Just curious how long everyone spends on reviewing Forum

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87mm

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Just curious how long everyone spends on reviewing

Post by 87mm » Wed Apr 15, 2015 10:53 pm

I've been prepping for the LSAT for some time and have made noticeable progress. I believe my initial diagnostic was in the mid to lower 140s (never experienced a test like this before had little prep). I actually did fairly well on the logic games but LR and RC were my downfalls. Im now hovering closer to 160. My overall process the last few months was slower paced going through the different bibles and trying to conceptualize everything. The last month I've kicked it up to ~2-5 hours/day doing a mix of drilling and timed sections.

Right now the process is: marking difficult ones while I take the section, redoing those after time and trying to eliminate other choices, check answers, and reviewing the answers I got wrong. I feel that this process is reasonable effective, but I am not sure if results are showing yet as my LR sections range from -5 to -9.

I could easily spend up to an hour or two per section on the review and redo process. Is this typical for everyone? I feel I should be "getting more done" in that amount of time.

In addition to that, I scan and cut out the questions i find difficult and get wrong and save them for later like a flash card. I review them on occasion but I will take them with me on my week vacation coming soon.

My LG are fairly solid. Outside of a few games that are completely out of nowhere for me, I average -3-4 a section. Usually small dumb mistakes (such as having my diagram right and the answer in my head but misreading the answers).

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lollsat

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Re: Just curious how long everyone spends on reviewing

Post by lollsat » Thu Apr 16, 2015 12:48 am

Wow. Everything word for word is exactly what I'm doing and what I'm going through. I cut them out for later just like you. So far have been -5 to -7 on LR though I've only done about 5 timed LR sections for a week thus far. It takes me like 40+ minutes for a section. How have you been with time, I'm hoping with more experience with timed sections my timing will get better.
Oh and to answer your question: I think BR for the questions I get wrong is really the key because I'm trying to understand the questions, my thought process, and any patterns I can find. So while it does take a little while, I consider it central to the study process.

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gamerish

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Jeffort

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Re: Just curious how long everyone spends on reviewing

Post by Jeffort » Thu Apr 16, 2015 3:24 am

Proper deep thorough review so that you really learn significant actionable things from questions you've attempted deserves to be a significant amount of your prep time since it's the part of the prep process that's most helpful for identifying weaknesses and building your skills to improve your score range.

Don't shortchange review time in favor of churning and burning through more questions. Effective and efficient LSAT prep should put a lot more focus and priority on quality of prep time/learning the most you can from each question you attempt than on maximizing the volume of questions you attempt through drilling/PT's/timed sections. Focusing on drilling more questions per study session to feel like you did more/get a false sense of accomplishment at the cost of sacrificing doing deep thorough review of questions you attempt is inefficient and wasteful of materials and prep time since doing the churn and burn routine is basically just playing 'pin the tail on the donkey' over and over without spending enough/much time doing specific directed things aimed at trying to get better at actually doing it accurately and efficiently.

In terms of reviewing full PTs, it should take around 2 to 3 times as much time to properly and thoroughly review it as it takes to take the PT timed, so 5-6 hours for reviewing a single PT is on the light side unless you're currently scoring in the low/mid 170s or higher range already.

Not spending enough time reviewing thoroughly and deeply is a common prep mistake/pitfall that causes people to waste materials and have long periods of time where their score range doesn't progress much and/or fluctuates a lot from PT to PT and/or they progress to a plateau and then get stuck there but keep plowing through lots more PTs for many more weeks/months.

Most of the score increasing magic comes from learning through deep review and taking proactive measures to address all the various weaknesses, mistakes, LSAT knowledge gaps, etc. you figure out by doing deep review of all questions you attempt. Not spending enough time reviewing is a big prep mistake and you really cannot spent too much time reviewing unless you go way off on tangents that aren't directly applicable to improving your LSAT skills/abilities such as spending lots of time compiling statistical charts about things like how often different subject matter types pop up in LR arguments or other fairly useless for skills building LSAT trivia.

