Self-study
So I am fairly new to the LSAT studying process. I just recently completed the core curriculum last week and begun my first practice block this week. In it I was assigned my first practice exam. As you can see from the results there is a pretty large gap between my raw timed score and my blind review score.
I knew going into it from the drills and practice sections that I had a pretty good understanding of the material and that early on, timing would be my biggest challenge (I didn’t even get to the last RC passage on the PT 😭). Often times in practice it would cause me to rush my answers after about the midway point. However I definitely did not expect there to be this large of a discrepancy between timed and untimed review.
During the blind review I made sure that I completed it without any support from outside sources (notes & lessons) as we are supposed to. So I know this was completely from knowledge.
But my question is how do I close this large gap? I know people will say to just slow down. But is that all there is to it? How can I go about improving my ability under time pressure the proper way?
Any help/advice from anyone who has gone through something similar would be greatly appreciated!
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4 comments
This is a great problem to have. 177 BR is excellent.
The more that you answer questions, the quicker you will be at solving them. I don't think you need more theory or lessons, you just need to grind away at questions. Keep taking your time and solving them.
It may not be obviously intuitive why slow and solving works when ultimately you have time pressure on the real test. It works because when you go slow, you catch the patterns, flaws, intricacies, the ways in which LSAC wanted you to misinterpret a statement, etc. When you go fast, you never map those out completely.
When people go fast and miss lots of questions, it is kinda like going into a dark room and feeling around for stuff. You might get the thing you're looking for, but making a map to use in the future is really hard.
Going slow and solving the question and breaking down the passage\answer choices is like turning the light on. You can look at the room and see the layout and the structure and say, "I see how they did this. I know why this works, and I know why those don't. Easy pattern." From there you can take that on to the next question. Over time, you can figure things out quickly and know exactly what you're doing.
What is a comfortable time per session that you need to complete a PT and get a 177? You can use that time as your baseline then you gradually drop the time 1 minute per session you take and check if your accuracy still the same. In that way you gradually increase your time pressure. Try this method for a month to see if you can mantain your accuracy at shorter time.