Hi! For RC and LR, i'm having a hard time bridging the gap between my timed score and BR score. For context, my goal score is low 160s-mid 160s, and I've increased my score ~15 points since my diagnostic in late May. I'm wondering if anyone has any advice and whether you guys think it's possible to hit my goal by September test date? Thanks in advance and have a good night! :)
1
4 comments
It looks like you're finishing the sections. Have you considered just going up to number 20 and guessing on the rest? In other words, just forgetting about trying to finish sections? Even though you can get 3-4 correct toward the end, by guessing you'd already get 1 out of the last 5, and you'd probably be able to pick up more between 1 through 20 than you'd lose by guessing on 21 through 25.
Obviously this kind of approach isn't what you ultimately hope to use later, but it's a good approach to use now. Otherwise you're going to make a lot of mistakes you could have avoided throughout the section.
@Kevin_Lin Thank you for this advice! I'll try this approach when I do another section/practice test :) I appreciate it!!
There's undoubtedly many different aspects you can still improve on but my suggestion is for you try to figure out your bottleneck with timing.
Are you getting to the question going "wait. What did the stim say?"
Are you getting bogged down in all of the answer choices regularly leaving yourself to go "most of these sound reasonable" or "I don't know which ones are clearly wrong"?
Are you getting snagged on handful of question types worse than others?
Are you second guessing yourself, leaving you to double check at times when you should have been able to lock in and move on?
If you are saying yes to the first one, I'd recommend doing translation drills. If you've read the loophole, you know what I mean but they're pretty self explanatory. Focus on just reading the stims of a section without touching the question itself and just focus on digesting the stim, translating it into your own words, and trying to come up with a prephrase (what's the potential loophole/gap in logic?, what could be an inference?, what would resolve this paradox?, what are these two disagreeing over?).
You don't necessarily need a prephrase for everything but they're useful both because they oftentimes set you up for the right answer depending on the question type and it requires active thinking.
In my opinion, one of the main goals everyone has or should have with the lsat is not letting the test direct your thinking. When you let them think for you, you let them guide you to the wrong answers.
Similarly, if you feel like you're saying yes to the other questions I asked, work your way through the aspects related to them and focus on drilling in on those specific skills. While it's possible to improve on everything all at once, I think it's generally more efficient and effective to try to focus on specific aspects more directly. That's doubly true when we're trying to preserve as much test material as possible for practicing.
@Adam I appreciate that! Perhaps i'll do targeted drills towards those weaknesses, since I tend to get bogged down by level 5 questions when I can't tell whether its a level 5/ I think I can do it but end up getting it wrong on my timed attempt. Thanks so much!!