The Official September 2014 Study Group Forum

[mornincounselor]

Post removed.

[boris09]

you guys are a little more quiet today than usual...what am i supposed to do during my 15 minute PT break if I don't have anything new to read here?

[jk148706]

Hey guys! I'm back!

I went away for about 4 weeks to begin training for teaching. I am teaching four classes of English I to Freshman at my alma mater high school. Classes have been going on for a week and I am having a blast. The LSAT has been FAR from my mind. I'll probably postpone again and see where this teaching thing takes me. At this rate, I feel like I'll never get around to the LSAT. Then again, sometimes you just got to live a little.

Anyway....I'm not dead.

WALT!

[boris09]

With this last stretch coming up I decided I had to speed up the PT aspect, and so I'm going to be drilling on my off days, and if I have energy, after the test. Today is the first of hopefully 17 PT tests that I get through.

PT 55:

LR1: 16/25 (second test in a row where I do way under my average LR section in one of the two)
RC: 20/27
LG: 22/23
LR2: 20/25

160.

As I write my test, if I am stuck between two choices and end up picking one I always star the other choice to symbolize that this was my other option. In moments like these where I under-perform (imo), I like to calculate how many of those 'starred second-option-choices' were correct, so I could see how well I would have done if I made the correct choice. If this was the case, my results would be: LR1 20/25, RC 23/27, LG 22/23, LR2 23/25 for a grand total score of 167..aka my goal..

I'm not sure whether this is a frowned upon tactic, or whether this may perhaps be a helpful way of understanding what i need to improve on, but I definitely feel kinda down about the fact that I made so many mistakes on questions that I had down to two choices. I could only surmise that I do not know these specific question types well enough to have made the correct distinction. Will blind review tomorrow the two LR sections and see whether I actually understood the questions and made a mistake during the pressure/timing/distraction aspect of the test, or if I am just an idiot and need to drill more

[5618715218781]

Would anyone using Princeton Review's 2013 version(very few...probably) check
P.241 Game 3, Q6, the answer is D, but that is wrong, right? Need verification~~~

[sashafierce]

Where is LLH? She has such a calming presence, I can feel her positive vibes all the way in the Caribbean She needs to be more active ITT

I'm here. Attempting to study today…

Thank you for such sweet kind words.

How is your prep coming along?

Your welcome Prep is good, I was forced to take two days off but I'm back on the grind from today

[Gray]

.

[Colonel_funkadunk]

Where is LLH? She has such a calming presence, I can feel her positive vibes all the way in the Caribbean She needs to be more active ITT

I'm here. Attempting to study today…

Thank you for such sweet kind words.

How is your prep coming along?

Your welcome Prep is good, I was forced to take two days off but I'm back on the grind from today

I've had to take two days off as well from having my son this weekend. Hoping to get back at it soon.

[Superstaranonymous]

.

[mornincounselor]

Post removed.

[jmjm]

I'm not sure whether this is a frowned upon tactic, or whether this may perhaps be a helpful way of understanding what i need to improve on, but I definitely feel kinda down about the fact that I made so many mistakes on questions that I had down to two choices. I could only surmise that I do not know these specific question types well enough to have made the correct distinction.

i am not sure how not knowing specific question types well enough be the primary cause of you not picking the right answer, unless you barely know the question types. for example, a question type of most-supported as opposed to must-be-true will hardly be the reason for ruling out one answer choice amongst the last 2 remaining - only one of the last 2 remaining choices will pass the test for most-supported if the question stem asks for most-supported. on the other hand, if you have a must-be-true question as opposed to most-supported and you're down to 2 choices, you could have the wrong answer passing the muster for the most-supported question but not the asked must-be-true question.

[alexrodriguez]

Hey guys! I'm back!

I went away for about 4 weeks to begin training for teaching. I am teaching four classes of English I to Freshman at my alma mater high school. Classes have been going on for a week and I am having a blast. The LSAT has been FAR from my mind. I'll probably postpone again and see where this teaching thing takes me. At this rate, I feel like I'll never get around to the LSAT. Then again, sometimes you just got to live a little.

Anyway....I'm not dead.

WALT!

!!!!

The teaching thing will get old. You'll always be secretly desiring birds in the forest and A. Lesky's perspective on the greek tragedy.

[BJS]

Took PT 64 today. It felt really rough - so rough I skipped my experimental section - but the score is my second highest. Still not feeling good about the LSAT though. This was my fourth PT in five days and I definitely feel intellectually drained. I struggled to focus and finished all sections relatively late.

LR1 -1
LG -1
LR2 -2
RC -2

[Blockofcheese]

Just took my first official PT since my diagnostic test and went up 6 pts! Moved me right to the lower end of the median for schools I'm applying to. Hoping to get well over the top end of some $$, but after the last few weeks I've had (lots of time in a Dr office/hospital for some medical things), I will take it and do some happy celebrating. I kept telling myself "Just don't go down, just don't go down" and actually squealed when I saw I went up.

I had something weird happen during the test though. Both LG sections (one was the experimental) I did pretty well. However, on one of them I had damn near a meltdown because I forgot how to write out the types/felt like the questions/games were REALLY tough. I was convinced I would drop the bottom out of my test with this section. Forced my way through and eliminated answers until I was fairly confident and only straight guessed on one. Went -5.

