How does the RC difficulty trend after PT 55 to present? Forum

[05062014]

Hey TLS,

Early in my prep I took PT 61 as my diag. and PT 55. My RC scores were terrible -7 and -8, respectively. I killed the RC on PT 60 today after avoiding the very latest PTs for months. This leaves me wondering if I am improving and/or RC difficulty has fluctuated greatly. I actually retook PT 55's RC two weeks ago and did worse than the first time around.

For those of you who have taken the most recent PT's how has RC difficulty generally fluctuated? Is it trending away from the difficulty of the mid 50's? Is there even a discernible trend at all?

Thanks

[Lock74]

I am also interested in this. I am worried that my rc scores from the 20 s and 30 s will not translate into the more recent tests. I have also noticed a fluctuation but it has narrowed with practice. If there is an increasing difficulty trend as mentioned already many times on this board, how do we prepare for it? What is exactly more difficult about the most recent RCs?

I do not like the notion that RC is a damage control section. People basically aim for mastering LGs and LRs in hope they mitigate a almost inevitable or at the least an invariable RC section that could go great or awful.

[2014]

Kind of depends how well you do on the CR question, but overall all of the post June 2007 ones are pretty comparable. There isn't much difference in RCs overall other than CR though from 20s to 50s/60s. Same writing style and the same types of questions, you will just do better or worse often based on intangibles like how interested you are in the subject, how fatigued you are, what section number it is, etc etc.

I say all that with the caveat that I haven't seen any of the tests from the last year since I took in preparation for the 2011 cycle

[05062014]

I went -2 today on RC getting the very last Q wrong but down to 2 choices. I actually did relatively terrible on LG and could not be happier because that can be remedied with drilling Linear Games which I ignored since the start of June because they were my strength in the LG section.

I went on vacation and came back so maybe that took the stress off my past RC performances. RC was not a problem until the late 40s-pt 55 for me but I thought I had no hope of getting better than a -4 to a -6 in this section until today.

[beautyistruth]

Are Euro-centric art passages gone for good? I've noticed that the art sections are heavily diversity-focused, which increases the test difficulty for me personally. I realize that technically, the passage requires no outside knowledge. However, and this might just be placebo effect, I always felt like I scored on the old tests when the content were things like Shakespeare, the Baroque era, and fairytales...

[BallHog]

I've heard comparative reading passages are easier. Is this the case? I don't really want to waste a whole section and possibly PT just to see if CR is easier/harder than the normal passages, as I have saved them for later in my prep.

[beautyistruth]

I feel like it really depends. PT 60 had a ridiculously easy comparative passage, but some of them have been hard. For me, the difficulty of the passage really comes down to the difficulty of the questions. Some passages just have a few questions where the right answer isn't very obvious, and every answer seems to have a problem and I feel like I'm picking between wrong and less wrong. (Yes, I know this means I haven't fully understood the question or the passage). But for me, the questions really make the passage hard, so I wouldn't say the CR passages are necessarily more difficult. Additionally, this occurrence seems to happen a lot in RC, which is why it's becoming a bit of a damage control section, which I am not happy about.

[CorkBoard]

I've heard comparative reading passages are easier. Is this the case? I don't really want to waste a whole section and possibly PT just to see if CR is easier/harder than the normal passages, as I have saved them for later in my prep.

Depends, honestly. I don't find them too difficult but I enjoy the comparative reading passages so my view is probably skewed.

To the other poster that mentioned this, the tests from the 20s-30s are significantly easier all around than the current ones, IMO.

[M.M.]

Are Euro-centric art passages gone for good? I've noticed that the art sections are heavily diversity-focused, which increases the test difficulty for me personally. I realize that technically, the passage requires no outside knowledge. However, and this might just be placebo effect, I always felt like I scored on the old tests when the content were things like Shakespeare, the Baroque era, and fairytales...

I think things you know more about you are likely more interested in, which translates to better scores.

[BallHog]

Thanks for the responses guys. I honestly don't care what I read. It can be about fish in the Atlantic Ocean or it can be about Chinese philosophy of the 13th century. At the end of the day, it's going to determine my score so that automatically makes me interested/engaged in the material.

[Br3v]

It gets harder.

/thread