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I haven't been timing on the pt's yet. I am currently getting between 168-170, not timed. I am not planning on going to a T14 or any of the prestigious schools, I already have a position if I can get in. That being said, I have a 3.24 and I plan on going to a school that is pretty low in the ranks. I am taking the Feb test. Is it time to start working on getting my time consistently inside 35 minutes now or since I am only getting these scores when I am not being timed, should I focus on accuracy still? Any advice is much appreciated. Thanks

I would definitely start working on timed tests. With logic games and, to a lesser extent, reading comprehension, timing is like 90% of the challenge. Untimed scores don't seem to signal much of anything. If you're taking in Feb., you need as much lead time as possible.

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Thanks for the responses. I have "timed" individual sections, but I haven't been trying to get my times under 35 yet. I am doing them around 40-45, which is pretty far off, I know. I will start trying to improve my time immediately, Thanks again.

Timed LG section just now, -4. The 4 I missed were the last 4 I guessed on because I ran out of time. This is good for me, but LG will most likely be my strength. I have a hard time with RC. I guess I better start studying and timing more and hit it hard for the next month!

One more question:

I am struggling the most with RC. I just don't perform well at all. I have used various methods, but I am curious as to what books or guides you all suggest specifically for RC? Any help is appreciated! Thanks

TLS2011 wrote:One more question:

I am struggling the most with RC. I just don't perform well at all. I have used various methods, but I am curious as to what books or guides you all suggest specifically for RC? Any help is appreciated! Thanks

manhattan rc worked well for me. i am a very strong reader to begin with, but i studied mostly lit/continental philo in college, so the type of reading required by the lsat was not my default mode, and i was getting a ton wrong. for instance, it felt wrong to trudge through a passage not fully comprehending what was said, so i would reread it until i got it, losing "the forest for the trees" in the meantime. however the time constraint of rc necessitates that certain habits of "good" reading be ignored. mrc helped me figure out the kind of attention i needed to pay during the exam. i highly recommend it.

another thing that worked for me was just drilling sections of rc over and over. i made sure to do some untimed, to try and see connections between the sort of questions that would pop up, and i tried to make it a habit to eliminate wrong answers FIRST by applying the fact test (they talk about this in mrc). rc is a bit unique in that everything can be explicitly refuted or proven by the text itself - you don't have to do much inferring, like in lr or lg.

hope this helps!

Thanks for the help. I will consider both of those techniques, the second one being the best because of my time. I appreciate it. Any other advice from anyone is more than welcome!

Many students tend to focus too much on the topic of each passage and not enough on the structure of the passage. Having a good understanding of *how the passage works* is really important - you need to know how many viewpoints are present, how they relate to each other, how each viewpoint is supported, etc. After seeing Shinners recommend this method somewhere, I've started stopping after each paragraph and asking my students to identify the role of that paragraph in as few words as possible (e.g. support for X viewpoint, scientists' viewpoint, background information - that type of thing). I find that taking a moment after each paragraph encourages more active reading and helps them understand the passage better overall.

In a nutshell, TCR:

BPlaura wrote:Many students tend to focus too much on the topic of each passage and not enough on the structure of the passage. Having a good understanding of *how the passage works* is really important - you need to know how many viewpoints are present, how they relate to each other, how each viewpoint is supported, etc. After seeing Shinners recommend this method somewhere, I've started stopping after each paragraph and asking my students to identify the role of that paragraph in as few words as possible (e.g. support for X viewpoint, scientists' viewpoint, background information - that type of thing). I find that taking a moment after each paragraph encourages more active reading and helps them understand the passage better overall.

KEY