The RC in PT 61? Forum

[Obelisk18]

It it unusually easy? I ask because I got 6 wrong on PT 60, 5 wrong on PT 59, and have generally been failing on RC of late. Yet on 61 I got -0, knew I had -0 when I finished, and had time to spare at the end. This has me miffed. When I started off PTing, I was consistently between 0 and -2 wrong on RC but, after a few awful sections in the mid 50s, I decided to underline, take notes, etc. It didn't help and, in some ways, got worse (I started having timing problems as well as comprehension problems). On 59 and 60 RC was the only thing keeping me from 175+. So on 61, I decided to go back to my old method, and trust in the reading ability that got me 770 on the SAT and GRE verbal. Well, it seems to have worked. Looking back at earlier PT's, I notice that the RC sections I bombed came towards the end of the test. Obviously (spoiler) in 61, the RC is the first section. If I just tend to be too fatigued to handle RC later in the test, that's something I can definitely work on, even with only two days left. LR gave me similar problems a few weeks ago and I just did multiple LR sections while braindead- now, I actually seem to do better on LR towards the end of the test. Which brings me back to my original question. If the RC in 61 is unusually easy then this may be a flawed theory and I might be better off either spending more time on LG, or focusing on the types of answers that tend to be right on RC questions. I don't have a lot of wiggle room, obviously, with the test on Saturday and I'd prefer not to waste any time. So what do those of you've who've taken it think? Easy? Normal? Hard?

[joshceo]

Funny you should ask that. I have taken quite a few PT's, and average -2 on RC. On PT 61, I missed 11! I don't know what happened exactly, but I don't think it's unusually easy by any means. I also blew a game on PT 61, and got my lowest score ever, a 163 (lowest score after 2 months of studying. Trust me, if I had taken an early diagnostic, I would have been lucky to be in the 140's). This recent RC disaster was a fluke more than likely, but the RC still had to be of average difficulty or I would never have missed that many. Until PT 61, I had NEVER missed more than 6 total on RC, so a -11 is crazy. I minimized my notes on PT 61, basically marking almost nothing, and I guess that wasn't a good idea.

[JacobH]

I'm sure you've taken individual passages that just clicked with you. This time, TPTB threw you a bone.