Self-paced
During my timed PT I am doing significantly worse than my BR. I know there is some controversy about the truth behind BR but I definitely find myself making simple mistakes when the pressure of time comes in. I don't know how to stop that. I feel like I have reached a plateau at my timed score as I keep scoring around there. I feel like something needs to click in me, but it is not and I am not sure what to do. Any suggestions?
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3 comments
For LR: make a systematic approach on how to engage stims. For me, I try to understand stims by themselves before looking at the question. I look for conclusions, premises, etc. first, then I try to understand what it wrong with it simply by reading it. Then I engage the question so I have a stronger position when engaging with the answer. This way, I am not second-guessing myself, eliminating bad answers sooner, and giving myself time to conclusively finish a question without biasing myself by knowing what i am looking for. Let the stim lead you to the right answer, versus letting the question bias you into something without thoroughly reading the stim
For RC: Learn how to chunk information. Unlike LR, this advice applies to honestly anything you have ever read. When reading passages, make a mental note of what the paragraph was about. All RC questions refer to something either explicitly or implicitly said in a passage, so being able to quickly go back to relevant parts and get the right answer will help immensely on time.
A secondary piece of advice I have, if you aren't pressed for time, is to read articles from journals or places like the Economist/Financial Times. Their writers tend to engage their audiences in more specific language than other news sources, which sometimes can feel like reading LR/RC when the writing is especially wordy. RC is sometimes said to be the section you "can't improve on", mainly because of how much of a dice roll passages can be at times, but that's not really true. The difference lies in whether you are a light academic reader or someone who has read so often you can discern and remember information like a living encyclopedia.
Here's a general video I made on the topic. Lemme know if you have any follow-up questions!
A few things that might be worth thinking about related to this:
What is your accuracy untimed? Obvious statement but the better you are at getting them right untimed will help under timed conditions. If you push yourself up there, it will help prevent you from bleeding points on some questions.
Training under a full pt is going to tax your endurance in a manner that a drill or even doing a few sections won't do. This is in part because obviously you're doing more on the pt but also that the tests are literally designed to work as a whole. Some sections are easier than others but they are balanced out in the entirety of a test.
Part of it is that getting better requires doing and evaluating which isn't necessarily fun when you see "lesser" scores and wrong answers on questions you feel like you should generally get right.