Beginning PrepTests Forum

[ChrisW]

I just finished the PS Bibles and am looking for ways to approach the preptests. I found 7Sage's Blind Review, and I'm going to do that for all the sections, but I was wondering if there were any other efficient methods out there?

[Pneumonia]

Blind review can be a bit excessive depending on how many questions you're missing. If you're in the 150's then sure, blind review, but if you're high 160's/170's then it's just gonna make you second guess yourself. This applies section by section too.

Take one first and come back with your score distribution for better advice.

[malleus discentium]

I just finished the PS Bibles and am looking for ways to approach the preptests. I found 7Sage's Blind Review, and I'm going to do that for all the sections, but I was wondering if there were any other efficient methods out there?

The point of taking full, timed PTs is to get timing and endurance down (as well as monitoring overall progress). You probably don't need to do more than about 20 of them for this purpose. Take them under as close to real conditions as possible (including the time of day you'll take the real test) to make them useful.

Now that you've finished the PS Bibles you're drilling with timed sections and question types, correct? You're not going straight to full PTs.

[Jeffort]

Yeah, don't rush into mainly doing timed PTs if you just finished learning the basics the first time and haven't yet done a lot of extensive skill/habits building focused drilling. Phase 2: drilling by type with lots of deep thorough review, is where most of the score improvement skills building magic happens, not from just doing a bunch of timed PTs after reading prep books.

How much actual practice working/drilling/reviewing LSAT questions have you done so far beyond doing the practice questions/games included in the PS Bibles?

[ChrisW]

I'm not taking full, timed preptests yet, just individual sections. I'm taking in September so I still have months of room to work with. I started my first section drills a couple days ago and found BR so useful that I consider myself fortunate to have found it this early in the game. I want to get the most out of each section, so I was wondering if there were any similar study methods out there that I could be using as well.

And thanks for the advice on taking actual preptests, I'll keep it in mind when I get that far.

[Jeffort]

It's best to drill by question/game type before transitioning into drilling with full sections. There are patterns and specific criteria and techniques/strategies for each different question type that you want to get really familiar with and good at applying properly. When you drill by Q type you get to see the patterns of common types of trap answers, common types of argument structures, flaws, etc. to build familiarity and skills with each common variation. Getting familiar with the commonly repeated flaws, types of arguments, types of trap answers, etc. per question type and best strategies/approaches for each specific type is one of the goals of focused drilling by type as well as to build the proper skills and habits for each specific type before adding in the extra challenges of full section format where you have to put everything together all at once having to remember which things to think about/steps to do Q by Q and manage bouncing from Q type to type as well as managing time. It's better to get good at each type of question before trying to master full section format performance.

Improving LSAT skills/abilities/score range is a step by step building process where you focus on building skills from the ground up in a structured way to build all the core skills to strong levels before focusing on the final end goal of putting all the skills together under full PT timed conditions or in full section format with mixed Q types. It's much more important to focus on building fundamental foundation skills and habits up to strong levels with all the question/game types before trying to get good at doing sections. There are lots of threads that discuss how to do drilling and reviewing properly for most effective use of prep time. Some of them are linked in the sticky threads.

Here is one where I describe the phases of prepping properly including drilling:
http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 3&start=22

For the full thread so you can see the posts before mine:
http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 6&t=224863


To figure which things to put more time into drilling and reviewing/studying again, do a full big picture comprehensive evaluation of your current strengths and weaknesses in as much detail as possible, then analyze that info to figure out which skills/Q types/logic type (cause and effect? conditional reasoning?)/section types to work on more/prioritize. Identifying your strengths and weaknesses is super important for making and following a good efficient and effective study plan/how to use of your prep time wisely. Taking one fresh fully timed PT soon would be useful for evaluating your current strengths and weaknesses. Take one and then thoroughly review the entire test, not just questions you got wrong. Review it very carefully to figure out which questions you got correct partly by luck, which ones you struggled with and got right, etc. so you can honestly determine your skill level/weaknesses.

Hope this is helpful.