87mm

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Re: Just curious how long everyone spends on reviewing

Post by 87mm » Thu Apr 16, 2015 7:48 am

lollsat wrote:Wow. Everything word for word is exactly what I'm doing and what I'm going through. I cut them out for later just like you. So far have been -5 to -7 on LR though I've only done about 5 timed LR sections for a week thus far. It takes me like 40+ minutes for a section. How have you been with time, I'm hoping with more experience with timed sections my timing will get better.
Oh and to answer your question: I think BR for the questions I get wrong is really the key because I'm trying to understand the questions, my thought process, and any patterns I can find. So while it does take a little while, I consider it central to the study process.
My timing hasnt been too bad. I can finish a section in 35 minutes. There are usually 1-2 questions that I have to rush more than I would like (The parallel structure and principle questions mainly). Lately, I feel I've been too focused on the LSAT and began to let my mind wander during practice. Heck, I nearly fell asleep yesterday doing a section. I may take it easy for a day or two to reset the brain.

Side note: I think working out, although very good to do to help keep you sharp, is very detrimental if you do heavy/intense exercise (heavy lifts, HIIT, crossfit etc...). You are so burned out after the workout you cant think.

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ltowns1

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Re: Just curious how long everyone spends on reviewing

Post by ltowns1 » Thu Apr 16, 2015 8:22 am

87mm wrote:
lollsat wrote:Wow. Everything word for word is exactly what I'm doing and what I'm going through. I cut them out for later just like you. So far have been -5 to -7 on LR though I've only done about 5 timed LR sections for a week thus far. It takes me like 40+ minutes for a section. How have you been with time, I'm hoping with more experience with timed sections my timing will get better.
Oh and to answer your question: I think BR for the questions I get wrong is really the key because I'm trying to understand the questions, my thought process, and any patterns I can find. So while it does take a little while, I consider it central to the study process.
My timing hasnt been too bad. I can finish a section in 35 minutes. There are usually 1-2 questions that I have to rush more than I would like (The parallel structure and principle questions mainly). Lately, I feel I've been too focused on the LSAT and began to let my mind wander during practice. Heck, I nearly fell asleep yesterday doing a section. I may take it easy for a day or two to reset the brain.

Side note: I think working out, although very good to do to help keep you sharp, is very detrimental if you do heavy/intense exercise (heavy lifts, HIIT, crossfit etc...). You are so burned out after the workout you cant think.

LISTEN TO JEFFORT...THAT IS IT LOL

Blueprint Ben

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Re: Just curious how long everyone spends on reviewing

Post by Blueprint Ben » Fri Apr 17, 2015 5:56 pm

Jeffort wrote:
In terms of reviewing full PTs, it should take around 2 to 3 times as much time to properly and thoroughly review it as it takes to take the PT timed, so 5-6 hours for reviewing a single PT is on the light side unless you're currently scoring in the low/mid 170s or higher range already.
Every word in Jeffort's post is gold, and you should listen to all of it. It's true that the most common prep mistake is to prioritize simply getting through material over proper review. I wanted to especially emphasize the point quoted above, which is that you should expect to spend much, much longer reviewing a PT than you spend taking it. I think 2-3 times is an appropriate estimate, and in my experience most students do not spend anywhere near that long on their review.

What do you do in all that time? First of all, I think it's essential to review every question on the test--not just the questions you circled for review, or the ones you found difficult. I think everyone's goal for blind review should be to score a -0 180. It might seem unrealistic, and of course it may not always (or ever) happen that way, but that should be your goal. Aim to spend enough time with every question that you can be 100% confident that you have the correct answer. That way, when you go back to score the test, you won't be able to attribute any mistakes to things like "I misread a rule" or "I misunderstood the stimulus" or any kind of 'carelessness' problem. When you do catch those errors, don't just tell yourself not to be careless anymore. Or to "read more closely," or something like that. Actually try to identify the reason why you made the mistake you did in the context of the section. Address those errors in terms of process, whenever possible. And write all of those observations down. If you missed a crucial word in the stimulus, figure out what you were focusing on when you should have been making note of that crucial word. Generalize the problem, and correct the process that led you to the wrong answer.

There's so much you can learn from properly reviewing a PT, that you're pretty much just wasting your time if you take one, score it, and then move on to the next. The "churn and burn" method doesn't work. So don't think you're necessarily making more progress by getting through more material. The time when you actually make progress is during review. Don't skimp on it.

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