Self-study
Hello!
There's often a large gap between my PTs and my BRs. My PT scores tend to be in the high 160s, and the BRs tend to be in the high 170s.
On most blind reviews, it's almost immediately obvious what the right answer is, and I can identify why the actual choice I made was wrong.
I believe stress and anxiety from the timer negatively impacts my performance.
In spite of having taken dozens of practice tests at this point (not all of which were on 7Sage), and having done a considerable amount of drills, sections, and reading/watching videos, my current average PT score (167) is lower than my initial diagnostic (no studying at all) score of 168.
Endurance also may contribute to the PT/BR gap. My mind sometimes starts to wander while I'm taking the PTs.
Do any of you have advice for overcoming the timer anxiety? Do any have advice for keeping your mind from wandering?
Thank you!
1
13 comments
Hi! I recently tried this method where before I take a PT, I write down question types and my process to solve them, and tell myself that for every question type, I just have to follow my process. No matter the difficulty, it is all solved in the same way.
Example: for weakening questions, I don't have to disprove the conclusion, I just need to make it unlikely to be true; for flaw questions, I have to describe the error in the reasoning etc. And btw these descriptions are based on the silly mistakes I make such as trying to prove something wrong in a weakening question when I don't have to, or trying to weaken a flaw question. You could customize your own version of this for what you usually miss in PT but not in BR. This closed my PT/BR gap for LR.
I often get so anxious that I lose track of what I'm doing, and reminding myself that I have done great in BR, drills and I can do the same in the PT if I just stop panicking and follow my process as usual is what has helped. For the mind wandering, I suggest using the highlighter tool. When I do this, I'm forced to interpret each sentence, is it conclusion, premise? then I highlight it, is there a questionable word in an AC? highlight!! This is how I keep myself focused.
Are you struggling with accuracy throughout or just running out of time? What kind of Qs are you getting wrong (level 1-3 or level 4-5), the advice I would give depends on your answer!
@NatalieManley
The issue is that I'm running out of time. I rarely run out of time on RC, but I often run out of time on LR.
When I do run out of time, it's only ever the levels 4 and 5 questions that I don't have time to finish.
I always get the 1 - 3 questions right. I feel like the issue is probably that I spend too much time second guessing myself on 1 - 3 questions. I evaluate all the answer choices even when I've found an answer that I think is right "just in case." I haven't cognizantly thought about this before, I'm only just recognizing that I do this as I type.
@blairivoyant This was my problem exactly! What really started helping me was trying to push myself to get through the first 15 questions in 15 minutes (while allowing myself to get through in 18 minutes on timed sections without freaking out, bc sometimes they throw some really hard Qs in the first 15). The way I trained myself to do this was making drills of only level 1-3 questions, then first giving myself 18 minutes to finish, then 17, then 16, then 15, until I got to a place where I could get through all 15 in 15 minutes most of the time with >85% accuracy. Sometimes when you do these drills you get like too many easy parallel flaw questions for them to be actually feasible in 15 minutes, but for this most part this helped me be way more confident early on in the section and learn how to pick my ACs and RUN. I hope this helps! Another thing is that I found some level 4-5 questions can be really fast if you know what you're looking for and you PREPHRASE your answers. Bailey's live classes on spotting the gap and Henry's classes on MBT, MSS, and SA questions were both really helpful at allowing me to get faster at some level 4-5 qs. If you want me to go into more detail on the strategies I learned in those classes, lmk and I'd be happy to share.
@NatalieManley That's great advice, I'll give it a try! If you feel like sharing those strategies, I think they'd be helpful. MBT and MSS can be particularly time consuming 😅
@blairivoyant sure! For MBT and SA (sometimes this works for an MSS with causal or conditional logic), diagram (either actually or mentally) then think about potential VIABLE conclusions. For example, if your diagram is A-->B-->C-->D, then you know anything that ends in A or /D is not going to be viable (because they are sufficient conditions, not necessary results), so you can quickly eliminate those ACs without even really reading them. Oftentimes this leaves you with only 1-2 ACs left which is way faster to deal with. I hope this helps!
@NatalieManley That is helpful! Thank you for all the advice, I'm eager to try it all out!
Overcoming timer anxiety is a skill. This is great because with enough practice, you can overcome it. On the downside that means you have to practice it a fair bit. What I found helped me was playing blitz chess. This may sound completely irrelevant to testing, but if you play chess and really force yourself to think through each move without worrying about the clock, you will get better. I lost on time a lot, and played bad chess over and over, but then it got to a point where I really could focus on the move without worrying about the clock, and crucially without forgetting about the clock. (Im not even good at chess, but still was able to build the time management skill). Find something like chess (online poker can work) which requires analysis under time pressure, and spend half an hour a day playing it.
@Michael123 That's interesting advice - I'll give it a try! Thank you!
@blairivoyant Another thing that has helped me with anxiety is to force myself to move on from Qs that I'm really unsure about, or I feel like I'm not seeing the trick or key to getting the Q right. I give myself MAX 2-3 minutes to try a question, and even if I don't feel confident in my answer after that, I HAVE to move on. I tell myself I can always come back to hard qs later with fresh eyes. This helps me not spiral and freak out about timing for the rest of the test.
@NatalieManley I'll try this too, thank you! :)
@blairivoyant Another thing that's helped my mindset is watching JY's live takes of full LR sections. Seeing how quickly he moves through questions and flags ones he's unsure about is kinda inspiring and shows what a more efficient approach might look like. I just watched the PT 153 one and it was super helpful.
@NatalieManley I haven't tried that yet, but I think it could help me to watch.
Thank you so much for all your suggestions by the way, I feel like they've given me direction!