June 2014 Retakers Forum

[jk148706]

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[jk148706]

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[akechi]

Sorry for the cross-post! But I would love the re-takers advise on this as well.

Hey all,

For those of you who like to categorize and catalog all of your LR misses / mistakes, how do you go about doing so? I have been using a really caveman-ish approach by simply typing up my mistakes in a single word file. For example, if I missed a question during my Cambridge Weaken packet drilling, I would write:

PT6-S4-Q10; Conclusion: Blah Blah; Premise: Blah Blah; Original Analysis: Blah Blah; Revised / Correct Analysis: Blah Blah; Answer Choices: Blah Blah.

However, this method is incredibly disorganized and does not really work all that well as a study tool. I have been doing this for a couple weeks and its incredibly difficult to see a pattern to my mistakes; instead, I just see a wall of text that I have to sift through in order to match up my mistakes to previous mistakes. I was hoping someone had a better method to keep track of one's mistakes in an organized and readable fashion. I have also tried organizing my mistakes per Mike Kim's suggestion of creating broad / general templates such as: 1) "Read it wrong" which encompasses, incorrectly IDing the conclusion, not understanding the reasoning, etc, 2) "Thought it wrong" 3) "Solved it wrong". However, even with these distinctions, I feel like merely typing these sub-divided mistakes into a single word file would still be an incredibly inefficient way to organize my mistakes.

Would anyone like to share their method for filing their list of mistakes?

[jmjm]

Sorry for the cross-post! But I would love the re-takers advise on this as well.

Hey all,

For those of you who like to categorize and catalog all of your LR misses / mistakes, how do you go about doing so? I have been using a really caveman-ish approach by simply typing up my mistakes in a single word file. For example, if I missed a question during my Cambridge Weaken packet drilling, I would write:

PT6-S4-Q10; Conclusion: Blah Blah; Premise: Blah Blah; Original Analysis: Blah Blah; Revised / Correct Analysis: Blah Blah; Answer Choices: Blah Blah.

However, this method is incredibly disorganized and does not really work all that well as a study tool. I have been doing this for a couple weeks and its incredibly difficult to see a pattern to my mistakes; instead, I just see a wall of text that I have to sift through in order to match up my mistakes to previous mistakes. I was hoping someone had a better method to keep track of one's mistakes in an organized and readable fashion. I have also tried organizing my mistakes per Mike Kim's suggestion of creating broad / general templates such as: 1) "Read it wrong" which encompasses, incorrectly IDing the conclusion, not understanding the reasoning, etc, 2) "Thought it wrong" 3) "Solved it wrong". However, even with these distinctions, I feel like merely typing these sub-divided mistakes into a single word file would still be an incredibly inefficient way to organize my mistakes.

Would anyone like to share their method for filing their list of mistakes?

I have a similar method with a few exceptions - (i) a 'why i missed it' comment that describes my thought process for getting that answer wrong, and (ii) a 'takeaway' which is what i should be doing in order to not make the same mistake again e.g. having a more robust pre-phrase or improved ability to discern between last two/three competing choices for elimination.
It's still a wall of text but i find that having these two categories compensates well for any inefficiencies.

[jmjm]

PT 66 LR2 Q23
is this one of the most softly supported question in recent lsats or am I missing something? I got the right answer by elimination but any support for the answer from 2nd speaker is all implied.

[rebexness]

These old pattern games, yuck.

[lurj]

Just finished PT 69 got 161

LR1 -5 (had to guess 5, went -1 on all questions attempted)
LG -4
RC-12 wtf wtf wtf
LR2 -5 (had to guess 5 went -2 on all questions attempted)

I really need some help with timing on LR. My accuracy level is good, I have been getting -0 to -1 on the first 20 questions (for this past week) but run out of time and guess the last 5 to 6, I just chose D . Tomorrow I am going to focus on LR section drills, I am going to try to complete the first 15 in 15 mins and see how that works. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to improve timing on LR?

