The Official December 2014 Study Group Forum

hillz · Post by **hillz** » Fri Nov 14, 2014 4:49 pm

sfoglia wrote:
hillz wrote: It's nice to hear that someone else didn't do crazy amounts of PTs. I drilled everything (def not like Hand in that I had to work on both my RC and LR) but I did get pretty confident with LG and I think that's what helped me a lot on test day.
I'm in such a weird spot, because I was PTing consistently at 173, upward to 178 for the entire month before. I think I did like 7 PTs or something that were at target score. IDK WTF happened on test day, but I'm concerned it has nothing to do with competence, which leaves me pretty helpless.

I truly believe that you'll do so well when you take again. Nerves/outside factors (like the crazy heat at your testing center) can have a huge impact on test day. You put in the time before and you were PTing at your goal, so don't worry. Keep practicing, don't overdo it, work on focus and meditation to soothe nerves, and you'll be golden. I believe in you, sfogs!

secadc11 · Post by **secadc11** » Fri Nov 14, 2014 4:51 pm

Jgoods wrote:
secadc11 wrote:
nlee10 wrote:
Dirigo wrote:How the heck is it even possible to complete RC in 25 mins??!
Carefully.
Haha you guys are great.

I will admit that the hardcore science passages slow me down now and then! They tend not to mesh well with my seriously liberal arts background.
yeah, takes him a whole 28 minutes instead...

Actually, I am female - I know, the username is not helpful.

And I'd even say it could take a solid 30 for those ones!

sfoglia · Post by **sfoglia** » Fri Nov 14, 2014 4:59 pm

hillz wrote:
sfoglia wrote:
hillz wrote: It's nice to hear that someone else didn't do crazy amounts of PTs. I drilled everything (def not like Hand in that I had to work on both my RC and LR) but I did get pretty confident with LG and I think that's what helped me a lot on test day.
I'm in such a weird spot, because I was PTing consistently at 173, upward to 178 for the entire month before. I think I did like 7 PTs or something that were at target score. IDK WTF happened on test day, but I'm concerned it has nothing to do with competence, which leaves me pretty helpless.
I truly believe that you'll do so well when you take again. Nerves/outside factors (like the crazy heat at your testing center) can have a huge impact on test day. You put in the time before and you were PTing at your goal, so don't worry. Keep practicing, don't overdo it, work on focus and meditation to soothe nerves, and you'll be golden. I believe in you, sfogs!

Aww, thank you so much, hillz. Hoping to do as well as you did this time around!

sfoglia · Post by **sfoglia** » Fri Nov 14, 2014 5:00 pm

GreenTee wrote:
sfoglia wrote:
GreenTee wrote: I never actually write any words on the page.
I usually write a few words when I've made some connection I want to be sure to retain.

But, I distracted myself by drawing a figure for one of the Sept. figures. I started to draw a clock, went "WTF am I doing, I never draw things?!" went to erase it, decided instead to turn my pencil over and scratch it out, then got annoyed by how sloppy it looked.
Fogs, this is hilarious. I actually did the exact same thing. I don't even remember what passage that was, but I remember drawing a clock, being confused about why I was drawing a clock, and trying to scratch it out.

Test day brain is a strange place to be.

Are you kidding? That's so insane! From where in the world did that impulse come? I wonder if there's a bunch of us. Some sort of hidden message in the passage that drove us to it.

Rigo · Post by **Rigo** » Fri Nov 14, 2014 5:05 pm

secadc11 · Post by **secadc11** » Fri Nov 14, 2014 5:10 pm

Dirigo wrote:
nlee10 wrote:
Dirigo wrote:How the heck is it even possible to complete RC in 25 mins??!
Carefully.
I may be a dummy, but I don't get the joke.

From what I can tell, all signs point to you not being a dummy.

I interpreted the joke as a version of the old corny types of 'Very Carefully' jokes such as:

"How do porcupines mate?"

or

"How does a dentist clean an alligator's teeth?"

etc. etc.

mornincounselor · Post by **mornincounselor** » Fri Nov 14, 2014 5:10 pm

Post removed.

secadc11 · Post by **secadc11** » Fri Nov 14, 2014 5:12 pm

mornincounselor wrote:I know I tend to pop in with comments and then never check back in to see if they were at all helpful, but I do hope at least some of there are.

Here's an insight I just came to.

By drilling LR packets in order of difficulty, I find that I tend to rush through those initial level one questions. That's fine during drilling because those questions are generally pretty obvious. But, I think I tend to continue this habit when I do full PTs. I rush through the first ~10 questions in the same way I would those level ones, but many questions in the first 10 are much trickier than those level ones. This results in way too many misses on easy questions because of this tendency to rush.

