LR HELP Forum

[Jcastro1]

So I'm averaging 167-169 on PTs but my goal for Feb is 170+. Right now, LR is my bane and its stuck at the -5 to -8 (total). The thing is, no one particular question is vexing me. I've drilled and finished the Manhattan LR and become familiar enough that even pattern questions seem easy. The process itself seems fine: isolating the core etc etc.

I'm freaking out a bit now since I just had a PT and my LR went -4, -3, and -5 on the experimental.

What should I be doing from now until test day. At this point, I may just go into the library and do section-review-section-review etc

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

[gaud]

Nitpick yourself. Figure out why you are missing the questions. Were you tricked? Did you misread? Were you reading too quickly (upon a slow review, did you find the correct answer with ease?) What about the answer you chose made you choose it? What about the correct answer made you not choose it?

You need to ask yourself questions like that. With your current scores you definitely know what you're doing, just fine-tune the skills and profit. Hopefully this helps.

Good luck!

[Typhoon24]

So I'm averaging 167-169 on PTs but my goal for Feb is 170+. Right now, LR is my bane and its stuck at the -5 to -8 (total). The thing is, no one particular question is vexing me. I've drilled and finished the Manhattan LR and become familiar enough that even pattern questions seem easy. The process itself seems fine: isolating the core etc etc.

I'm freaking out a bit now since I just had a PT and my LR went -4, -3, and -5 on the experimental.

What should I be doing from now until test day. At this point, I may just go into the library and do section-review-section-review etc

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

To put it frankly, there's a solid reason why you got those 5-8 wrong on the logical reasoning section. You didn't do something properly. What you should do now is look at your tests and see which questions/question types you got wrong and see EXACTLY why you got them wrong (mistook sufficient for necessary, the other way around, out of scope, degree, etc...). There was a miscalculation in your head somewhere when you solved that problem, and addressing it is the first step. After you've targeted it, train yourself never to make that mistake again through either drilling consciously trying to avoid that kind of mistake or through other methods. I know it sounds easier said than done, but then again, at this point in LSAT prep, nothing's easy anymore lol. Good luck Castro!

[bp shinners]

Yea, at that point, it's more about figuring out how the LSAT is tricking you than it is diagnosing weaknesses in certain question types. Most likely, you're falling for the same trick or two, over and over again, just in different question types (there's almost always a pattern to it).

So answer these two questions, in addition to figuring out why your answer was wrong and the right answer was right:
1) What about the right answer made me think it was wrong?
2) What about the wrong answer made me think it was right?

If you can figure these two out, you'll be in much better shape for avoiding committing the same logical fallacy in the future. If you can phrase it as a common LSAT flaw (I equivocated; I picked an AC that's too strong), even better.

Sometimes, just recognizing the flaw you're committing is enough to see improvement.

[Theopliske8711]

I am making similar mistakes. I get everything, all of the concepts and all. For me the trouble has been that I kind of lose track of what I am reading and so are unable to locate things. I realize that with exception to maybe 2 questions, almost all are rather easy if you follow what is going on. On timed tests, I seem to blank while reading, perhaps I am rushing.

[ws81086n]

Banking time for questions that will give you trouble for whatever reason is pretty crucial. One great way to do this is to not second guess yourself on an easy question, or a question that is not easy but that you have a great feel for. No point in checking and re-checking if you're confident in your work on the question.