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I am getting really flustered to be completely honest. I am not getting much better at this test due to the fact that I just tend to overthink every single thing. There are so many drawbacks to that 1. I run out time because obviously if I am overthinking everything, I will never have enough time 2. Because I am over thinking I am almost always changing from the right to the wrong answer because I wrongly make wrong answer sound right by doing this overthinking process. It sounds practically insane to ask someone how to get over this "overthinking" mindset, but I am going to ask anyway. Has anyone ever gone through this experience, or is going through this experience, and how did you, are how are you, getting over it. This over thinking process is very prevalent in my BR where I have unlimited time to think about the answer.
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@wraith985-4026 Thank you, I will continue to nit pick at my error in reasoning and hopefully I will be able to overcome them. The reason why I don't want to pay for a tutor is because I just think I need to practice more with timed tests and with the difficult questions. I feel that a tutor at this point in my prep will only be telling me why my reasoning is wrong, and while that sounds great I have you and JY's videos to tell me that my reasoning is wrong and how I should change it. Also, I learn best from hands on experience such as taking tests and dissecting the answer choices. My issue was that for such a long time I did un-timed, older material, and now that I am doing timed new material everything is hitting me at once. The newer tests are more subtle with the answer choices on the more difficult questions, more so than the older tests, and I am still getting used to that, as well as the timing aspect. If worse comes to worse I will get a tutor for sure, but for now I am gonna take a stab at my errors in reasoning, notice more of the subtleties and see where that leads me. I am taking my first try at this test in FEB and will see how that goes, then I will prob take it again during the summer, and if by then I still do not understand that I will get a tutor. Thank you for your guidance, as well as everyone else's, it is always truly appreciated.
To some extent, you will always 'overthink' things because your nervousness will tend to make you conjure up wild speculation in an attempt to make sure you've covered all of your bases. If you think you have a good imagination now, I promise you that a 180 scorer will be able to identify many more imaginative loopholes and corner cases to exploit. Overthinking is not a problem in and of itself - it only becomes a problem when you can't distinguish good lines of reasoning from bad. To me, that's where your issue seems to lie.
If you talk yourself into making wrong answers sound right, that means you made a logical error somewhere along the line. If you eliminate the right answer because it sounded irrelevant to you, you made a logical error somewhere along the line. In both cases, you've talked yourself into a bad line of reasoning, so there MUST be a reason that it was tempting to you. Identify why those thought processes are not correct, and BE SPECIFIC in your articulation. The more crazy theories you come up with that make you think a wrong answer is right, the better - because then you get to deal with each and every one of them. When you can identify the problem with every single last line of reasoning that initially led you astray, you are where you need to be. And if that takes an hour for one question, then it takes an hour. If you don't do it now, you'll have to do it later, and it won't always take that long.
Don't worry about 'overthinking' - just treat each of those insane 'overthinks' (is that a word?) as an opportunity for you to sharpen your logical skills. In fact, you should welcome overthinking when you're still trying to learn, because dealing with its results builds the foundation that allows you to stop. I tell all of my students at the outset to nitpick EVERYTHING - because those objections are precisely the catalysts for guidance.
EDIT: And yes, I appreciate that you don't want to pay any more money for LSAT prep, but you really should consider getting a few hours of tutoring if you continue to be unable to dig yourself out of this rut. It doesn't have to be me or JY or any other high priced tutor, but I can't properly express in words how much an outside perspective can help. You'll pay in either money or time regardless, and my assumption is that you don't have unlimited time to spend.
The way I approach every stim is with the mindset that the argument is not sound unless it is a MBT or MP question. Sometimes though, for the tougher questions, I cannot tell exactly what the answer is but I do know that the answer will always address the relationship between the P and C. For example, if the question is a weaken question and the conclusion says something like "thus, bob is not intelligent," I would know that one of the answer choices could say something like "Bob did not do well on his physics exam because he had chicken pox." I usually know what the answer choice will do, but sometimes what I have a problem with is that I analyze the answers so much that even the right answer seems like its wrong. Also sometimes for the tougher questions its difficult to figure out why that one answer is right because it seems so irrelevant when its really not. Maybe I am not that intelligent to see certain things?
Yes--- something that was mentioned in one of the seminars (I think it was the active reading one with c.janson35 ?) is that we want to constantly question each argument that is given to us. Think of the test as a friend that is constantly spewing out BS and we want to call out our friend on his BS arguments, so we have to find those holes in the argument. When we approach the test in this adversarial way, it'll be put us in constant attack mode. And with that we can be more confident before even reaching the answer choices, and we'll have a general idea of what the answer might already be before we go through all of the answer choices. Try approaching your questions from that perspective, I think it'll definitely help you out in the long run :)
@poonage65146 yes!
So, @poonage65146 you have brought something to my attention. When testing, I think sometimes I don't really know exactly what is wrong about the relationship, and from there I let the answer choices guide me. Unfortunately, I feel like with that strategy that is where I might get bogged down because I analyze each answer choice wayy too much, and that creates overthinking, and more importantly, me somehow reasoning that the wrong answer is right. Do you think that could be the issue?
Something else that's really important in helping me cut down on wavering between two answer choices (since there is only one correct answer and 4 wrong ones) is to not only be able to identify what premises and conclusion are, but also understand how the two work together. So understanding how the premise supports the conclusion, and thinking about where there are holes in that specific argument. Not sure if that was a very helpful explanation, but actively reading and engaging with the material/constantly questioning the stimulus is definitely helping me improve.
My next pt is tom, ill let you know how that goes.
!!! @poonage65146
@tanes25413 Very concise! I like that :-)
What @poonage65146 said!
+1
@twssmith644 ohh! Gotcha! My apologies as well!
