A little help from my friends Forum

[Mouth]

All,

Quick background: I took my first loosely-timed diagnostic last November, where I score a 164. I was pleased enough, though I went -0 on logic games, and by common wisdom I didn't have a whole lot of room to improve from there. I went through the Trainer, Manhattan, Powerscore (didn't jive with me at all), and some 7sage. My first few tests were mid 160's, then they were in the mid 170's Jan-Feb for a while, then they slowly dwindled back down to a 163 on the June LSAT. While LG has always been consistent at -2 or better, I've seen from -10 to -0 on both RC and LR, but I can never nail it down to a repeatable performance.

I'll be retaking in September, and I guess what I'm asking is have any of you gone from an average of -6 on RC/LR and necked it down to -2 or less, and how did you do it? I don't know if my initial prep was just misguided or what, but in my review of wrong questions, when I read the questions and then look at the answers the right one usually smacks me across the face and I am not sure how to overcome the plateau so that I can consistently get these ones that are obvious in review correct the first time with confidence. I'm looking at Noodley's retake thread right now, I just want to make sure that I'm not leaving anything on the table like last time.

Anyways, thanks for reading, and I hope to see what helped everyone get past these frustrating stages. I've seen the promised land, I just need the directions back to it...

Cheers,
Mouth

[abujabal]

All,

Quick background: I took my first loosely-timed diagnostic last November, where I score a 164. I was pleased enough, though I went -0 on logic games, and by common wisdom I didn't have a whole lot of room to improve from there. I went through the Trainer, Manhattan, Powerscore (didn't jive with me at all), and some 7sage. My first few tests were mid 160's, then they were in the mid 170's Jan-Feb for a while, then they slowly dwindled back down to a 163 on the June LSAT. While LG has always been consistent at -2 or better, I've seen from -10 to -0 on both RC and LR, but I can never nail it down to a repeatable performance.

I'll be retaking in September, and I guess what I'm asking is have any of you gone from an average of -6 on RC/LR and necked it down to -2 or less, and how did you do it? I don't know if my initial prep was just misguided or what, but in my review of wrong questions, when I read the questions and then look at the answers the right one usually smacks me across the face and I am not sure how to overcome the plateau so that I can consistently get these ones that are obvious in review correct the first time with confidence. I'm looking at Noodley's retake thread right now, I just want to make sure that I'm not leaving anything on the table like last time.

Anyways, thanks for reading, and I hope to see what helped everyone get past these frustrating stages. I've seen the promised land, I just need the directions back to it...

Cheers,
Mouth

How did/do you practice? Additionally, when you are reviewing the wrong questions, are you doing the whole "oh duh this is the right answer it's obvious" and move on? Or do you look at each AC and state to yourself (verbally or otherwise), "ok, this one is wrong because of X. This is wrong because of Y. This is correct because of this logical chain. This one is wrong because Z. This last one is wrong because A". Doing that is time-consuming as hell, but helps establish links.

I also am a huge proponent of taking a PT, going through each incorrect question, and delineating exactly why I got it wrong. Establishing a trend as to why I miss questions (sort of a wrong answer derivative) helps me know what areas I need to target for practice. Also writing out "dude read the words in the stim more carefully it's obvious" multiple times will really get you understanding that you need to do that. I also handwrite instead of type. Find it hits the brain better that way.

[Mouth]

Yeah, I would go through my practice tests and physically write on them/mark them up with a red pen with where I messed up and why answers were wrong or right and how I could have gotten to the right question quicker. Then on the front page of the test I would write up all of the big picture lessons learned and look at that over time as I drilled until my next PT.

Timing is a pretty big issue for me on RC and LR. I can be pretty close to the 15/15, but the last ten or so questions always seem to suck up absurd amounts of time and it's a chain reaction of going too fast and missing the subtleties of the harder questions. I think a lot of my timing issues come from reading too much into the text and the answers which leads to a lot of waffling, but I can't seem to break that habit as much as I would like.

[abujabal]

Yeah, I would go through my practice tests and physically write on them/mark them up with a red pen with where I messed up and why answers were wrong or right and how I could have gotten to the right question quicker. Then on the front page of the test I would write up all of the big picture lessons learned and look at that over time as I drilled until my next PT.

Timing is a pretty big issue for me on RC and LR. I can be pretty close to the 15/15, but the last ten or so questions always seem to suck up absurd amounts of time and it's a chain reaction of going too fast and missing the subtleties of the harder questions. I think a lot of my timing issues come from reading too much into the text and the answers which leads to a lot of waffling, but I can't seem to break that habit as much as I would like.

Definitely feel you on the LR timing thing. Sometimes it almost feels like just skimming the stim after reading the stem is good for eliminating 3 obvious wrongs, and then getting that last one just takes a quick glance to find the indicators that one or the other is wrong.