I'm right in the same boat with you, RC is definitely a weak point for me. This may or may not help you, but I saw a huge change in my score when I tried to genuinely enjoy what I was reading. I know, this seems so basic and "dumb," but I'm telling you, it has helped me stay focused and better retain what I was reading when I actually got into the passage.

I was finding that the more I tried to annotate, go over and over my answers, concentrate until I thought my eyes would bleed, the worse I actually did on RC. Why? Because I was stressed out from the minute I started the section until the end. I was trying so hard to remember everything that it was actually affecting how I was processing the information. Nothing worked as well as when I just concentrated on what the passage was trying to tell me.

This may not all relate to you, but I think trying to relax a little bit and enjoy the passage would help.

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I agree with what everyone else has said—the fear of the uncertainty. I would also heavily recommend practicing with skipping questions. It feels awful in the beginning, but in the end it's what strategic test takers do.

Especially for LR and LG, coming back to these questions with a clearer mind with fewer nerves may help avoid losing a bunch of points. At the end of the day, like what some posts have said before, it comes down to nerves. There's nothing you're going to see on these tests that you have not encountered in some shape or form in a previous test.

As an additional note, after taking PT 67 and 68, the LR sections were definitely more "normal," meaning harder questions later and easier questions upfront. There might be one or two questions in the first 15 that took me a second longer, but largely PT 65 and 66 were very different from what I saw in the LR sections for the other preptests.

I wonder how the section changes through the 70s.

I have also been struggling with BRing RC, partly because I absolutely dread it. What I have been doing: working with a clean copy, reread the passage and on a word document, write out briefly what each paragraph is doing in the passage, i.e. Graf 2: continuation of theory in first graf etc etc.

For the questions I struggled with, I try to figure out how it's assessing my understanding of the passage, i.e. Q14 is a question testing overall understanding of the author's point of view. This helps to narrow down where my problem areas are. Because this process is more interactive than just redoing the section, I don't hate it...as much.

I just started doing this, but it's been helping to really understand the passages, which is my main problem with these new tests. It may help figure out where your mistakes are for RC.

Frustrating! And nerve-wracking. It feels like every 10 or so tests you're coping with some change in the test.

@.hopkins Haha no I definitely do! Right now, I'm only doing one preptest per week, so I'm doing 54 this weekend, but I'll catch you guys in the 60s!

Not to mention you guys stay up way too late for me :)

Cambridge has a packet of the most difficult LR questions. Has anyone bought that by the way and found it to be worthwhile?

For the June test, I was coming in an hour early before work to study and then I would study after work until 8 or 9, on most days. That doesn't sound that bad, but I did it for almost 4 to 5 months straight. On top of that, I was studying 6 to 7 hours each weekend day as well. It really burned me out. I was miserable.

Now I'm practicing to retake for October. I'm alternating between getting up early and studying at home then coming to work. Those days I wake up early, I stay and study after work until around 6:30-7. Other days I don't study early and just stay a little later to compensate, 8ish. You need to find a balance. So I guess I'm averaging around 3 hours a day, but it feels very manageable.

You're doing work after you come home, you're also doing work while you're at work and on top of that, you're studying. It's a lot. Try out a few routines. Also, it's really not about how long you study, but the quality of it. If you can't get into it at 9 or 10, don't waste your energy. Hope this helps.

This is very helpful, I think I was making it more complicated—rough question though. Thanks!

On which PTs you were doing better and which PTs you are doing worse on? What types of questions are you getting wrong? Is there a pattern?

I think RC has become progressively more difficult on the more recent tests. The passages are sometimes more difficult to parse through and the answer choices are trickier. Of course, that isn't true for every recent test and the difficulty is also subjective. Universally for RC it's a matter of really understanding the passage. The LSAT Trainer's method of reading RC is very good—read for the bigger picture, don't get stuck on details. Try to understand how each part is functioning in the passage.

When you finish a passage, do you have a good grasp of what's going on? What are the various view points? What's the author's opinion, if any? If not, that's where I would start. If you're taking the October test, it's late to start a new strategy. But maybe if you heavily drill reading passages untimed with the Trainer method that will be helpful.

