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How can I break into the mid 170s?? Do I need to change the way I'm practicing and reviewing (sections and wrong answer journal) or just practice more? Does anyone have tips to start scoring consistently -0/-1 on LR instead of -2/-3? Also does anyone have issues with RC consistency / tips on how to become more consistent?
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6 comments
Speed whispering on RC so you don’t miss little things
It's hard to say as everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses but I can share what worked for me. One thing that helped me in LR was to start doing the section in chunks, and not necessarily doing the chunks in order. For example doing questions 5-10 quickly, and then reviewing 5-10, flagging any that felt tricky and then going to the next chunk, rather than doing the whole test and then going back to review. Taking a deep breath between chunks can help to reset and keep your heart rate low.
The fast track lessons are also helpful to reinforce what each question type is looking for. Sometimes going too fast, I would treat one question type like another. For example, picking an answer that would be good for a strengthening question when I was doing a necessary assumption question.
More broadly, I think the challenge for me was to know when to get out of pattern recognition mode. It took a lot of intentional practice for me to know which ones were 100% correct and which ones felt a little off and needed to be thought through more. Doing untimed tests, and treating every question like it's difficult can be good practice for developing that skill set.
Reviewing questions that I got correct, but I was slow on, helped earn me some time back on the exam. I tended to focus at the start on incorrect answers. Sometimes you get things incorrect because you are rushing to make up for time you lost on a different question that you got correct.
It may be the case that none of that was relevant to you, good luck regardless!
This is not really answering your question sorry but I did want to ask how you got to the point of scoring low 170s? I cannot break out of the 155 PT / ~170 Blind Review spot and it's really frustrating me :/
What kind of questions do you typically miss? Are you missing a random 2-3 questions, or are you missing the 2-3 "curvebreakers" in the section? Or perhaps a certain type of question, like CondReasoning?
If there is a pattern to your weakness, attack that pattern. Otherwise, it is just a consistency / focus issue. The only tip I can give is to be thorough for every question- walk through every bit of each question like you are J.Y. solving it in his videos.
I say this because MY most missed questions are the "easy" ones, where I think I have the answer after reading only half of the stimulus/answer choices. I got through this by approaching each question the same, no matter what level of difficulty I thought the question was.
RE: RC, work on your mental maps. In my experience, if I do not immediately know the answer to an RC question after reading the passage, it is because I did not commit that specific piece of information to it's position relative to the rest of the passage. The fix is to always be actively thinking while reading. Each sentence is either a building block in the map, or is not relevant and can be discarded.
Hopefully this was at least a bit helpful. It is extremely tough to improve once you hit the 170+ threshold, so it's okay to be a bit frustrated. In this range you know you can solve each question correctly, it's just a matter of your mental approach. Each problem is solvable and has one definite answer... go find it!