I'm not sure what the take away is. Maybe to drill with full sections as a supplement to Cambridge, maybe one shouldn't rush through level one questions, or one should start with level twos, or perhaps one should scramble the questions when drilling.

Wow I have actually been thinking about this same thing a lot lately as I'm using the packets for the first time. I've thought about cutting them all up and removing the #s and shuffling them ... but that is just such a ridiculous amount of menial work.

Shakawkaw · Post by **Shakawkaw** » Fri Nov 14, 2014 5:17 pm

mornincounselor wrote:I know I tend to pop in with comments and then never check back in to see if they were at all helpful, but I do hope at least some of there are.

Here's an insight I just came to.

By drilling LR packets in order of difficulty, I find that I tend to rush through those initial level one questions. That's fine during drilling because those questions are generally pretty obvious. But, I think I tend to continue this habit when I do full PTs. I rush through the first ~10 questions in the same way I would those level ones, but many questions in the first 10 are much trickier than those level ones. This results in way too many misses on easy questions because of this tendency to rush.

I'm not sure what the take away is. Maybe to drill with full sections as a supplement to Cambridge, maybe one shouldn't rush through level one questions, or one should start with level twos, or perhaps one should scramble the questions when drilling.

Hey MC - I've had this problem too, but found that in order to check myself against rushing, I make sure that I circle qualifiers/quantifiers or strong/weak language in the stim so I don't make silly mistakes when assessing the CR vs the wrong ones. It's helped for sure. I have also found it useful to start working backwards (may be weird, but it works for me). What I mean by this is that by the time I'm in middle territory (which I find is often where the trickier questions are) I jump to #25/26 and work backwards from there. Might help keep you on your toes, if you want to try that.

ETA - how do you guys BR RC?

Rigo · Post by **Rigo** » Fri Nov 14, 2014 5:21 pm

nlee10 · Post by **nlee10** » Fri Nov 14, 2014 5:27 pm

haha, not really a joke.
It's something my brother would reply anytime I asked a question.

portmanteaux · Post by **portmanteaux** » Fri Nov 14, 2014 5:44 pm

Shakawkaw wrote:
mornincounselor wrote:I know I tend to pop in with comments and then never check back in to see if they were at all helpful, but I do hope at least some of there are.

Here's an insight I just came to.

By drilling LR packets in order of difficulty, I find that I tend to rush through those initial level one questions. That's fine during drilling because those questions are generally pretty obvious. But, I think I tend to continue this habit when I do full PTs. I rush through the first ~10 questions in the same way I would those level ones, but many questions in the first 10 are much trickier than those level ones. This results in way too many misses on easy questions because of this tendency to rush.

I'm not sure what the take away is. Maybe to drill with full sections as a supplement to Cambridge, maybe one shouldn't rush through level one questions, or one should start with level twos, or perhaps one should scramble the questions when drilling.
Hey MC - I've had this problem too, but found that in order to check myself against rushing, I make sure that I circle qualifiers/quantifiers or strong/weak language in the stim so I don't make silly mistakes when assessing the CR vs the wrong ones. It's helped for sure. I have also found it useful to start working backwards (may be weird, but it works for me). What I mean by this is that by the time I'm in middle territory (which I find is often where the trickier questions are) I jump to #25/26 and work backwards from there. Might help keep you on your toes, if you want to try that.

ETA - how do you guys BR RC?

I usually re-read the passage and think about the main point and reasoning structure. Then just go through questions I marked as unsure. I usually find some connections that I missed before just from reading too quickly/ not being able to absorb everything.

mist4bison · Post by **mist4bison** » Fri Nov 14, 2014 5:47 pm

portmanteaux · Post by **portmanteaux** » Fri Nov 14, 2014 5:50 pm

Took a few days off because I was getting a little discouraged.
Took PT 68 this morning
RC: -4 --This is an improvement for me, but I got slowed down by Q.10 which asked for an analogy, and I was comparing the wrong factors! I've made this error a few times in RC--not reading the question stem carefully enough.
LR: -1
LR: -3
LG: -6 -- I got slowed down by the last 2 games, and got 4 wrong in the last game.

How are people overcoming the increased difficulty of the newer logic games? I was going -0/-1 pretty consistently in the older tests.

Shakawkaw · Post by **Shakawkaw** » Fri Nov 14, 2014 5:57 pm

Thanks for the RC BR tips, mist and port. I find it hard to re-read the passage without sticking to initial mistakes I carried through re: interpretation or details. Maybe this is because I am lazy, or dumb, or both. Haven't decided yet. Looks like it'll be suicide drilling this weekend.

