

[meegee]

+1 to the above user's post about perfect LG. Also +1 to the blind review.

You can achieve -0 LG consistently with enough drilling. To quote NoodleyOne from his guide:

You want Games to be a guaranteed -0 with some extra time to resharpen your pencils. That’s your goal.

My biggest problem with prep books and other people that shell out the general guideline of "08:45" per logic game is that not all logic games are created equal. They vary in difficulty.

This is what you want to do on your average logic games section:
LG1: Easy, finish in 5 mins.
LG2: Still pretty easy, needed to draw some hypos though. Finish in 6 mins.
LG3: The difficulty level has jumped. Finish in 9 mins.
LG4: Hardest LG, luckily I have enough time to dump into this one. Finish in 12 mins.
3 mins left for review.

The numbers aren't concrete and I basically made them up, but it should get the general point across. You want to crush the easy games so you have enough time for the harder ones. And then you want to get good enough so that you're moving through the harder games fast enough you have time left for review.

[Sirs_LMNOPQRS]

My biggest problem with prep books and other people that shell out the general guideline of "08:45" per logic game is that not all logic games are created equal. They vary in difficulty.

You're right the easy games should be faster, but I like 8:45 as an absolute ceiling for drilling. 12 min might be okay for the first time you've seen a tough game, but 12min on the second try is not a win.

[zipehtzin]

If you are getting 155 now, you can realistically get 160 with additional effort. Realistically you can get more than 160.

I have only used Powerscore and Manhattan strategy books, but I find that Manhattan's logical reasoning book is much better than Powerscore's. Manhattan's "read the question stem first" approach alone can save you lots of time by narrowing your focus on any given LR problem. The Cambridge drill books are a great way to master LR problems, and Manhattan's LR book is a useful reference while you drill.

[buenolaw]

Suicide is always an option. Or cooley. Both are about the same

user has been banned for violating the "don't tell people to kill self" rule.

[bp shinners]

What I'm seeing from your post is that you're reviewing incorrectly, and reviewing your incorrect answers is pretty much what prep is all about.

You say that you go back and the right/wrong answers seem obvious - that's because you know what they are. It's really easy to convince yourself that you just made a stupid mistake on a question when you know you got it wrong and what the right answer is.

Start getting in the habit of underlining what you think makes an answer right/wrong. This allows you to go back and recreate your thought process, so you don't just say that it was a stupid mistake - you can figure out your actual mistake. The blind review method mentioned above is also a great drill to get better at the test.

Taking 22 PTs without seeing improvement is almost assuredly a sign that you're review is poor - so focus on fixing that!

[cloy26]

What I'm seeing from your post is that you're reviewing incorrectly, and reviewing your incorrect answers is pretty much what prep is all about.

You say that you go back and the right/wrong answers seem obvious - that's because you know what they are. It's really easy to convince yourself that you just made a stupid mistake on a question when you know you got it wrong and what the right answer is.

Start getting in the habit of underlining what you think makes an answer right/wrong. This allows you to go back and recreate your thought process, so you don't just say that it was a stupid mistake - you can figure out your actual mistake. The blind review method mentioned above is also a great drill to get better at the test.

Taking 22 PTs without seeing improvement is almost assuredly a sign that you're review is poor - so focus on fixing that!

The BR advice is given frequently, rightfully so; however, what do we do AFTER? Surely a personal thing, but what's the best way of keeping track? Having a .doc with all your BR questions you answered incorrectly w/ explanations about the error/wrong answer choices, etc? And how should we re-review our mistakes? Redoing the questions after a certain amount of time, reviewing our notes?

I recently started doing a thorough review of my PTs and I want to make sure I'm utilizing that time efficiently. I've taken a number of PTs too and have seen minimal improvement (LG exception).

[Jeffort]

What I'm seeing from your post is that you're reviewing incorrectly, and reviewing your incorrect answers is pretty much what prep is all about.

You say that you go back and the right/wrong answers seem obvious - that's because you know what they are. It's really easy to convince yourself that you just made a stupid mistake on a question when you know you got it wrong and what the right answer is.

