Planning on Retaking: Advice on Plan of Study Forum

[toddly76]

Planning on Retaking: Advice for a two-month plan of study?

Background:

-Took a powerscore course over July and August, and in the course of all the homework, I've come across questions from almost every extant preptest.

-I started PT-ing in the 170s in mid-July and was hovering between 168-172 with a couple of 175s for good measure.

-I've taken all the most recent Preptests from 50-63 in preparation for the OCT 11 exam. I've also taken several in the 30s.

-Games are my worst sections, then LR and RC is my best. LR I'm very inconsistent, sometimes going -0/2 on sections to going -5.

Plan of Attack:

-I want to start on Dave Hall's Games Method, because I'm terrible at making inferences and his method of using previous work in a diagram seems to agree with my abilities. I'm willing to pay for the Games course, but not the comprehensive one.

-I've also been reviewing the LR questions I've missed, cutting them out and going through them, but I'm having trouble translating that into a consistent understanding of the hardest questions. I know people say "you have to understand why the right answer is right and the wrong answer is wrong" but going though this step hasn't seemed to translate into getting consistently better on the hardest LR questions.

Preptests: Not sure how to proceed Since I've no doubt seen questions from all the older tests and done most of the recent exams from 50-63. Every time I've redone a preptest I've scored out of my general range on it. Any advice here how to proceed?

Any help from someone who's done this would be appreciated. Thanks!

[American_in_China]

Get Velocity's comprehensive package. His best stuff isn't the games, imo, it's the Logical Reasoning. But if you want to just do games, steal a Kaplan class LR timing and endurance book. Over 1000 individual questions by type, and I think 25 to 30 practice sections. Doing tons of practice, by question type, will be like taking a Velocity course- you start seeing the patterns among and within question types.

[toddly76]

Thanks. Do you think there's any way I can get through Dave's entire program in 2 months? I'm a PhD student with a full teaching and class load. I had the summer off and was able to do the powerscore course. I'm also concerned about developing a brand new approach to LR, and not having ample time to implement it consistently before the test.

[bp shinners]

-I've also been reviewing the LR questions I've missed, cutting them out and going through them, but I'm having trouble translating that into a consistent understanding of the hardest questions. I know people say "you have to understand why the right answer is right and the wrong answer is wrong"

Those two questions are important, but I think the following two are more important:

1) What about the wrong answer made me think it was right?

2) What about the right answer made me think it was wrong?

The questions you've been asking will lead you to figure out what makes up a wrong and right answer, which is important. However, these two questions will lead you to figure out which mistakes you're making over and over again to get incorrect answers. I usually recommend my students keep a log of these answers for a week or so, and a pattern usually develops.

For instance, many students want to say, "Oh, I get Must Be True questions wrong, so let's work on that." That's great, but it's much more useful to say, "Oh, I'm constantly equivocating throughout different question types, so I have to stop doing that!" The former gives you questions to work on; the latter gives you something to think about throughout the test to ensure that you don't make the same mistake over and over. It's a little more tangible.