Advice on inconsistency Forum

[gnomgnomuch]

Hey All,

I'm now firmly entrenched in the low-med 160's, and only a couple things are holding me back from a 170+ score.

1) LG - I've been drilling them, I've been studying them, 7Sage/BP/Bibles and I just bought Manhattan, but I always mess up 1 game on the section. My sections generally look like this - 5/5, 6/6, 1-3/7 4/5 -, It's basically the single biggest roadblock I have to getting ~ my target score. It's also insanely frustrating, because LG is supposed to be the most learn-able section. (For reference, I Pt'ed 2/23 on my first LG section)

2) Inconsistency on LR. I've gotten sections completely right, and I've gotten them with a -7. Today's most recent PT (PT 42), I went -7 on my first LR and -3 on my second. I don't seem to have any specific areas of weakness, rather I just seemingly randomly miss questions all over the map. I also miss more questions in the beginning of the section (1-15) than the latter part (16-25/26). Case in point I missed 4 questions from 1-15, and 3 from 15-26 in LR #1. In LR #2, I missed 2 from 1-15, and 1 in 16-25.

All advice would be really appreciated.

[sfoglia]

Hey All,

I'm now firmly entrenched in the low-med 160's, and only a couple things are holding me back from a 170+ score.

1) LG - I've been drilling them, I've been studying them, 7Sage/BP/Bibles and I just bought Manhattan, but I always mess up 1 game on the section. My sections generally look like this - 5/5, 6/6, 1-3/7 4/5 -, It's basically the single biggest roadblock I have to getting ~ my target score. It's also insanely frustrating, because LG is supposed to be the most learn-able section. (For reference, I Pt'ed 2/23 on my first LG section)

2) Inconsistency on LR. I've gotten sections completely right, and I've gotten them with a -7. Today's most recent PT (PT 42), I went -7 on my first LR and -3 on my second. I don't seem to have any specific areas of weakness, rather I just seemingly randomly miss questions all over the map. I also miss more questions in the beginning of the section (1-15) than the latter part (16-25/26). Case in point I missed 4 questions from 1-15, and 3 from 15-26 in LR #1. In LR #2, I missed 2 from 1-15, and 1 in 16-25.

All advice would be really appreciated.

Have you tried to punch in your PT information on LSATQA.com? I didn't think that I had any particular weakness in LR until doing so, but the data pointed me to certain question types that on which I really wouldn't have thought that I needed to work. I'm hoping that revisiting those will prove productive for future PTs.

Other than that, subscribing to this thread. I'm having the exact same issues: trapped in the low 160s, LG is a horror story, LR improvement slow and sporadic.

[Jeffort]

Hey All,

I'm now firmly entrenched in the low-med 160's, and only a couple things are holding me back from a 170+ score.

1) LG - I've been drilling them, I've been studying them, 7Sage/BP/Bibles and I just bought Manhattan, but I always mess up 1 game on the section. My sections generally look like this - 5/5, 6/6, 1-3/7 4/5 -, It's basically the single biggest roadblock I have to getting ~ my target score. It's also insanely frustrating, because LG is supposed to be the most learn-able section. (For reference, I Pt'ed 2/23 on my first LG section)

2) Inconsistency on LR. I've gotten sections completely right, and I've gotten them with a -7. Today's most recent PT (PT 42), I went -7 on my first LR and -3 on my second. I don't seem to have any specific areas of weakness, rather I just seemingly randomly miss questions all over the map. I also miss more questions in the beginning of the section (1-15) than the latter part (16-25/26). Case in point I missed 4 questions from 1-15, and 3 from 15-26 in LR #1. In LR #2, I missed 2 from 1-15, and 1 in 16-25.

All advice would be really appreciated.

Mistakes are never random. There are specific reasons in your processes/decision making behind each missed question. Deep thorough review to figure out the exact reasons/mistakes/issues behind each missed question and behind questions you got right but struggled with and/or got lucky with is key for further improvement. It's takes a lot of time and goes way beyond just making sure you understand why the CR is correct and why the one you chose is wrong. You need to backtrack and examine your entire approach and thought process step by step that lead you to deciding that the CR was incorrect/to not select it and instead picked an incorrect AC thinking it was correct to figure out what went wrong.