Try doing the first 10 in 10 minutes. If you can do that easily, work up to 15 in 15. If you can work up to 20 in 20 youre golden. After I was able to reliably hit 20 in 20 I usually finish my LR sections with 5 or 6 minutes left.

[jk148706]

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[BaberhamLincoln]

I tried tweaking my RC lately.
The two changes I made aren't HUGE, but I have found that I have more time. I'm not seeing a huge score difference, but I am MUCH less stressed mid-test because of the two changes.
Want to hear if you guys do any of these things:

- I take less than a minute at the start of the section to write down how many questions are asked per passage. I start with the highest # questions. Like if the 3rd passage has 8 questions and the others have 7 or 6 (my PT last night), I do the third passage first. It might just be mental, but I find that I feel I've gotten more done quicker and have less far to go to finish.

- I try to make sure that the comparative passage is last. Not only because I tend to feel confident on these and I like them so they leave me in a good mood for the next section, but also because of this new strategy I have (and usually this doesn't interfere with the change above because the comparative reading usually has the least # questions to it): I will read passage A and, if I'm pressed for time, I will go through the questions and cross out things I know are wrong, or simply answer what I already know just from reading passage A. For instance, if one of the questions for the 2 passages is asking about something specifically in Passage A, I can answer that without reading Passage B. And I can go through and cross out things that I didn't see in Passage A when the question is something like "Which one of these techniques did BOTH authors use?" etc. Then I will read Passage B and finish the questions.


Thoughts? These two things combined make me feel much more in control. I have thought about playing with the idea of glancing at each passage quick at the start and starting with the topics I am most comfortable in (psychology, literature, etc) before going to the denser passages (usually the legal ones get a little long...)

[DaRascal]

PT38, S4-Q25

I don't think it's that hard of a question but the wording threw me off: "The claims made above are compatible with each of the following EXCEPT":

Should that be read as a Could Be True EXCEPT question? That's not how it registered in my mind when I read it.

[Learn_Live_Hope]

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[dasani13]

Another 163, PT 64

LR -7
LG -2
LR -3
RC -11 like wtf

6 questions away from my goal! Not sure if I should drill some more LR these last weeks or just PT/review as much as possible. I ran out of time and had to guess on a total of 7 LR questions without even reading them and the entire last passage, which had 8 questions.

[Learn_Live_Hope]

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[dd235]

I tried tweaking my RC lately.
The two changes I made aren't HUGE, but I have found that I have more time. I'm not seeing a huge score difference, but I am MUCH less stressed mid-test because of the two changes.
Want to hear if you guys do any of these things:

- I take less than a minute at the start of the section to write down how many questions are asked per passage. I start with the highest # questions. Like if the 3rd passage has 8 questions and the others have 7 or 6 (my PT last night), I do the third passage first. It might just be mental, but I find that I feel I've gotten more done quicker and have less far to go to finish.

- I try to make sure that the comparative passage is last. Not only because I tend to feel confident on these and I like them so they leave me in a good mood for the next section, but also because of this new strategy I have (and usually this doesn't interfere with the change above because the comparative reading usually has the least # questions to it): I will read passage A and, if I'm pressed for time, I will go through the questions and cross out things I know are wrong, or simply answer what I already know just from reading passage A. For instance, if one of the questions for the 2 passages is asking about something specifically in Passage A, I can answer that without reading Passage B. And I can go through and cross out things that I didn't see in Passage A when the question is something like "Which one of these techniques did BOTH authors use?" etc. Then I will read Passage B and finish the questions.


Thoughts? These two things combined make me feel much more in control. I have thought about playing with the idea of glancing at each passage quick at the start and starting with the topics I am most comfortable in (psychology, literature, etc) before going to the denser passages (usually the legal ones get a little long...)

Great advice!!!
As someone who is constantly struggling with time on RC, I am going to implement this strategy on my next PT to see if it works for me

[rebexness]

PT 42 tonight, untimed.
(By untimed, i mean i completely dicked around on my phone the entire time. Its probably a fairly representative score. ADHD extra time balanced by losing any sort of "in the zone" advantage.

