Making my own drilling packets? Forum

[tporfavor]

I have just worked through the PowerScore Bibles and the LSAT Trainer, so now I want to focus my attention on drilling my weaknesses.
I have copies of PT 7-45 to use for this purpose (saving PT 50+ for complete timed practice), but just the whole prep tests, not organized by type or difficulty. I regret not getting the Cambridge packets to begin with, but it seems silly to buy them now, since I have all of the questions, they're just not organized.
Is there a way to organize them myself? Is there another effective way to drill from the PTs?
Thanks for the help!

[mornincounselor]

Post removed.

[RobertGolddust]

Make your own drill packets for LG and RC, buy lrdrillingpackets from a prep company unless your fond of tedious labor.

[Pneumonia]

honestly I would just get the cambridge packets for LR. It will be way better. You can make your own RC and LG though.

[Reboot_the_Robot]

I did this for my upcoming retake!

My only study materials are the Manhattan LR and RC books and some PTs (29-38, A-C, and 52-69). After I read the Manhattan LR book, I went through PTs 29-38 and separated them into the question types shown in Manhattan. I then split each problem type into 4 even sets (just in the order they came, I didn't try to split by difficulty), and began drilling them. I used the first 2 sets for my first month of study, drilling daily by question type. I used the last 2 sets once each as progress checks (1 a couple weeks into drilling, and the other at the end of the month) to see if my accuracy had improved. From there I began doing timed PTs and Blind Reviews. I'm still drilling the last 2 sets in between PTs.

I honestly found doing this way incredibly helpful, and thought that splitting them into types myself made me better at quickly recognizing problem types during timed tests.

[Clyde Frog]

Just buy the Cambridge packets. I never even took a pt below pt41, rather I used all the questions from pt 1-40 for drilling purposes. I actually downloaded them in pdf format to my ipad, which I felt helped greatly. I would pull out my ipad anywhere and practice the proper approach to every question, as well as what the properly identifying what the wrong answers were. It was so much more convenient than carrying that Cambridge book around.

[sunsheyen]

I have just worked through the PowerScore Bibles and the LSAT Trainer, so now I want to focus my attention on drilling my weaknesses.
I have copies of PT 7-45 to use for this purpose (saving PT 50+ for complete timed practice), but just the whole prep tests, not organized by type or difficulty. I regret not getting the Cambridge packets to begin with, but it seems silly to buy them now, since I have all of the questions, they're just not organized.
Is there a way to organize them myself? Is there another effective way to drill from the PTs?
Thanks for the help!

There is an organizational listing for LG here http://lsatblog.blogspot.com/p/spreadsh ... ta.html#lg under the Logic Games heading. They are broken up into three batches and each batch is organized by both date and test number, so you can cobble together a drill set. Of course, the nomenclature will vary based on what your primary source of study is, but easy to work out.

I made my kits, I'm a very poor single mom, so I couldn't justify spending a bunch of money on the same tests I already had, just cut and pasted together. It just took some time, but now i have a great set of files for drilling along with intact tests. I had to extract pdf page by page and put in a new doc-really just pointing and clicking.
I used the cute pdf editor website to extract pages from my pts and then compiled them according to category.
so now my lsat prep folder has a folder with the full Preptests, one with explanations of tests, then LG folders for things like Basic Linear, Advanced Linear, Grouping. Within those are single page pdf files of each game labeled by pt#/question#.

When I'm drilling, I go through the folder and use the pdfs onscreen, and only waste paper to print when I'm doing an actual timed practice test.

Next up is LR, and it seems harder to do than with logic games, since there are multiple types on each page. I may just use the following spreadsheet to go down the list of tests and drill that way. It may be a little slower with opening files, but hey, it will work.
I'm going to use a combination of the breakdown linked above by a TLSer along with this link from the same page of LSAT Blog that I inserted in my first paragraph. The link is listed, of course, under the Logical Reasoning heading. http://www.mediafire.com/view/mglylykyj ... +Older.pdf

[Jeffort]

Another free option to make drilling LR by type less labor intensive without buying the Cambridge packets is the website LR Question type finder utility I programmed and put up years ago before LSAC allowed people to sell electronic/downloadable pdfs of LSAT questions and Morely founded Cambridge to sell downloadable packets online.

It only covers PTs 19-45 though because I created in like 8 years ago and never got around to classifying the LR questions and putting the info into database tables for PTs1-18.

http://www.lsatdiscussion2.com/logicalreasoning.php

It's really simple, just select a PT# from one dropdown list, select an LR question type from the other dropdown list, press the GO button and out comes a list of the LR questions of that type in the two LR sections of the selected PT. Hopefully the web page displays right and works on smartphones/ipads, I programmed it long before those things existed and all the newfangled types of scripting languages for mobile devices were developed.

[sunsheyen]

Another free option to make drilling LR by type less labor intensive without buying the Cambridge packets is the website LR Question type finder utility I programmed and put up years ago before LSAC allowed people to sell electronic/downloadable pdfs of LSAT questions and Morely founded Cambridge to sell downloadable packets online.

It only covers PTs 19-45 though because I created in like 8 years ago and never got around to classifying the LR questions and putting the info into database tables for PTs1-18.

http://www.lsatdiscussion2.com/logicalreasoning.php

It's really simple, just select a PT# from one dropdown list, select an LR question type from the other dropdown list, press the GO button and out comes a list of the LR questions of that type in the two LR sections of the selected PT. Hopefully the web page displays right and works on smartphones/ipads, I programmed it long before those things existed and all the newfangled types of scripting languages for mobile devices were developed.

This is great, Jeffort! Thank you, it is much more efficient for me to use than toggling around through spreadsheets. You rock! Already bookmarked!

[dasani13]

Just buy the packets. It's a good investment.

[papercut]

Just buy the packets. It's a good investment.

+1

They're not that expensive.

I also liked redoing the same questions a bunch of times, so having extra copies will come in handy, if you find the same benefit to redoing questions.

[malleus discentium]

I have just worked through the PowerScore Bibles and the LSAT Trainer, so now I want to focus my attention on drilling my weaknesses.
I have copies of PT 7-45 to use for this purpose (saving PT 50+ for complete timed practice), but just the whole prep tests, not organized by type or difficulty. I regret not getting the Cambridge packets to begin with, but it seems silly to buy them now, since I have all of the questions, they're just not organized.
Is there a way to organize them myself? Is there another effective way to drill from the PTs?
Thanks for the help!

I was in your exact situation. I bought all the 10-test books from LSAC before I knew what I was doing. I split them all up into drilling packets manually because I didn't want to buy the Cambridge ones after I had already bought the full PTs. I was wrong. It took like three days and was a huge waste of time. Just buy the packets.