Start getting in the habit of underlining what you think makes an answer right/wrong. This allows you to go back and recreate your thought process, so you don't just say that it was a stupid mistake - you can figure out your actual mistake. The blind review method mentioned above is also a great drill to get better at the test.

Taking 22 PTs without seeing improvement is almost assuredly a sign that you're review is poor - so focus on fixing that!

The BR advice is given frequently, rightfully so; however, what do we do AFTER? Surely a personal thing, but what's the best way of keeping track? Having a .doc with all your BR questions you answered incorrectly w/ explanations about the error/wrong answer choices, etc? And how should we re-review our mistakes? Redoing the questions after a certain amount of time, reviewing our notes?

I recently started doing a thorough review of my PTs and I want to make sure I'm utilizing that time efficiently. I've taken a number of PTs too and have seen minimal improvement (LG exception).

Identify all of your specific mistakes in as much detail as possible, they highlight current weaknesses. Work doings things directed at improving things you are weak with that you discovered from review. What you specifically do depends on what your specific mistakes are. There are different solutions to different mistakes.

Step one is to figure out all the specific mistakes, then figure out ways to address them. It requires being very detailed in identifying each mistake. There is always more than just one reason behind why you get particular questions wrong, so you shouldn't be trying to minimize or simplify your mistakes into trivial things. Examine the EXACT thoughts you had in mind and reasons you specifically used to make decisions each step of the way through each question you missed. Basically, good review is a careful detailed autopsy reviewing every single step in your thought process you actually went through when you actually worked the question. What did you actually do step by step leading up to selecting your final answer? Examine the whole sequence of events to examine the process that lead you to a wrong answer and evaluate how you could have approached the question better. Examining the actual reasons in your head that are behind your decisions through each step is critical in order to unearth flawed reasoning and decision making processes you are using to solve questions.

It's not just about reviewing to understand why the correct answer is actually correct and why the wrong one you picked is actually wrong, more importantly, it's about figuring out why you thought the wrong answer you picked was correct and why you thought the correct answer was wrong and didn't select it instead. That is the crucial stuff to examine in order to figure out what to do next to improve. There are many different types of mistakes from careless reading errors to trouble understanding the underlying logic behind the question, and many in between, each is dealt with differently.

[Tyr]

What I'm seeing from your post is that you're reviewing incorrectly, and reviewing your incorrect answers is pretty much what prep is all about.

You say that you go back and the right/wrong answers seem obvious - that's because you know what they are. It's really easy to convince yourself that you just made a stupid mistake on a question when you know you got it wrong and what the right answer is.

Start getting in the habit of underlining what you think makes an answer right/wrong. This allows you to go back and recreate your thought process, so you don't just say that it was a stupid mistake - you can figure out your actual mistake. The blind review method mentioned above is also a great drill to get better at the test.

Taking 22 PTs without seeing improvement is almost assuredly a sign that you're review is poor - so focus on fixing that!

Great advice. Additionally, do you think that the OP taking that many PTs without a notable improvement could be a sign of lacking fundamentals, or perhaps the need for more drilling instead of taking a bunch of PTs?

[bp shinners]

What I'm seeing from your post is that you're reviewing incorrectly, and reviewing your incorrect answers is pretty much what prep is all about.

You say that you go back and the right/wrong answers seem obvious - that's because you know what they are. It's really easy to convince yourself that you just made a stupid mistake on a question when you know you got it wrong and what the right answer is.

Start getting in the habit of underlining what you think makes an answer right/wrong. This allows you to go back and recreate your thought process, so you don't just say that it was a stupid mistake - you can figure out your actual mistake. The blind review method mentioned above is also a great drill to get better at the test.

Taking 22 PTs without seeing improvement is almost assuredly a sign that you're review is poor - so focus on fixing that!

Great advice. Additionally, do you think that the OP taking that many PTs without a notable improvement could be a sign of lacking fundamentals, or perhaps the need for more drilling instead of taking a bunch of PTs?

Definitely, though scoring a 155 consistently suggests that he has a basic grasp of logic; just not a basic grasp of the way the test uses those constructs to create questions.