Long story short: I moved my test date from September to December. I was scoring in the high/low 150s/160s. RC was my worst section.
I, however, since the time I was prepping during this past summer, have been getting better and better. I’m around -2/-4 for LR, -3 for LG, and very recently, I’ve been going -4 (down from -7) for the RC sections I’ve taken.
A few things, though.
First, I haven’t practiced LR/LG in a while (school has started and I’ve been focusing on RC). Are these skills really easy to lose or is it easy to build rust and not perform optimally after about a week or two?
Secondly, these have all been taken independently. I know putting it all together is a different beast but just wanted to represent those scores correctly for you guys. Also, for RC, I’ve been tackling those per passage. So, I’d do a passage before I go to bed, two the next day and maybe one later that night (and I’d go perfect on two passages and -2 on the two other ones). I’m still nowhere near confident in my RC skills and don’t know if this is just a temporary improvement, and I also don’t want to lose the skills I’ve honed for LR/LG by focusing too much on just RC as I’ve stated before.
Does anyone have ANY advice on how I should structure my study schedule for the December test? Should I start again? I don’t want to peak too early in like mid-October or something (is this a bad thing?) I was thinking of taking a PT (one I’ve never seen before) under strict timing conditions, seeing where exactly I’m at, and then depending on what my worst section is, going from there. Is this a good idea/make sense?
I guess I’m also having a hard time truly gauging how much I’ve improved and if it’s just recently “clicked” or if it’s something else (?)
Any advice appreciated!
I CAN SMELL THE 170+!! Forum
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msp8
- Posts: 395
- Joined: Wed Mar 19, 2014 3:59 pm
Re: I CAN SMELL THE 170+!!
Well, I'm in a similar boat. I wrote out my planned schedule in the Dec 2014 thread.
The gist is similar to what you've concluded. Take a PT, or a few PTs, to determine where you're at. If you feel you have a solid grasp of the fundamentals of it all, then do it under strict timed conditions, in one go. Then do a heavy blind review process. You should aim to do exceedingly well on this front. If you struggle in the blind review, mark where you've struggled and determine why you've struggled there. After you finish the blind review, go into a heavy review process and thoroughly understand where and why you've struggled.
Then drill those question types hard -- the ones where you struggled.
As for peaking too early -- no idea. Haven't taken the test, so not sure if there is such a thing. For me, I'm looking to be testing at my objective range by early-mid October, and then refining everything and making slight, incremental improvements/maintaining my level through November (also because I won't have much time in November to study), mainly just taking 2 PTs a week through Nov to maintain.
The gist is similar to what you've concluded. Take a PT, or a few PTs, to determine where you're at. If you feel you have a solid grasp of the fundamentals of it all, then do it under strict timed conditions, in one go. Then do a heavy blind review process. You should aim to do exceedingly well on this front. If you struggle in the blind review, mark where you've struggled and determine why you've struggled there. After you finish the blind review, go into a heavy review process and thoroughly understand where and why you've struggled.
Then drill those question types hard -- the ones where you struggled.
As for peaking too early -- no idea. Haven't taken the test, so not sure if there is such a thing. For me, I'm looking to be testing at my objective range by early-mid October, and then refining everything and making slight, incremental improvements/maintaining my level through November (also because I won't have much time in November to study), mainly just taking 2 PTs a week through Nov to maintain.
