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Hi everyone --
I know that many of you are getting ready to take the exam, and so with J.Y.’s blessing I thought it might be helpful for me to post a few quick last minute tips here on the 7Sage site (I’ve also posted this on reddit and my tls thread). These tips are not specific to the trainer (though those of you familiar with the trainer will be familiar with these suggestions). I know that at this point, most of you are focused on taking and reviewing PT’s -- what I’m about to mention are all simple suggestions/exercises that you should be able to integrate into that PT work fairly easily. Not all suggestions are meant for all students, so please, of course, pick and choose whichever you think might be useful for your situation -- if any of this accidentally contradicts 7Sage advice, please assume that they are right and I am wrong :) --
For LR
During this final period it can be very helpful to firm up and habitualize your question-specific strategies and thought processes. To that end...
Without looking back over your work, create a notecard for each type of Logical Reasoning question. On one side of this notecard, write out the most important things to know/keep in mind for that q type, and on the other side, write out the basic strategies you generally try to employ. Once you’ve done the best you can from memory, return to your notes and lessons and such and make sure to fill in the q types, key priorities and such that you missed initially. Review these cards before PT’s, then, in your PT review afterwards, use these cards to assess your methods, figure out where you need to modify strategies or put in a reminder for yourself, and so on. These actions can help you notice, and address, those areas of prep where perhaps your learning has yet to fully convert into skills and habits.
LG
The more automatic you feel about your notations/diagramming strategies, the less nervous you will feel about what might appear on the games section, the better you will be able to set up your diagrams, and the faster and more accurate you’ll be at doing the work necessary to solve questions.
So, to that end, without look back over your work/learning products, try to create a list of all the different types of rules that can appear in Logic Games, and try to organize all of these rules in some way (for example, trainer students know I organize rules in terms of ordering, grouping, and so on). Note how you plan to diagram each of these rules. Then go through games you’ve played in the past, just looking at the scenarios and rules, and fill in your notes with all the various other types of game rules you missed initially. Create notecards of any rules for which you don’t feel automatic about your notations, and study those carefully. Review all your diagramming strategies before taking PT’s, then, in your review, review carefully whether you were able to use diagramming methods effectively for every rule. Take note of, and carefully review, those situations when you were not.
RC
It’s very important to understand what pressure does to your brain (and, consequently, to your reading process): it literally changes the way that you think and the way you read. If, in all your practice, you are far more relaxed (and perhaps forgiving of yourself) than you will be during the real exam, it is possible that you are going to find it very difficult to apply all that you’ve gained during your practice on the real thing -- it’s very possible you will end up reading the passage very differently from how you intended to, and end up rushing too much and overlooking important concepts, or being too careful and wasting too much time, and so on.
So at this point you want to do whatever is necessary to train your brain to read the passage exactly as you want it to. Make your decisions about which reading strategies you want to apply, make sure you are practicing applying them under enough pressure, and get enough practice in so that you can feel a “set rhythm” for how you read LSAT RC passages. It gives you a great advantage to go into the test with a consistent, habitual, and effective method specifically tailed for reading LSAT RC passages, one which is practiced enough so that you apply it without having to think about it.
Timing Strategies/Mindset
Finally, you want to use for final prep to set your timing strategies, determine what you are going to do should tough timing decisions arise, and practice applying those timing strategies/making those timing decisions.
Nearly everyone who takes the exam wastes a lot of unnecessary time and energy thinking about section timing, rather than the question in front of them. It puts you in a much better position if you’ve anticipated potential issues, have the right mindset about them, have practiced dealing with them, and so on.
So, getting your timing strategies set should be one of the main goals of your final PT work. You want to think about your ideal timing, and how you’d like to balance your time through a section and so on, but you also want to make sure to practice and think about timing challenges -- how long to give yourself when stuck on a certain type of question, or how to balance your time between two RC passages when it seems like you don’t have enough to finish both, and so on. One way to experience/practice these challenges, especially if you are in a very high score range, is to artificially limit the time you have per section (say, to 30 mins, etc.) for a couple of your PT’s and test out your survival strategies.
Final Random Timing Tip
In my experience, one of the most common ways in test takers end up wasting time is by over-investing it in the hardest problems -- you want to avoid this as much as possible.
To illustrate, imagine that you are in the 160-165 range and your goal is to get that 165. Depending on the scale for that test, you know that you can miss about 20 q’s or so and still get the score you want. And if you were to take all the q’s from any one particular LSAT practice exam and order them in terms of difficulty, you’d perhaps find that about 70 of them are ones that you feel fairly confident you can get right without too much difficulty, 20 of them are ones that are challenging for you, and, depending on the day, your mindset, etc., you might get right or wrong, and finally perhaps 10 are so hard that you think it’d be very unlikely you can get the right answer in a reasonable amount of time no matter what.
The best way for you to use your time is to --
1) get through the easier 70 as fast as you comfortably can without making errors.
2) recognize when a problem is of extreme difficulty and don’t allow yourself to spend too, too long on those hardest 10.
3) give yourself as much time as possible for those 20 in the make/break down that will determine where you will score within your range.
Keep that in mind, and make sure you don’t allow yourself to over-invest too much time or energy in those hardest problems -- the harder ones aren’t worth any more points.
Again, not every suggestion is for every student, but if you read this whole thing I hope you found at least some of it useful -- I wish you all the best on test day -- Mike
I must admit I get just the slightest bit of joy from angering people w/riddles -- I think it’s a perversion that’s developed from spending my work life constantly having to be worried about being clear and understandable.
If any of you want a clue about how to figure this out, this riddle uses essentially the same mathematical principles as the better known Monte Hall problem.