For LR/RC I felt fairly confident, but they were by far my worst sections. One of the RC sections got me pretty tough, otherwise I was averaging -0 to -1 on each passage. LR...I'm going to go through later and figure out what happened (my brain wants a break).

Has anyone else had this inverse where they feel like the did horrible on a section and great on another only to find the opposite actually happened?

[mornincounselor]

Post removed.

[boris09]

I'm not sure whether this is a frowned upon tactic, or whether this may perhaps be a helpful way of understanding what i need to improve on, but I definitely feel kinda down about the fact that I made so many mistakes on questions that I had down to two choices. I could only surmise that I do not know these specific question types well enough to have made the correct distinction.

i am not sure how not knowing specific question types well enough be the primary cause of you not picking the right answer, unless you barely know the question types. for example, a question type of most-supported as opposed to must-be-true will hardly be the reason for ruling out one answer choice amongst the last 2 remaining - only one of the last 2 remaining choices will pass the test for most-supported if the question stem asks for most-supported. on the other hand, if you have a must-be-true question as opposed to most-supported and you're down to 2 choices, you could have the wrong answer passing the muster for the most-supported question but not the asked must-be-true question.

Perhaps i phrased my thoughts a little oddly. I didn't actually mean that me not knowing the specific type led me to picking the incorrect choice, but rather that i didn't have enough exposure drilling those types of questions. I think this might be a possible explanation because i've noticed that the more i've drilled certain questions, the more i have an idea of what to look for in the stimulus, and common phrasing of incorrect answers

[boris09]

I do the same thing actually - just make sure when you review you figure out why your answer was not correct, but also think about what made you choose it, and what made you not choose the correct one. More often than not (in my case, anyway), there will be something glaringly wrong about your answer that you just completely missed. These mistakes are good, in a sense; you'll get better at finding the tricky wording they use in wrong answer choices.

Thank you for the advice! I'll definitely try to implement during my blind review today

[Learn_Live_Hope]

I just realized how Powerscore teaches you to attack the conclusion in weaken questions, while Manhattan teaches you to attack the argument, and not the conclusion….

Had to share

[Gray]

.

[Learn_Live_Hope]

Has anyone else had this inverse where they feel like the did horrible on a section and great on another only to find the opposite actually happened?

Oh god yes. I had one where the first half of the test felt so bad that I almost threw in the towel, and I ended up actually getting -0 on both of the first two sections. It was unexpected.

Anyways, took PT 63 today, went:
LR1: - 0
LG: -1 ... Game 3 (car types) was killer for me. I spent 5 minutes total on the first two games and just got really stumped by a couple of questions in 3. When I got the answers by POE, and realized which one was right, it was like "ohhhhh that should have been easier"
LR2: -2 that question about the cops getting an award? WTF was that. I need to find an explanation.
RC: -2

So it was -5 for 175. It was one of those tests where no raw score gets you a 176, so...

None of my mistakes were silly errors, just tough questions that I got wrong, although for 2 of them, my second choice was the right answer.

I've realized that my raw score is very very consistent. Last week's debacle aside, I almost always get exactly 5 wrong. Weird.


I'm going to go make pizza now.

Great work!

[Colonel_funkadunk]

I just realized how Powerscore teaches you to attack the conclusion in weaken questions, while Manhattan teaches you to attack the argument, and not the conclusion….

Had to share

Attacking the argument seems more credited. I've had quite a few I came across where TCR didn't affect the conclusion just the reasoning jumping from premise to conclusion.

[Colonel_funkadunk]

I'm going to go make pizza now.

What kind?

also 175 is way legit.

[Learn_Live_Hope]

I just realized how Powerscore teaches you to attack the conclusion in weaken questions, while Manhattan teaches you to attack the argument, and not the conclusion….

Had to share

Attacking the argument seems more credited. I've had quite a few I came across where TCR didn't affect the conclusion just the reasoning jumping from premise to conclusion.

They do say look for the answer that attacks the way the author arrived at the conclusion…so that would be the same as attacking the argument. I think I might have misread it at first….

[jmjm]

I'm not sure whether this is a frowned upon tactic, or whether this may perhaps be a helpful way of understanding what i need to improve on, but I definitely feel kinda down about the fact that I made so many mistakes on questions that I had down to two choices. I could only surmise that I do not know these specific question types well enough to have made the correct distinction.

i am not sure how not knowing specific question types well enough be the primary cause of you not picking the right answer, unless you barely know the question types. for example, a question type of most-supported as opposed to must-be-true will hardly be the reason for ruling out one answer choice amongst the last 2 remaining - only one of the last 2 remaining choices will pass the test for most-supported if the question stem asks for most-supported. on the other hand, if you have a must-be-true question as opposed to most-supported and you're down to 2 choices, you could have the wrong answer passing the muster for the most-supported question but not the asked must-be-true question.

Perhaps i phrased my thoughts a little oddly. I didn't actually mean that me not knowing the specific type led me to picking the incorrect choice, but rather that i didn't have enough exposure drilling those types of questions. I think this might be a possible explanation because i've noticed that the more i've drilled certain questions, the more i have an idea of what to look for in the stimulus, and common phrasing of incorrect answers

imo what's most important to know is that there is always exactly one answer that will answer the question stem to any extent.

[rwe13]

PT 58: 175-New personal best

LR: -4
LG: -1
RC: -1

First test actually bubbling in answers and using an analog watch, so I'm glad my score didn't suffer and even happier that LR was consistent (-2 in each).