@nye887085 Your mindset going into every question involving arguments should follow this diagram:
1. Read the question stem
2. Read the stimulus
3. Underline the Conclusion
4. Bracket the Premises/Support
5. Eliminate Wrong Answers (about half of the answer choices will be out of scope or have a degree problem)
6. Find and confirm the correct answer (I put small tildes next to answer choices that might be correct)
Your main goal should be going into questions to look for WRONG ANSWERS. Every. Single. Time. The more you do this, the easier finding the incorrect choices becomes.
In terms of fundamentals, knowing how to negate answer choices are important in NA and knowing when you can/cannot conclude something in Principle questions will help immensely.
@nye887085 By fundamentals, I mean those big core concepts that JY hammers home in the curriculum. Starting with the really small but so important things such as being able to pick out the argument and separate it out from the rest of the horseshit. Thats the most important. Another concept that you have have to being to do almost without even thinking about it translating English to logic. You have to have your sufficiency/necessity components down as well as being able to recognize group 1-4 indicators and translating them. Negation, Demorgan's law, intersection relationships, valid and invalid argument forms, a working knowledge (not necessarily memorization) of the common flaws, biconditionals, etc. By committing these major ideas to memory and constantly reviewing them, you're going to put yourself in much better position to attack these questions with confidence, timeliness and most importantly accuracy. Practice these concepts constantly, even in the PT phase.
I received a piece of advice that I think about daily. It pretty much boils down to this... when you get really good at something, you spend most of your time practicing. Its so easy to just keep taking test after test, but if you don't hit these core concepts once in a while, you will lose your sharpness with them. Best of luck to you.
@tanes25413 I am so sorry, I was answering goalis180 question about how I define fundamentals. I was just trying to make a distinction between understanding vs strengthening fundamentals. My apologies, I was in no way referring to your post:) We are going to get this test!!
This question type was the hardest for me all the way up to point ... when they became my favorite. Just keep drilling them and you should reach a level where they start to seem easy. Subtlety is everything. Just find that one thing in the answer choice that simply must be true, for if it weren't the argument would never work. You'll get there!!
Yeah @twssmith644 I was just speaking in general. I'm not sure of your situation but I was referring to goal. I just threw my issue with strengthen questions out there as an example; however, I did not mean knowing how to answer a strengthen question equates to understanding the basic fundamentals needed for this test. We do have a different concept of fundamentals, but at any rate, we'll all get it one way or another.
I have been studying off/on for a year and for me, strengthening fundamentals is not the same as understanding the fundamentals. It appears from your posts you have a grasp of the concepts. From my view, fundamentals include more than just the concepts but about viewing the test taking experience as a whole. Strengthening is about making the process more intuitive so that I can move more confidently thru the test and "bank" time for the most difficult questions.
I typed so much more than what's posted. Idk what happened! Try writing why every answer is either right or wrong. Lots of people recommend this. I haven't tried it but I see the benefits. It's definitely my next step for certain question types.
I think everybody had this issue in the beginning. It's definitely gonna come down to knowing the fundamentals. You said your BR isn't where it should be so there's an indicator to your overthinking. For me, the issue was definitely a lack of understanding the fundamentals. How can you answer a question if you don't know how to go about answering the questions? Or, you don't have the fundamentals, say logic, DeMorgan's, etc., to answer the question? I couldn't answer the darn strengthen questions because I was trying to strengthen the conclusion! SMH.
also, @poonage65146 @twssmith644 @nye887085 @tanes25413, maybe I misunderstand what you mean by fundamentals, do you mind elaborating on what constitutes "fundamentals?"
Twssmith, I do know how to negate, but I agree with you, maybe I need to write out the AC's to see my personal pattern of reasoning on the wrong answers, and demolish that reasoning. I know I can def do it, I just need to patch a few holes, thank you.
For NA, have you watched the video from @poonage65146's workshop? Do you negate the AC's - negation is a fundamental that I am drilling especially for the more complex questions. Maybe try a free 30 minute consult with one of the tutors? I still recommend writing out why ACs are right/wrong especially on the difficult questions to help identify and master the trap answer patterns. Keep working on building your confidence without burning out, you can do it:)
I am able to identify 99.9% of the time what are the premises and the conclusion. I am also able to call upon what I need to do to get the question right, for example SA assumption questions there is a gap where a new idea is introduced which should be linked to an idea that the author assumes is the same. In flaw questions the author makes an error in reasoning from P to C. Weaken questions require us to, not attack the Premise, not attack the conclusion, but wreck the relationship between the Premise and conclusion. I know what I am supposed to do. I am usually getting the level 4 and 5 difficulty questions wrong, and most of the time the question is so subtle, and I am choosing the wrong attractive AC. I mean the questions I missed on PT 52 were pretty tough to be honest.
I would say my weakness varies on the difficulty of the questions to be honest. Most of the time, however I struggle with NA. NA questions take the most time for me, and sometimes flaw.
I have had the same issues. @poonage65146's response was right on target for my current situation. By strengthening my fundamentals, I am not waffling on answer choices especially when down to two contenders & my timing has improved significantly because I have more confidence in identifying the correct answer. I am in the middle of re-doing the 7Sage curriculum and found it very helpful. The main lesson I have learned - I missed a lot of information the 1st go around focusing too much on just learning the basics.
If your fundamentals are strong, many people recommend literally writing down why each AC is wrong/right for every question during blind review. Since there is only one correct AC, this may help you clarify your reasoning to accurately and more efficiently determine the right answer. All the best:)
Did the same when I first started as well. Your overthinking might be due to the fact that you're focused on the wrong things. For arguments, you should be worrying about the premise and the conclusion about 95% of the time. If you're having problems in BR, you should focus on why answer choices are wrong, and not on why one answer is correct. Most of the time, it'll be a difference between scope or degree.