LR Section - Speed vs Accuracy - Need Advice! Forum

[h3jk5h]

I've been prepping for a month now extensively, going over all the Bibles, Manhattan Guides, and the LSAT Trainer.

When I took a prep test to see whether I made any improvements, I was disappointed with my score (around the same as my diagnostic which was 152).

Logical Games and Reading Comprehension aside, my accuracy for the Logical Reasoning Section went up, but I was much slower than before. I've been practicing on thoroughly understanding the reasoning behind the stimulus' argument (thinking through how the premise of the stimulus intends to support the conclusion, and thinking about potential flaw).

But this process, while it has increased my accuracy, slowed me down quite significantly. When I do logical reasoning questions un-timed, I get almost all questions correct and I have a vague sense of why the wrong choices are incorrect, but I eventually have to do this in 35 minutes, a feat that I'm not sure that I'd be ever able to accomplish.

I'm not seeing the immediate results, is my worry warranted?

[Jeffort]

No, your worry is not warranted. The LSAT is not a knowledge based test where just reading and learning a bunch of stuff produces immediate results under timed conditions.

It takes a lot of practice with focused drilling and proper deep review for a substantial amount of time to build your skills applying everything you learned in the books to questions accurately under timed conditions.

You are just finishing off phase 1 of a three phase process. Prepping properly for the LSAT is much different than the traditional ways that work for most other tests, since they are mainly knowledge based.

You need to do a lot of phase 2: focused drilling plus review skills building work before phasing into taking a bunch of timed sections or full tests.

The post in this link has several links to posts/threads about drilling and the phases of prep to do it properly for maximum potential results:
http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 2#p7725872

In short, it takes a lot longer than a month to significantly increase your score range under timed conditions, think a few months or even more depending on your starting point and goal, how much time and effort (lots of prep time every week!) you actually put in, and your personal learning curve/rate of improvement.

[malleus discentium]

I'm not seeing the immediate results, is my worry warranted?

Yes. Getting a 180 on the LSAT should take like three weeks of studying start to finish, tops.

[Yeezus]

The speed will come with practice. Once you do enough problems, you will get used to the types of questions that they throw at you and naturally speed up.