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i hate when they do this. do you guys find yourself double checking when this happens too? often it ends up being correct anyway and is just a waste of time. whats TCR in dealing with this

No. At this point, I've trained myself to ignore the patterns and just accept that the credited response doesn't change just because one of five letters repeat themselves in a brief span of time.

az21833 wrote:i hate when they do this. do you guys find yourself double checking when this happens too? often it ends up being correct anyway and is just a waste of time. whats TCR in dealing with this

Don't read in to any patterns and just move it. The order of answers is perfectly randomized and thus meaningless. It's entirely possible to get 5 "C" answers in a row; it's unlikely, but no more unlikely than any other distinct combination of 5 answers, such as "ACBED".

Bubble in chunks. There are 8 pages of LR; bubble after every 2. Bubble after every game and every passage. This will help you concentrate less on the "patterns" within the answer choices and also prevent you from breaking your train of thought to bubble, not to mention being more efficient.

You are fighting a losing battle trying to predict patterns within sections. I will say though, often times I find that there is a relatively even balance among letters that are the correct response if you complete a section. This is not the case always and if you take enough PTs, you see how putting the correct answer earlier or later for specific questions serves to trap the majority taking the test into not picking the answer. This is just a hunch I get sometimes though..

I remember being worried about this when I took the good ol' SAT way back when. It always bothered me on the SAT because the SAT is arbitrary as hell. It is a piece of shit test. On the other hand, the LSAT is much better. It is much less arbitrary, and in fact, in most instances, it is logically agreeable. To get over your bubbling mentality, all you need to do is realize this. Why? Because if you realize this, you'll start focusing on what the right answer is. You'll have more faith in the fact that you CAN infer the right answer with relative certainty. Because of this, you'll realize you don't have to worry about hocus-pocus stuff like bubbling patterns. I never think about bubbling patterns because of this.

az21833 wrote:i hate when they do this. do you guys find yourself double checking when this happens too? often it ends up being correct anyway and is just a waste of time. whats TCR in dealing with this

The sections are generated generated using an automated algorithm bound by its own set of rules (like, can't have 25 must be true questions all answered A). The bounds are loose and unknown except by those who have worked on the model, but rest assured having 3 or 4 of the same AC in a row is not strange and you should never even factor it in.

If it would ease your mind to read about how they make the tests, you can check it out here.

Unless you were a scrupulous pure math major though, it's more likely to give you a headache than ease your mind.

Rest assured test-makers make no attempt to deliberately influence the answer choice order relative to other questions beyond bounding it by generalized constraints that prevent things like generating sections of 25 C's in a row.

And with less than ten days to go before the big test, I recommend not giving this any further consideration.

Nope, never even take a second glance at it. I took a section the other day and it had 2 blocks of 4 letters in a row.

Also as cc.celina suggested, I bubble in chunks.

D-E-A-D combos freak me out more than multiples!

arcanecircle wrote:D-E-A-D combos freak me out more than multiples!

B-A-D combos scare me just as much but A-C-E combos make me confident .

CyanIdes Of March wrote:

arcanecircle wrote:D-E-A-D combos freak me out more than multiples!

B-A-D combos scare me just as much but A-C-E combos make me confident .

I like BAD and CAB because it's easier to mark.

RCinDNA wrote:No. At this point, I've trained myself to ignore the patterns and just accept that the credited response doesn't change just because one of five letters repeat themselves in a brief span of time.

TITCR

I always bubble at end so whatever is done is done.

You are all thinking about this too much.

abdistotle wrote:You are fighting a losing battle trying to predict patterns within sections. I will say though, often times I find that there is a relatively even balance among letters that are the correct response if you complete a section. This is not the case always and if you take enough PTs, you see how putting the correct answer earlier or later for specific questions serves to trap the majority taking the test into not picking the answer. This is just a hunch I get sometimes though..

I've noticed this too. Anytime I see a answer I like that's A, I know I have to check the rest thoroughly. It seems like half the time A is attractive on first glance, it's wrong (and the right one is D or E). On the other hand, if the first attractive answer I see is a B or C, I don't need to be quite so thorough checking the rest.

Getting over this was one of the hardest things in my studying, but it helped. I would fret about patterns so much that I didn't focus on the questions. I agree with the bubbling in chunks idea. I never worried on RC and LG, it was LR I worried on and most likely because I didn't bubble in chunks.