Hi everyone, I've taken 2 PTs after my diagnostic and the discrepancy of scores between the actual PT and the BR is large. Both PTs, I scored a 151 but on BR I scored a 167 and a 171.
Does anyone have tips on how to do better?
4
Hi everyone, I've taken 2 PTs after my diagnostic and the discrepancy of scores between the actual PT and the BR is large. Both PTs, I scored a 151 but on BR I scored a 167 and a 171.
Does anyone have tips on how to do better?
4 comments
Copying my response from another post asking the same thing:
I think there are a couple things I would recommend based off my own experience with a gap between timed and BR performance.
First, in terms of the timing I think you might benefit from being more willing to make your best guess and skip when a question isn't clicking for you and come back later. Another thing for LR is try to be regimented with your approach to each question. For me this means I read the question stem, then the stimulus, then try to prephrase possible answers if I can, and then go to the ACs. This forces me to be steady and calm which ultimately turns into speed. It might also be helpful doing some untimed drills to try to build this habit.
You clearly know the test well at this point if you are BRing in the 170s, so try to isolate what you can do to improve timed execution based on how you approach questions in BR. Ask, "what about this approach in BR can I bring into a timed section? What could have lead me to the correct answer the first time around?" One strategy that has been helpful for me in that regard is doing untimed sections and recording myself thinking aloud and then listening back to the recording of me getting answers wrong -- this has been really helpful in precisely understanding some of my faulty patterns of reasoning.
I assume you've taken a ton of LSAT questions at this point in your studying, which builds habits. Some of those habits are obviously great, but others can be hurting your performance. I think the LSAT's time constraints force us to rely on muscle memory and habits we form in practice, so it is important to keep note of when your automatic processes don't align with how you successfully approach a question in BR. The goal is to make your BR brain and your muscle memory brain operate the same way.
slow down, take your time answering every question. Once you hit the 5 minute warning, guess on all remaining questions, then go back to where you are and start working on that problem. Accuracy is much more important than speed. you will get better with speed naturally.
im in the same boat. Whats helped me is focus on fundamentals and getting those quicker through games, quizlet, or drills. And also taking untimed sections with BR.
If you can work your way to the answer on blind review, you probably have enough baseline skill to predict the answers before you even look at the choices. On LR at least, read the question stem first, then the stimulus/paragraph to the side, predict the answer, and then scan the ACs. On RC, still predict after you read the question stem and before looking at the ACs.