How to drill effectively? Experts, please help!! Forum

[McBrunson]

Just bought the Cambridge Packets and plan on reading the books + drilling over the next several months. Jeffort mentioned in a recent post that drilling is the most important stage in one's prep, so I'd like to make sure I'm doing it the right way.

I'd really appreciate if some high-scorers can write a detailed post/ guide on how to drill each section. It would help a TON of people since there is a lot of confusion regarding this stage. Maybe each individual is different and there's no one way to drill. If that's the case, then I guess I'll have to find a way that works specifically for me.

Here are some of the questions I have:
1) Do you drill timed or untimed? Mike Kim advocates drilling timed whereas others on TLS say that you should drill untimed.
2) Should one drill all the questions in each packet? I read a post where someone wrote (I think DD) that you should save all the level 3 and 4 questions till later in your prep and use them to work on your weaknesses.
3) Should you blind review when drilling?
4) How many LR questions should one drill at a time? For LG and RC, should you drill each game/ passage individually or do four at once?
5) Is it helpful to drill everything twice?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. THANK YOU IN ADVANCE.

[Lsataddict175]

I'm interested in this as well. There doesn't seem to be a general consensus on TLS regarding "how to drill."

[Pneumonia]

ya'll should check out the pithypike study thread, I and others have posted some pretty in depth stuff in there.

[McBrunson]

ya'll should check out the pithypike study thread, I and others have posted some pretty in depth stuff in there.

Thank you!

[WaltGrace83]

This is what I do and here is my post from the June 14 thread

I guess what I should probably mention about my reasoning for doing timed first and then BR is that I go through EVERY answer, not just the ones I have problems with. My strategy is literally this:

1) Do a set of 10, 15, or 25 or so and give myself a time limit (1:20 x (number of problems))
2) Circle the ones that I feel I am not confident in while doing the questions
3) Go back to the circled ones first, take a purple pen and structure the LR stimulus by re-underlining the premise and re-bracketing the conclusion, understand the background information, pick out important words, analyze the stem, etc.
4) Analyze every answer choice, saving the one that I chose for last. I write out a mini explanation next to every letter and circle key words that make the answer choice wrong ("all" for NA for example and then I'll write out "scope" next to letter choice A)
5) Analyze my selected answer choice and reaffirm why it is right, understand why I think its wrong
6) Go to the Manhattan forums (not the answer key) and look up the right answer that way. If there is an explanation, read out everyone's discussion and understand what they are saying. If there is no explanation, write one out in full and then check the answer. If my answer is correct, move on. If not, ask questions about it.
7) Do this for every question.

EDIT: two things I forgot to mention. I also take a highlighter and bracket the whole questions I get wrong so I can easily revisit them later. In addition, if you want to see what my explanations look like, check out Waltgrace1983's Manhattan Profile