The Official June 2015 Study Group Forum

Li'l Sebastian · Post by **Li'l Sebastian** » Thu May 28, 2015 5:52 pm

zacboro wrote:Just finished PT 27 and it went well! Congrats on the RC improvement Jackel, I've also been seeing an improvement. Maybe good RC karma is in the air lol. And to everyone else keep prepping! We're getting so close!!

I just want you to know you're my favorite poster in this forum.

JDman · Post by **JDman** » Thu May 28, 2015 5:55 pm

Anyone taking Testmasters?

gamerish · Post by **gamerish** » Thu May 28, 2015 8:04 pm

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JackelJ · Post by **JackelJ** » Thu May 28, 2015 8:36 pm

gamerish wrote:How did you guys get over the difficulty hump going from level 1 and 2 LR questions to level 3 and 4 (if you used the Cambridge packet's difficultly classifications)?

I choose TCR well over 90% of the time on level 2 questions, for example, but go up one difficulty level to 3 and that goes down to ~50%, often times even less than that.

I know more drilling is always TCR but I always drill a significant proportion of any question type's level 1 and 2 questions before moving on to the level 3s and 4s and yet my odds of choosing the right answer are still dismal.

How are you drilling? Is it timed or untimed and do you just pick the answer that sounds the best or do you eliminate all the wrong answer choices and (think) you really choose the correct answer?

gamerish · Post by **gamerish** » Thu May 28, 2015 8:47 pm

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buckiguy_sucks · Post by **buckiguy_sucks** » Thu May 28, 2015 8:53 pm

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179orBust · Post by **179orBust** » Thu May 28, 2015 9:30 pm

Gamerish: The difficulty levels in the Cambridge packets are totally subjective; there are times when a level 4 question seems easy for me and other times when a level 2 seems pretty difficult. When confronted with an "easy" level 4 question, I would sit there staring at the question afraid that I was missing something. That's why I hate that the questions are separated by difficulty levels. Some people will find a certain question to be really difficult whereas others will find that same question really easy. My guess is that you're going into the level 3 and 4 questions with a defeatist attitude and that's why you're getting a lot of them wrong. Ask a friend to mix around the questions for you and I can almost promise you that your percentage of correct answers will improve. If I remember correctly, you were scoring 165+ on your recent practice tests, and if you're 50% correct response rate on 3's and 4's carried over to those practice tests there's just no way you could have achieved that kind of score. That's why I'm pretty confident that my presumption above is correct.

I know many people here advocate drilling untimed, however, I found that drilling timed has helped me immensely. When I drilled untimed, I would get around 95-97% correct. This gave me a false sense of security + it didn't convert to timed practice tests where I typically went -4 per section. I think the problem with drilling untimed is that I, like you, brute forced my way through the answer choices. I got these correct, but I was developing bad habits since there's no way you can do this on a timed practice test. Now, I take out a stopwatch and drill each question timed, and before looking at the correct answer, I'll do it again untimed. If I stick with my initial answer choice on the second time doing the question and get it correct, I know that I've done a good job. If I switch my answer the second time and that ends up being the correct answer, it's easy to see where I went wrong the first time and it makes it easier to fix my mistakes. Again, this is just the way I go about my drilling, I know others will disagree with this approach.

On an unrelated note, my friend brought up a good point and said that I should probably change my tar. He said most people on this forum are Democrats/ Liberals and when they see a picture of Ted Cruz they're like: "Why the fuck should I answer this crazy right-winger"? I really hope that's not the case, and I can say with confidence that if someone had a tar of Hillary Clinton or even Bernie Sanders I'd still answer his/her questions.

Li'l Sebastian · Post by **Li'l Sebastian** » Thu May 28, 2015 9:35 pm

I just got my highest score to date!!!!!
179 on practice test 65(dec 2011)

-2 LR
-2 RC.

I feel incredibly amazing right now!

Probably a high outlier but all I want is a 175 on test day!

biggestlawman · Post by **biggestlawman** » Thu May 28, 2015 9:46 pm

How is everyone doing this fine evening!

I have been studying at a slow rate for a while now. Typical curve balls of life! Fortunately I have not been out of touch. I need to become disciplined again! I am even contemplating working 4 days a week instead of 5. I don't think few thousand dollars that I will lose by working less is going to be a big deal, but going to Harvard will be!

I think I need to exhibit extreme mental toughness and discipline from here on until October!

Good luck to everyone gearing up for June!

gamerish · Post by **gamerish** » Thu May 28, 2015 10:13 pm

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whacka · Post by **whacka** » Thu May 28, 2015 10:21 pm

nlee10 · Post by **nlee10** » Thu May 28, 2015 11:23 pm

Getting the LR Most Difficult Packet from Cambridge (all the Level 4 questions together) has somewhat helped my LR performance.

Joscellin · Post by **Joscellin** » Thu May 28, 2015 11:24 pm

JDman wrote:Anyone taking Testmasters?

I am, though I'm in Texas so we get "Scoreperfect" instead, but it's still the same course.

