Concern with BP LG book Forum

[McBrunson]

Recently bought the book and, as I was skimming through it, I realized the book uses many games from recent practice tests (50+). If it was only a few games I wouldn't really be concerned, however, it seems like there are around 20 games from the newer practice tests. Many people here stress the importance of saving the newer material and I'd like to know if it'd be worth to forgo this book and opt for the LGB instead. For those that already used the BP LG book, how did you deal with this?

[thevuch]

for me, my mastery of LG came with doing all of the new games several times each. just rotate them out. it wont hurt you too much seeing them in a the BP book and then doing on the PTs, especially if you space them out.

[BPlaura]

My feeling is that people tend to overestimate how much seeing a game previously is going to affect you. You're going to be seeing so much material that, unless you just did a game a few days before seeing it on a PT, you're not going to remember much about it. And re-doing games is actually a great way to monitor your improvement - after re-doing the game, you can check back to see whether you found inferences that you missed the first time around.

[papercut]

for me, my mastery of LG came with doing all of the new games several times each. just rotate them out. it wont hurt you too much seeing them in a the BP book and then doing on the PTs, especially if you space them out.

+ 1

[LauraS]

I think your concern is valid. I think it's valuable and important to have the experience of taking PTs fresh and having to cope with figuring out a completely new game with limited time. You get a sense of your own timing and where your scores are. You also learn to work through the panic that can come up when you encounter a game that's different from what you've seen before.

I found I remembered the general setup of some of the games from the Blueprint book, after going through it once, when I took PTs weeks or months later.

But I love the Blueprint games book, and I highly recommend it. It teaches the process of approaching games in a clear, gradual, and helpful way. I don't want you to miss out on it. Also, the latest versions of the Manhattan LSAT games guide and the Powerscore Bible have new games, though maybe fewer of them, so you're not free of the problem with them.

I don't have a good suggestion as to what you should do. Mike's wonderful LSAT Trainer doesn't have new games. Maybe some sort of mixed approach using it would be best. I'd love to hear what you eventually decide to do.

[CocoSunshine]

Why not skip newer games and use older games for drilling? After you finished corresponding PTs, you can come back and check with their solutions.

[LauraS]

Why not skip newer games and use older games for drilling? After you finished corresponding PTs, you can come back and check with their solutions.

That's a very good suggestion. The challenge with doing that is that the Blueprint book teaches skills by walking you through games, and it builds one step on the next. That setup makes it an awesome learning tool, but it makes it hard to skip games. Also, I believe most of the games are new games.

There are places where the book lets you try a game on your own that you could probably skip and do later, though.

[Jeffort]

You shouldn't worry about this issue. People put way too much mental and emotional importance on practice test scores and unhealthy obsessions constantly trying to predict test day score potential throughout their entire prep journey. Frequently taking PTs and stressing about rate of improvement every step of the way through the process too long before test day when practice test scores aren't at all important to focus on is a bad way to use prep materials and prep efforts.

A few practice test scores that might be slightly inflated because you've seen a game or two before doesn't make them any less useful for their main legitimate productive purpose: figuring out and evaluating all your mistakes/weaknesses. Unless you get a 180 on those PTs, they are just as useful for evaluating your performance and figuring out what types of things you need to work on more through drilling. Being able to determine current score range with precision from PTs isn't really important unless you're mainly trying to predict the future about test day potential within the last few weeks before test day. Is there a target score that will make you stop trying to improve as much such that an inflated PT score would hurt you/your prep routine somehow?

Practice tests main use is for figuring out weaknesses to focus on for further improvement, not to celebrate successes and determine things to get cocky about and slack-off/get complacent with.

As long as you make sure to set aside enough fresh tests that aren't included in the book to use specifically as important score assessment PTs leading up to test day, you'll be fine. Just use the 'spoiled' tests as PTs long enough before test day when knowing your current test day conditions score range with precision isn't super important other than for your ego.

[BPlaura]

A few practice test scores that might be slightly inflated because you've seen a game or two before doesn't make them any less useful for their main legitimate productive purpose: figuring out and evaluating all your mistakes/weaknesses.

Strongly agree with everything Jeffort said. TLS gets really, really nervous about saving every single PT above 50 to do it "fresh," but you also need to be learning with some of those PTs.

Also, good to see another "Laura S." in these parts. (I had a brief moment of "wait, when did I write that?")

[mornincounselor]

Post removed.