My apologies if this has been discussed better here before and I'm just missing it! Everything I've been able to find specifically on the 7Sage Discussion boards has been pretty wishy-washy in general about it, so I figured I'd post.

I know that success using particular “methods” (e.g., specific notation systems, margin-writing, etc.) in RC is typically pretty idiosyncratic and that what works for one person might be entirely unhelpful for another, but I want to sing the praises of a tool that I haven’t really seen suggested too much elsewhere (and in fact, that I’ve seen a few actively discourage):

The highlighter! Hear me out.

I didn’t even realize it was acceptable to use a highlighter during the actual test until recently because it doesn't seem to get talked about much, and I definitely did not expect it to help me, but it totally has. If you're like me and feel like the passages are a blur and the answers sometimes feel like total shots-in-the dark because you're so rushed and stressed, this honestly might help you get a little bit more certainty and confidence.

I’ve been putting my pencil down during my initial read and focusing just on understanding the passage and its structure, and then going through with the highlighter during a much briefer second pass and marking up everything that seems like it’ll be helpful to have for the questions (names, dates, details, shifts—anything that seems like answer-fodder, really). For me, this serves two purposes: 1) it quickly reacquaints me with the passage's overall structure in light of having just finished it (which can be quite helpful for a tricky main point question), and 2) it (obviously) makes the information easier to locate quickly.

It might just be me, but I feel like—since I've been staring solely at #2 pencil chickenscratch and black ink for months and months during prep and it can all start to feel like extraneous clutter at a certain point—the yellow of the highlighter stands out and really helps me organize the info visually. I’ve gone from missing 5-6 per RC section (on the newer tests) and sometimes not finishing on time to only about 2-3 misses on average (and in time, even with spending about 4 minutes upfront on the passage). For someone trying to go from consistent 169ish to consistent 172ish, these 2-3 extra points are huge for me!

Now I WILL GRANT YOU the possibility that this is all placebo and my actual improvement might simply stem from increased familiarity with RC (and no doubt that's a big part of it too), but the highlighting method really has, at least at this stage of prep for me, helped me feel more confident about my understanding of the passage. It feels like having a great setup for a logic game and being able to breeze right through the questions.

Anyway, if you're banging your head against the wall with RC and wrote off using a highlighter because you thought you couldn't spare the time, I'd say give it a shot! If it doesn't work for you, that's okay—but maybe it will!