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How to avoid stuuuupiiiidddd mistakes??
Posted: Thu Nov 28, 2013 3:31 am
by crazyvix
I have done 6 timed PTs till now. Scored from 168-175. I'm indeed seeing progress but the problem is I kept making these stupid mistakes. I guess most of them are due to speed reading but I can't help but accelerating whenever I start to do LR questions, hoping to finish 15 questions within 15 minutes. That's a perfect pace for those who have already been scoring high but this made me make all these stupid mistakes. For example, I finished all the sections within given time but later when I did blind review under no time constraint, I changed my answers of EIGHT questions and what's driving me crazy is I got them all right the second time! So... Has anybody encountered the same problem before? Any suggestions? Thanks in advance!
Re: How to avoid stuuuupiiiidddd mistakes??
Posted: Thu Nov 28, 2013 3:54 am
by Jeffort
Stop skipping step of analysis for questions you think are easy just to try to save time. Doing that is your stupid mistake, stop skipping steps even when you think the question is easy and get tempted to think it doesn't require full careful detailed analysis or solid reasons to reject contenders. It's called being careless and overly confident, LSAC loves to punish people when they get all cocky like that, hence your 8 stupid misses.
Follow all the steps, including verification ones to have good reasons to eliminate all tempting contenders for ALL questions, or else just get comfortable throwing away some points on easy questions to make yourself feel like you are saving time to make that 15 in 15 mark. I'd rather go with being extra careful and accurate instead of fast and careless cuz one way gives away points, the other doesn't.
Re: How to avoid stuuuupiiiidddd mistakes??
Posted: Thu Nov 28, 2013 5:43 am
by GATORTIM
Step 1. Don't go to law school
Step 2. Do something else. Anything else.
Re: How to avoid stuuuupiiiidddd mistakes??
Posted: Thu Nov 28, 2013 6:42 pm
by Christine (MLSAT)
You're trying to speed up the wrong way, and it's costing you. It will continue to cost you as long as you stay in this mindset.
If you were standing on one side of Times Square, and you needed to get to the other side as fast as possible, would you look at the crowd, shrug your shoulders and say "meh, not THAT crowded, GERONIMO!" and just barrel through people as fast as you could in a straight line? That would be ridiculous, and that's essentially what you're doing with the careless 'speed-reading'. And it's getting you comparable results.
If you want to speed up, you can't skip steps of the process, as Jeffort says. Instead, you would want to reduce the amount of time between each proper step. That's not just "speed", it's efficiency. The thing is, this type of efficiency increase happens naturally as you practice the proper steps over and over and over and over again. As soon as you finish one step, you should know instantly what the next step is and how to apply it - no wasted space thinking 'buh....what now....oh!'.
Think about playing a piece of music at proper speed. You have to practice it a billion times at slower speed to get it perfect, then it gradually becomes less and less effort to go faster and faster. Playing it *fast* but badly is worthless. But when you've honed the correct process to perfection, speeding up becomes nearly effortless.
In other words, stop *trying* to go fast. Stop focusing on the concept of speed. Focus on process perfection first, and only as a part of that, consider efficiency.
Re: How to avoid stuuuupiiiidddd mistakes??
Posted: Sun Dec 01, 2013 11:04 am
by lsatgains
Also seems like you are imposing rather arbitrary timing checkpoints for yourself. Do not worry about answering the first 15 in 15 minutes. Focus more on taking the appropriate amount of time to answer the question. The test punishes those who skip over steps. Remember that in logical reasoning, the test makers are largely concerned with two things: your reasoning ability and your attention to detail. Once I realized that they really cared about your attention to detail, it was easier to "zero in" and hang onto every word. Consequently, my LR score went from -5 to about -2 overnight.
The first "15 in 15" advice may be a little outdated at this point. On the recent tests, there seems to be more difficult problems throughout the first 10 problems than in years past.