LG: -1
LR 1: -3
RC: -3
LR 2: -2
Raw: 92
Score: 172

[Brian_Wildcat]

I've been lurking here because for some reason my password wasn't working but... here I am!!!

just took PT 62

RC -8
LR -6
LG -3 (my previous best LG was -10 so I got lucky. That or all the studying is paying off)
LR -3

Scaled score:166

[rebexness]

FYI date change deadline is 5/25

[dd235]

65.3.27

WTF!?!?! Definitely one of the most ridiculous/worst LSAT question I have encountered

[dasani13]

Starting 65 in a few.

[180kickflip]

Just finished PT57

LG-5
LR -4
LR-0
RC-1

Raw 91, scaled 171

Mauve Dinos killed me in LG. I got it all right, but it took forever+ I ended up running out of time + answering "c" from 19-23 after. Those were my only wrong answers. RC went way better than normal+ I finished the second LR with 5 mins left to review it. Gonna BR it now+maybe try to get to PT58 later today. I seem to be pretty consistent around 170 now (which I'd be more than happy with). My biggest fear is a time consuming Game like Dinos on test day =\

[dasani13]

Took PT 65 earlier today, 162.

LR -5
LG -3
RC -12 lol, it's getting worse
LR -5

6 questions short of my goal again. Out of my -10 in LR, 5 were because I ran out of time and the -3 in LG were because of that stupid last game. RC was just a mess.

[akechi]

Anyone willing to post their real-time run through of PT52-S1-Q10?

I understand why A is correct, but I was hoping someone would be able to point out a more efficient way to arrive at the correct answer. I chose "C" when I first encountered the question during my PT, then later corrected my answer choice to "A" during blind-review. When I first read the stimulus under time pressure, I instinctively tried to mentally diagram the argument because of the trigger words "until", "when", and "will". However, this just resulted in me becoming frustrated and anxious that I was taking so long on a Q#10 and ultimately chose C and moved on.

For those interested, this is how I diagrammed it in conditional logic during blind review:
Key: S = System; I = Plan Implemented; EE = Effectively Enforced; BNY: Before end of Next Year.

1. BNY -> ~S
2. ~S -> ~EE (I took the liberty of equating not effectively enforced and mass evasion)
Therefore:
1. I -> ~EE

Answer choice A gives us I -> BNY. Plugging that back into the original argument:

1. BNY -> ~S
2. ~S -> ~EE
(Assumption: I -> BNY)
Chained together we get: I -> BNY -> ~SS -> ~EE

Therefore:
I -> ~EE

[dasani13]

"It provides support for the conclusion of the argument."

"It qualifies the conclusion of the argument."

What's the difference? Why can't we assume that when something qualifies the conclusion of an argument, it supports it?

[dasani13]

Anyone willing to post their real-time run through of PT52-S1-Q10?

I understand why A is correct, but I was hoping someone would be able to point out a more efficient way to arrive at the correct answer. I chose "C" when I first encountered the question during my PT, then later corrected my answer choice to "A" during blind-review. When I first read the stimulus under time pressure, I instinctively tried to mentally diagram the argument because of the trigger words "until", "when", and "will". However, this just resulted in me becoming frustrated and anxious that I was taking so long on a Q#10 and ultimately chose C and moved on.

For those interested, this is how I diagrammed it in conditional logic during blind review:
Key: S = System; I = Plan Implemented; EE = Effectively Enforced; BNY: Before end of Next Year.

1. BNY -> ~S
2. ~S -> ~EE (I took the liberty of equating not effectively enforced and mass evasion)
Therefore:
1. I -> ~EE

Answer choice A gives us I -> BNY. Plugging that back into the original argument:

1. BNY -> ~S
2. ~S -> ~EE
(Assumption: I -> BNY)
Chained together we get: I -> BNY -> ~SS -> ~EE

Therefore:
I -> ~EE

Hey akechi, have you tried looking at this explanation? http://www.manhattanlsat.com/forums/q10 ... t6584.html

[Calbears123]

I swear the PTs in the 50's are WAY easier then the ones in the 60's