162 cold. Can I get to the 175+ promised land? Forum

[presidentspivey]

LG -6, LR -3, RC -9. Would like to get to the promised land of 175 and up, and it seems like that may be possible. Encouraged by my LR score, worried RC will be hard to boost and that I don't have enough room for improvement on my LG to get there. Where should I start? I'm planning on testing in September.

[twiix]

You will be able to reliably get LG to -0 to -2 if you put in the effort. It is far and away the easiest section to learn. Check out some guides on this site for help getting there, and put in the hours it takes. That would mean you need to get roughly 5 more correct on RC which is probably reasonable depending on when you want to sit for the test. There is no magic solution. Start studying and stay dedicated.

[MediocreAtBest]

You only missed 3 LR questions out of ~50 on your cold diagnostic?

[Platopus]

A 175+ should be obtainable if you can make up the easy points on LG and clean up RC a bit. -3 on LR for a diagnostic is strong. RC is definitely learnable, just like the other sections of the test. You may need to do some experimenting to figure out what methods work best from you, but at -9 there's definitely room for improvement; even -3 RC on test day would be a significant gain. RC seems to be the section that people talk themselves out of improving upon. Treat it like games. Do passages over and over and over again until it clicks, and don't settle for a -5.

If you haven't already, get your hands on as many PT's as possible and start drilling heavy. Since you have a good foundation in LR, focus early on nailing down LG. You seem to have a natural inclination, so going -1/-2 in 3-4 weeks on LG is certainly doable. Once you have games down, stay fresh on them, but spend more time on drilling RC passages and improving on LR if you can. I'm a big fan of the Powerscore RC passage type books for tests 1-40 - they are very conveniently split up by passage type. 7sage is the go-to resource for LG, but if you haven't already, get a hold of the Powescore LG bible and go through that, its very solid for building a foundation. Either Powescore or Manhattan (I recommend both) work well for LR. There's a ton of good resources sticked in the forum, so dig around a bit and adopt one of the plans from the 180 scorers. Basic plan should be 1st accuracy, 2nd timing, 3rd stamina + consistency. If you're sitting in September you have plenty of time to space out studying so it's not overkill. I wouldn't worry about taking a PT for at least a month, and until you feel like you're making gains in LG or RC.