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On the last few PTs I have experienced a strange trend on LR. When I take the actual PT, I encounter some LR questions that I am uncertain about the answer choice but the answer choice I select is correct. For some of these same questions, I find my self selecting the wrong answer choice during blind review. The most stressful part of this experience is I have not been able to identify a pattern in terms of question types or question difficulty. Really the only pattern is that is happening more frequently.
Has anyone else experienced this? How did you overcome it? Is it simply a lack of understanding?
Comments
I haven’t had this issue on blind review per say. But several times during my answer choice review at the end of a section I’ve gone back to double-check circled questions and have changed right answers to wrong ones. Talk about annoying.
Yes, I think the issue is understanding. I’m finding that, usually, the issue is in the details for me and I just need to pay attention to things like qualifiers, or tricky words that take an answer choice out of scope. At least for me, the issue has been understanding the answer choices and/ or misreading the question stem (like overlooking EXCEPT).
If you picked an answer choice completely randomly and it happened to be correct, would that be sufficient for you to just move on? Obviously not. So why would getting lucky and picking the correct answer while under timed conditions have any special kind of value, especially given that you've already conceded you don't fully understand how the thing works? It doesn't matter one iota whether you got an answer right if you don't understand how it works, because without that principled basis there is no chance you'll be able to consistently replicate that success down the road anyway.
So yes, it is simply a lack of understanding. You got lucky under time, and in your blind review you went down the wrong path despite having unlimited time, definitively demonstrating your lack of understanding and undoing your lucky guess in the process. Happens to everyone; you just have to make sure you aren't acting like you were 'robbed' of a point or anything like that.