Shakawkaw · Post by **Shakawkaw** » Fri Nov 14, 2014 5:59 pm

portmanteaux wrote:Took a few days off because I was getting a little discouraged.
Took PT 68 this morning
RC: -4 --This is an improvement for me, but I got slowed down by Q.10 which asked for an analogy, and I was comparing the wrong factors! I've made this error a few times in RC--not reading the question stem carefully enough.
LR: -1
LR: -3
LG: -6 -- I got slowed down by the last 2 games, and got 4 wrong in the last game.

How are people overcoming the increased difficulty of the newer logic games? I was going -0/-1 pretty consistently in the older tests.

For newer games, I went back through newer tests I did and got more q's wrong than I should have, or just games I spent a lot of time on. I would redo these until I got everything correct and was fast (after watching JY's videos, of course). This helped get comfortable with the nuances between older and newer games. The equivocation questions still suck up a lot of time, depending on the game. I take JY's advice of skipping it and coming back to it later.

mist4bison · Post by **mist4bison** » Fri Nov 14, 2014 6:02 pm

portmanteaux · Post by **portmanteaux** » Fri Nov 14, 2014 6:07 pm

mist4bison wrote:
Shakawkaw wrote:Thanks for the RC BR tips, mist and port. I find it hard to re-read the passage without sticking to initial mistakes I carried through re: interpretation or details. Maybe this is because I am lazy, or dumb, or both. Haven't decided yet. Looks like it'll be suicide drilling this weekend.
Haha we're all in it for the suicide drills then. Yippee.

If you tend to stick to initial mistakes, I'd definitely suggest writing notes for why everything is wrong. It takes time and sounds superfluous, but it really helps me spot misinterpretations.

I agree! It also helps if you highlight/indicate the relevant portions of the passage that would have helped you select the correct answer. Also, for passages that I found to be particularly difficult, I review those notes the next day which helps to reinforce everything.

schmelling · Post by **schmelling** » Fri Nov 14, 2014 6:08 pm

Post removed.

Rigo · Post by **Rigo** » Fri Nov 14, 2014 6:14 pm

schmelling · Post by **schmelling** » Fri Nov 14, 2014 6:27 pm

Post removed.

nlee10 · Post by **nlee10** » Fri Nov 14, 2014 6:28 pm

Dirigo wrote:Just did a LR section (first full section in awhile cuz lazy) Missed 3 questions, but I was really happy with my timing. I pushed myself and did the first 10 in under 10 mins and first 15 in under 15 mins.
Finished the section in 30:30.

ETA: LOLOLOLOL my post is funny considering schmelly's post.

LOL. But awesome timing!

sashafierce · Post by **sashafierce** » Fri Nov 14, 2014 6:29 pm

secadc11 wrote:
mornincounselor wrote:I know I tend to pop in with comments and then never check back in to see if they were at all helpful, but I do hope at least some of there are.

Here's an insight I just came to.

By drilling LR packets in order of difficulty, I find that I tend to rush through those initial level one questions. That's fine during drilling because those questions are generally pretty obvious. But, I think I tend to continue this habit when I do full PTs. I rush through the first ~10 questions in the same way I would those level ones, but many questions in the first 10 are much trickier than those level ones. This results in way too many misses on easy questions because of this tendency to rush.

I'm not sure what the take away is. Maybe to drill with full sections as a supplement to Cambridge, maybe one shouldn't rush through level one questions, or one should start with level twos, or perhaps one should scramble the questions when drilling.
Wow I have actually been thinking about this same thing a lot lately as I'm using the packets for the first time. I've thought about cutting them all up and removing the #s and shuffling them ... but that is just such a ridiculous amount of menial work.

FYI Jeffort told me that the TLS 15 in 15 mins is not a good strategy since the test makers changed their question difficulty distribution system sometime in the past few years (I think he said the past 3 years but I'm not sure). Basically they have started placing harder questions in the first 10 questions and people who rush to meet the 10 in 10 or 15 in 15 benchmark tend to suffer. Because of that I don't follow that rule anymore, I just try to leave 5-10 mins for the last 5 questions, this has been working tremendously for me, I literally haven't missed a question in the first 15 questions in forever.

Rigo · Post by **Rigo** » Fri Nov 14, 2014 6:30 pm

Shakawkaw · Post by **Shakawkaw** » Fri Nov 14, 2014 6:34 pm

Dirigo wrote:
schmelling wrote:
Dirigo wrote:Just did a LR section (first full section in awhile cuz lazy) Missed 3 questions, but I was really happy with my timing. I pushed myself and did the first 10 in under 10 mins and first 15 in under 15 mins.
Finished the section in 30:30.
ETA: LOLOLOLOL my post is funny considering schmelly's post.
hahaha
always use your full 35! Do that and you're on your way to a cool 180 rigo
Yeah I really need to push myself though or else I am starved for time because I dawdle like a dummy.
I have 3 weeks to find a nice rhythm.

Plenty of time!

ETA - which PT was your LR section from, Rigo?