I've had quite a good experience with them, despite starting with a high diag.

equang · Post by **equang** » Thu May 28, 2015 11:35 pm

whacka wrote:
equang wrote:
whacka wrote:PT 70: this one was kinda unorthodox because I've been working full time and can't do LG in the office so I have to dedicate all of my time at home to LG. This means I split this PT up and did it at work, sections 1 and 2 yesterday and 3 and 4 today. Not ideal, obviously, but it is what it is. The office is also substantially more distracting so it's good practice for my concentration!

LR1: -2
RC: -3
LG: -1
LR2: -2

-8 for 173

Not sure how to feel about this. LR is still not what it was on my old PTs and I'm not quite sure why. Both of my misses in section 1 were due completely to a skipped or misread word, which actually makes me feel better. Both of the other 2 were bona fide wrong answers that even BR wouldn't have helped. RC is RC, I'll take what I can get. LG was due to running out of time. I've got an ill and the only cure is more drilling.
Took 70 yesterday as well, we are pretty close:
Lr -1
RC-3
Lg-0
Lr-3

My mistakes were all comical....

Did all 4 sections without any break lol.

Anyone have tips/links to share for weaken or assumption? Did the trainer and manhattan for lr, they are boring when re-reading. I think I need to look for alternative explanations on some of the causal q's.

What is comforting to know at this stage is that every (or a large majority)wrong answer is solidly wrong.
Hah, looks like we traded a LR question - which ones did you miss in section 4?

15,19,24. For 24 I was running low on time so I did it really fast, but the correct answer is there with just a word difference basically. I feel like a day with 2-3 brain farts yields a 174, and 177 if no brain farts... I think weaken and flaw are the two question types I am most shaky on still. The must be trues can sometimes be tricky because of conditionals or whatever else disguising.

TheWalkingDebt · Post by **TheWalkingDebt** » Fri May 29, 2015 12:55 am

Took two pts today. Last five pts are

169
165
171
165
170

I think the better performance is in the 170 because I missed 3 rc questions strictly due to time and felt better about lr in general though I missed a couple gimmes in the beginning of the first lr section

Planning on two more pts tomorrow

Eta even though there's inconsistency in there it is nice to see two of the last three hit 170 or higher after 7 straight below. Looking to climb back up to 175+ territory tomorrow

Smallville · Post by **Smallville** » Fri May 29, 2015 8:00 am

JackelJ wrote:
zacboro wrote:PS, is it just me or was the Feb group so much more active? Especially this close to game day..
This thread's tl;dr: OP refused to PW so the thread became lame and everyone left

didn't want this to go unnoticed...

SOOOOOOO close to game day y'all! Hope yer all killeen eet

msp8 · Post by **msp8** » Fri May 29, 2015 8:16 am

JackelJ wrote:
ccordero wrote:
msp8 wrote:Btw, I wanted to ask earlier as you were talking about making changes to your RC approach ... what sort of things did you change? And is it still going well?
Also curious to see what Jackel did to switch up the RC approach
Re RC: I haven't changed my approach too much. I basically read the passage actively, taking note of what the main purpose of each paragraph is and the authors attitude. I guess I changed my approach in that I really try to be actively reading and processing the information. I don't take too many notes or mark up the passage other than underlining parts that I think are very important (ie main points, authors view, etc). I've also really tried to internalize the passage before going to the questions. Then I go through the questions and use POE for most of them. I only check back with the text if there's a specific line reference or if I'm down to two AC's after eliminating the rest. I went -4 in RC on my PT today, which is an improvement for me.

Ymmv, I'm a slower reader with a good memory and this is what I've found to be best for me so far.

Good stuff! I'm a slow reader too. I've made a lot of improvements on RC but I haven't changed much. Just familiarity, I suspect, with what typical traps are laid out, and processing the information adequately.

Generally · Post by **Generally** » Fri May 29, 2015 9:03 am

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buckiguy_sucks · Post by **buckiguy_sucks** » Fri May 29, 2015 9:07 am

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whacka · Post by **whacka** » Fri May 29, 2015 9:10 am

nlee10 · Post by **nlee10** » Fri May 29, 2015 10:03 am

whacka wrote: What's PW?

Pic whore. You post up selfies on here.

Li'l Sebastian · Post by **Li'l Sebastian** » Fri May 29, 2015 10:47 am

nlee10 wrote:
whacka wrote: What's PW?
Pic whore. You post up selfies on here.

So everyone left because they didn't post selfies?

nlee10 · Post by **nlee10** » Fri May 29, 2015 11:41 am

ruizdaw wrote:
nlee10 wrote:
whacka wrote: What's PW?
Pic whore. You post up selfies on here.
So everyone left because they didn't post selfies?

Quite the opposite. We always used to PW.

JackelJ · Post by **JackelJ** » Fri May 29, 2015 12:57 pm

Smallville wrote:didn't want this to go unnoticed...
SOOOOOOO close to game day y'all! Hope yer all killeen eet

Thanks Smalls, I'm happy someone appreciated it. I thought you were all set for Fordham, why are you retaking?

I'm sure yer gonna kill eet though