Those aren't equivalent statements according to this stimulus. If you're only confining your thinking to the stimulus, the author concludes pessimism is bad. Enabling people to believe in better futures will counteract the loss motivation and presumably, address the pessimism. But nowhere in this reasoning is there anything about optimism because counteracting pessimism is not the same thing as being optimistic.

The safe assumptions you can make on the LSAT are much more obvious. For example, equating being economically disadvantaged to having a lower average household income compared to the national average is a safe assumption to make (PT 23, LR2, Q16). The assumption you're making would be adding premises and new ideas into the stimulus.

@.janson35 AGH I know exactly what you mean! I have gotten questions right the second time and questions wrong twice on the retake, like the unicorn/centaur question. It's a great way of measuring your learning. Even if you already know the answer, try to work backwards to figure out how the test takers came to THIS answer choice. You will really learn the ins and outs of the test.

All of AC (C) is out of scope. That would be the simple answer here. There's nothing in the stimulus that discusses optimism. The gap in the argument is why enabling people to believe better futures are possible will prevent loss of motivation. The argument assumes this relationship in the last sentence, but it's not explicit in the argument. (B) tackles that gap.

Negating (C) "Optimism about the future is NOT better than pessimism..." is not necessary to this argument. Would this really hurt the argument? And think about it, it seems like optimism here is trying to take the place of "enabling people to believe better futures are possible." Is that an equivalent statement? Unlike strengthen, weaken or reconcile/resolve questions, necessary assumptions will stay close to the stimulus, or closer than these other question types. Hope this helps.

Been around 7sage, but haven't had a chance to join one of these BR groups, so sorry if this is common knowledge. Just to clarify, you guys are going over PT 53 this Saturday?

Is there some kind of extended calendar of which preptests you're going over the next few weeks so I can make any adjustments to my schedule?

Just an added note. Know of at least one person who was admitted to Columbia this past cycle with around a 3.5 but a 170+ LSAT, non-URM.

A high LSAT in general will take you a lot farther than a high GPA/low LSAT.

Yeah, this is something I have been experiencing as well. But I agree with @. I always take away something new from the test I didn't get before. I'm still reasoning through LR answer choices, I rarely ever remember the inferences in a game so redoing them is always helpful, and even if I remember some of an RC passage, re-reading through the passage and trying to understand how each paragraph relates to each other is reinforcing how I want to be reading an unfamiliar passage.

@ The more I think I remember this game, I think the less I actually do - do not remember a not both rule...ughhhhh

@ It is totally possible. You can get away with making inferences/getting questions right and basically working around the fact that you missed a rule, it also depends on the rule though. Can you subtly say which rule you missed? I can only remember one question from that game, but I think I remember all the rules.

:((( There were five questions, 14 -18.

@ Yes, by doing some work upfront, you realize there is a limited number of possibilities and this game is actually pretty restrictive.

Usually the way I do logic games is that I will create very rough diagrams to map out a few rules, just enough that I understand how they interact with each other. That's what I did in this game - mapping out those two major rules to get a feel of what the boards would look like. I don't think you need to do all the boards, but I do wish I had spent more time upfront with the rules in hindsight.

Similar to the difficult game in June 2015, this game rested on one key inference and I think those that took a second upfront to work through some of the possibilities were rewarded. Regardless, it WAS a difficult game, but I think it was manageable if you saw the inference right away and didn't sink your time.

It seems the main problem for some in this game wasn't that it was abnormal or very difficult, but that some people misread one of the rules. I'm not sure if LSAC was taking this into account when they wrote those rules together (with very similar words), but it's interesting many people misinterpreted them.

I honestly thought game 2 was more challenging. I usually go -1 or -0 in games, and there was one question in that game I could NOT figure out the answer to, which may not bode well.

@ I would definitely recommend going through PT74, if not taking the full test. I used it as a way of getting any dumb mistakes out of the way with the most recent test available. It's definitely comparable to the other 70s tests I find, so I suspect Monday's test will be similar in difficulty.

I work full-time, and I'm almost glad I do because otherwise I would definitely be going crazy this week.

I have 72, 73 and 74 left currently. I'm planning on taking 74 on Wednesday and maybe 73 or 72 on Friday and Saturday. I haven't decided if I will preptest after Friday yet, seems like a recipe for disaster.