Write out all the reasons that contributed to each question you missed (there is always more than one mistake or one tough aspect of a Q that resulted in getting it wrong) by reviewing each one thoroughly to inspect where you went wrong in your decision making and analysis processes. That list will reveal patterns in your mistakes and give you a roadmap of your weaknesses that need to be addressed. There are many different reasons for missing any particular question and you need to figure out which mistakes you are making frequently and what underlying weakness(es) are the cause so you can do stuff to fix those issues.

Deep thorough honest review and taking appropriate action from what you learn about the mistakes in your habits/methods/skills is the key to improving your skills and score range.

Just looking at data about performance by question types isn't very helpful since every question type has super easy up to super hard versions. You have to look more deeply into your specific methods and decision making processes to figure out how to change/improve your approach for better consistency and higher accuracy with the high level difficulty questions since those are probably the majority of the ones you are getting wrong.

[Clearly]

I think you're mistaking consistency for ability. It sounds more like you are consistently doing worse than you expect. Work on getting better at games in general before worrying about being consistent there. As for LR that will also need work, but you also have to realize the nature of the beast. LR sections often vary widely in difficulty on a test, with one being the "curve setter" and the other being more of a formality. Doing drastically better on one section doesn't mean you're inconsistent, it means you're often doing exactly what they predicted when the made the form. Also, if you are keeping track of where you lose points in a section, I wouldn't divide it in half, a more accurate classification would prob be more like "1-11, 12-18, 19-25/26".

ETA: I don't want to appear negative, but I'd rather see people have a more realistic understanding of the effort required to hit their goals, so I'd like to point out that getting from low/mid 160s to a 170+ is never just a matter of a few quick improvements. While it doesn't seem like many points, that's right where the curve starts to be a pain in the ass, and it's often more a struggle than people realize. For instance, I randomly pulled up a recent test, for a 162 you need a -25; for a 170 you need a -14.
As you can see, those quick 8 points to get from 162-170 actually requires getting 44% of your total mistakes correct next time.

I'm not saying it can't be done, I've done it myself, just don't underestimate the challenge!

[sfoglia]

Hey All,

I'm now firmly entrenched in the low-med 160's, and only a couple things are holding me back from a 170+ score.

1) LG - I've been drilling them, I've been studying them, 7Sage/BP/Bibles and I just bought Manhattan, but I always mess up 1 game on the section. My sections generally look like this - 5/5, 6/6, 1-3/7 4/5 -, It's basically the single biggest roadblock I have to getting ~ my target score. It's also insanely frustrating, because LG is supposed to be the most learn-able section. (For reference, I Pt'ed 2/23 on my first LG section)

2) Inconsistency on LR. I've gotten sections completely right, and I've gotten them with a -7. Today's most recent PT (PT 42), I went -7 on my first LR and -3 on my second. I don't seem to have any specific areas of weakness, rather I just seemingly randomly miss questions all over the map. I also miss more questions in the beginning of the section (1-15) than the latter part (16-25/26). Case in point I missed 4 questions from 1-15, and 3 from 15-26 in LR #1. In LR #2, I missed 2 from 1-15, and 1 in 16-25.

All advice would be really appreciated.

Mistakes are never random. There are specific reasons in your processes/decision making behind each missed question. Deep thorough review to figure out the exact reasons/mistakes/issues behind each missed question and behind questions you got right but struggled with and/or got lucky with is key for further improvement. It's takes a lot of time and goes way beyond just making sure you understand why the CR is correct and why the one you chose is wrong. You need to backtrack and examine your entire approach and thought process step by step that lead you to deciding that the CR was incorrect/to not select it and instead picked an incorrect AC thinking it was correct to figure out what went wrong.

Write out all the reasons that contributed to each question you missed (there is always more than one mistake or one tough aspect of a Q that resulted in getting it wrong) by reviewing each one thoroughly to inspect where you went wrong in your decision making and analysis processes. That list will reveal patterns in your mistakes and give you a roadmap of your weaknesses that need to be addressed. There are many different reasons for missing any particular question and you need to figure out which mistakes you are making frequently and what underlying weakness(es) are the cause so you can do stuff to fix those issues.

