Bubbling issues: Need a new strategy Forum

[niederbomb]

According to PS, bubbling after every question is the "safest" method, but I don't think it's working for me. I think I tend to lose my place and bubble in the wrong section. This happened a few times during practice, and test day nerves may have made it happen more on the real thing.

I took an undisclosed test, so I can't be sure my 162 (PT avg. 171) was due to misbubbling. However, I recently did two PT's from the same period with 25-minute sections and got 161 and 166 respectively.

Obviously, something bad happened on the real thing, causing a worse score than leaving 10 RC questions completely blank on PT 46.

One thing I've come up with from reading a previous thread is to circle the answers in the test book, bubble in a page at a time (so I'm less likely to get distracted and lose focus) and then also write down the sequence at the bottom of the page, so I can double-check it easily.

Slow, I know...but if I can get the same score as I got on the real thing leaving 10 RC questions and 1 game completely blank, going slower in December will be worth it.

Any suggestions?

As a child, I had diagnosed ADHD and dyslexia, which I thought I had grown out of....maybe not completely. My spatial skills are also awful.

[gdane]

Ive never understood why anyone would have an issue with this.

Do the question, find the answer on the sheet and bubble. It shouldnt take away from your concentration.

Try bubbling in sections. Bubble your answers in after every page or every 10 questions.


The best option, in my opinion, is bubbling after every question.

[niederbomb]

Like I said, I used to have dyslexia and didn't learn to read until my early teens, so maybe I'm prone to this sort of thing.

I can do lots of math in my head, but I always manage to mess it up on paper.

I have a lot of trouble lining things up properly and keeping things in the right slot, column, not just on the LSAT. It's hard to explain, really.

I wish you had a helpful suggestion rather than "I don't understand how someone could do this."

[bk1]

Take lots of PT's to practice bubbling.

Save time at the end of each section to double check.

[minnbills]

I write them in before I turn the page.

[rinkrat19]

I bubble after finishing each page, unless time was getting short, and then I'd bubble after each question.

To avoid miss-bubbling, sometimes I started at the end of a section and worked backwards. You fill in the last question bubble first, and you know you'll be ending at bubble #1. That way you're fitting 25 answers in 25 rows, not fitting 25 answers in 30 rows with plenty of room to screw it up. It's harder to skip a row, which seems to be a common problem.

You really just have to figure out what works for you. I would think that bubbling would be the least of your problems with ADHD. How on earth do you slog through the boring RC reading?

[CryingMonkey]

You really just have to figure out what works for you.

TITCR. I personally circled the answers in the book and then bubbled at the end of the section - I found that that gave me good speed, good accuracy, and let me get a rhythm going throughout the section. That said, that strategy would suck if you were concerned about running out of time to finish the section. A possible solution is to keep an eye on your timepiece and do all the bubbling with 5 minutes to go. Going by page is also a good solution - it makes it easy to see if you've misbubbled or skipped a question. I think bubbling after every question is probably the least efficient way of going about it, since you're breaking your concentration after every single question and you have to go back and forth between the book and the answer sheet 25 times per section instead of like 5. But do a bunch of PTs experimenting with different methods and then go with the one you like best.

[northwood]

i bubbled after each question, then took a minute to double check. give yourself 33 minutes to do each section. that way you will have a good pace for yourself, and be able to have 2 minutes left over to double check your bubbling, so you dont run into this problem. another good idea is to do each prep test with a scantron. All you need to do is make copies of a scantron from an official prept test( blank of course) and you can practice your strategy as you do official timed prep tests.

[Nonok]

I bubble right after I circle the answer, then I go back after each page and quickly run through the bubbled answers for that page to make sure I didn't mess up. For RC in specific I make sure I'm starting on the right question # for each different passage.

[CGI Fridays]

My method: do an entire two pages, then bubble before you turn the page.
Speak a pattern of letters in your mind as you read them from the test book, then bubble them.
Eg "ABAC" then write them. I usually did four at a time, but whatever works.
I also kept a really, really dull pencil for bubbling. Might seem silly until you try it.

[Pleasye]

My method: do an entire two pages, then bubble before you turn the page.
Speak a pattern of letters in your mind as you read them from the test book, then bubble them.
Eg "ABAC" then write them. I usually did four at a time, but whatever works.
I also kept a really, really dull pencil for bubbling. Might seem silly until you try it.

I also bubble after every 2 pages (the two pages that lay flat in front of you obv).

Instead of a pattern, which I can easily confuse while I'm nervous I say "1A" "2C" "3E" etc.

I look at the question number and its answer and then fill it in, then look at the next question number and answer and then fill it in. That way while I'm saying "1A" in my head I'm also looking at 1 on the answer sheet and bubbling in A. Hopefully this makes sense

[mst]

Sometimes I do the page at a time thing (especially with LG), other times I can go all the way to the 5 minute mark, then do all my bubbling (mostly with RC). Always seemed to work.

[motiontodismiss]

A game at a time, a passage at a time, 2 pages at a time for LG/RC/LR respectively. Sometimes I do catch myself making bubbling mistakes, I think I'm going to start boxing the rows that I skip (or highlighting, but just the number). And just request hand scoring on the real thing.

Maybe I should write the answer out in upper case letters next to the question so I don't read an answer wrong (I make stupid bubbling screwups even when I'm inputting the answers into Knewton for it to grade-usually involves bubbling in the wrong section, or starting off with section 2 and then by question 10 bubbling in section 3 for ex).