Hi everyone, I'm scoring in the mid 150s but need a 160+ for November. I'm also taking the October LSAT but have not been able to figure out an effective studying method. I am decent at RC but LR is my biggest issue. When I do an untimed section I get around a -4, but timed it goes up to around -10.. My worst question types are flaw, strengthen/weaken, conditional reasoning, and phen-hypothesis.
Sometimes I get perfect 5/5 on my timed drills on lvl 4-5 questions but then get stuck on a lvl 2 or 3 which makes no sense. So if anyone has any advice on what I should do to improve quickly please let me know! Should I do untimed short drills, do timed full sections, or take a PT every other day? I'm not sure.
5
2 comments
I went from the same mid 150s to 160+ in the span of 2 months and I think what helped tremendously is doing a practice test once a week, and then I spend the next day reviewing (or whenever I have time). Every other day I would drill 15 q's of my biggest weaknesses. I also have a non traditional approach when reviewing the test in which I review each question even right ones, because sometimes I will get a question "right" but I wouldn't really get why. I have the same worst question types so drilling those 15 questions each day "adaptive" level really helped. Good luck, you are going to kill it in October!
I'll preface this advice by saying that knowing your weakest categories is a lot less valuable than knowing why they're your weakest categories. I can identify meaningful commonalities between them, but it's only my best guess, and may not be applicable to your case. Do you keep a wrong answer journal? It doesn't have to be a fancy Moleskine or anything, just some record somewhere of your thoughts on what went wrong. I just write mine on 7Sage the "Notes" tab of the question, usually explaining why I picked the wrong answer, why I didn't pick the right answer, and some general takeaway that, if I had internalized before approaching the question in the first place, would have prevented the error. Here's an example.
Princ: society should not restrict the performance of any of the actions of adults or interfere with the likely results except to prevent negative effects on others.
The reason I'm spending so much time on this caveat is that reviewing the trends in your "journal" is way more valuable for priority-setting than looking at raw analytics numbers. They're good to know, but like all statistics, they're most instructive when backed up by more qualitative knowledge.
Okay! With that out of the way, CR is a kind of broad category, but flaw, S/W, and P/H questions all share a heavy emphasis on comparative support structure analysis. Quickly sussing out the anatomy of what is and is not conducive to the truth value of the conclusion. If I wanted to target that core competency, I would throw in some untimed drills of those question types. For each question, I would write out the support structure of the argument, the assumptions and gaps inherent to its reasoning, and any faulty logic it might employ. Think, "If I wanted to rebut this argument, what would be my first move?" The idea isn't to flawlessly execute this practice for every question thereafter, but more to encourage the practice of playing around with an argument in your head as you read, eyeing up the joinery, and wiggling around various pieces to see what falls apart. This is the way I approach these question types; it is not the best way and certainly not the only way. That said, I think it's worth kicking around for a few days.