Deep thorough honest review and taking appropriate action from what you learn about the mistakes in your habits/methods/skills is the key to improving your skills and score range.

Just looking at data about performance by question types isn't very helpful since every question type has super easy up to super hard versions. You have to look more deeply into your specific methods and decision making processes to figure out how to change/improve your approach for better consistency and higher accuracy with the high level difficulty questions since those are probably the majority of the ones you are getting wrong.

This is very, very helpful. Thank you. I'm going to go back to my previous PT and do that, and continue with that method from now forward.

I can absolutely see what you're saying about performance by question types, but I do think that, when it comes to something like LR, it is helpful for me to know that, for example, I have never missed a single Main Conclusion or Role/Function, at least for the process of elimination. After a certain number of practice tests, I'd imagine that I can be sure that I've gotten a good range of difficulty, and it's good to know what strengths I do have.

[sfoglia]

I think you're mistaking consistency for ability. It sounds more like you are consistently doing worse than you expect. Work on getting better at games in general before worrying about being consistent there. As for LR that will also need work, but you also have to realize the nature of the beast. LR sections often vary widely in difficulty on a test, with one being the "curve setter" and the other being more of a formality. Doing drastically better on one section doesn't mean you're inconsistent, it means you're often doing exactly what they predicted when the made the form. Also, if you are keeping track of where you lose points in a section, I wouldn't divide it in half, a more accurate classification would prob be more like "1-11, 12-18, 19-25/26".

ETA: I don't want to appear negative, but I'd rather see people have a more realistic understanding of the effort required to hit their goals, so I'd like to point out that getting from low/mid 160s to a 170+ is never just a matter of a few quick improvements. While it doesn't seem like many points, that's right where the curve starts to be a pain in the ass, and it's often more a struggle than people realize. For instance, I randomly pulled up a recent test, for a 162 you need a -25; for a 170 you need a -14.
As you can see, those quick 8 points to get from 162-170 actually requires getting 44% of your total mistakes correct next time.

I'm not saying it can't be done, I've done it myself, just don't underestimate the challenge!

Again, so helpful, and not negative in the least. It actually is an incredible encouragement to know that it isn't that I'm an incompetent dimwit, but just that I need to keep with it for longer than I would have imagined to see improvement.

[rbrown0824]

What about logical structure? As you're reviewing your mistakes, see if you are missing more of a particular type of reasoning e.g. a disproportionate number of correlation/causation, or those that mistake total for percentages or those that mistakenly attribute a characteristic to an entire population because it exists in its components.

[Blythe17]

1) LG - I've been drilling them, I've been studying them, 7Sage/BP/Bibles and I just bought Manhattan, but I always mess up 1 game on the section. My sections generally look like this - 5/5, 6/6, 1-3/7 4/5 -, It's basically the single biggest roadblock I have to getting ~ my target score. It's also insanely frustrating, because LG is supposed to be the most learn-able section. (For reference, I Pt'ed 2/23 on my first LG section)

It looks like you're doing well on LG except for a single game, which I assume is usually the "hard" game on each section. I suggest simply noting the game type for each of them, and you'll probably see a pattern of which types are tripping you up. Then focus on drilling those specific types.

Also, don't feel too frustrated about it! The fact that you went from 2/23 to where you're at now speaks to the "game-ability" of LG and the fact that you're able to improve on it significantly. If what I assume is true, then you're almost there--just maybe a couple of particular difficult game types left to tackle.

[Clearly]

The real question is what your time distribution looks like. The biggest breakthrough when I was struggling with games was when I realized that it wasn't about me not being able to do hard games, it was that I wasn't being efficient enough on the easy games. The 8:45 per game distribution mindset is no good. The fourth game is always harder than the first, and treating them like you should do them in the same way is risky. Find out if your problem is that you're not getting games with unlimited time, or if you're trying to do a 12 minute game in 8. My distribution of time looks something like
5 min
7 min
9 min
14 min

Game fours are unpredictable in nature, and sometimes you just need time to sort them out and test some more things.