How to get those last points on LR

kacantolina

Hello!

It was about a month ago that I first broke into the 170s on practice tests (sadly, just after taking my December test on which I only managed a 165) where something finally clicked and I started going from -9s to -2s and -3s on LG. It seems like a few hard logic games can really trip me up and bring my score back down, so I'm drilling as many of them as possible until the February test so that they feel as natural as breathing, hopefully.

In the mean time, though, I still miss between 2 and 4 on each logical reasoning section, sometimes losing as many as 8 combined between them! I'd like to figure out how to move forward, but I don't think I'm missing any particular concept. Parallel reasoning is a pain to do, but the questions I seem to miss seem to only fall into one of two categories: 1. I read an easy question incorrectly and missed a point or 2. It's the sort of question where I go back and STILL can't get the right answer. I can always sort of SEE why the correct answer is correct, but I don't usually take away any general principle from the wrong answer other than maybe that a particular word was too strong or something, or some assumption I didn't pick up on.

Can anyone recommend a way to move forward and use this review time wisely? I worry that I can review and review on logical reasoning and never learn the new things I would need to get that 175+ score that I'm hoping might still be possible? Maybe?

(side note: no worries on RC, I only ever missed one or two in that section, even in diagnostics. I'm mostly focused on drilling the heck out of LG and polishing my LR abilities.)

sophie74

One thing that REALLY helped me is doing the LR sections backwards, starting with the last question and working forwards. Still skipping around from there, but if you get the hardest q's out of the way first, it makes the easier ones at the beginning even easier, and you are not fatigued when you hit the harder, longer q's. It is definitely worth trying on a few PTs to see if this can help your problem. You may find that it eliminates it.

A question for you is what are your strategies to missing only one or two in RC? The boat you are in for LR is the boat I am in on RC. My score is stagnant and I really want to get up to -1 or -2 by Feb. Any advice would be so, so appreciated!

Cant Get Right

@kacantolina said:
1. I read an easy question incorrectly and missed a point or 2. It's the sort of question where I go back and STILL can't get the right answer.

Yeah, these are really difficult, but they can be overcome.

For the first one, that sounds like an issue of focus and mental clarity. You understand the problem, you just read and understand a slightly different one from what's actually there. I went to extreme lengths to make sure I showed up for PTs (and the real thing, of course) in top form. I bent everything from my sleep schedule to my diet with the aim of making sure I was razor sharp by test time. It helped, and I stopped making these errors. At a certain point there are increasingly diminishing returns for our efforts, and you sound like you've hit that wall where small improvements take enormous efforts.

For the second, these are the most difficult questions on the test and they are intentionally designed to trip up as many people as possible. For people scoring in the 178 range, these are likely among the few they missed. I never did get to a point with these where I could consistently achieve understanding and full confidence in my answer: Sometimes I could, sometimes I couldn't. Really, the most important thing on these is to not let it bother you. Skip them, and be okay with missing them. These will cause you serious points if you let yourself get bogged down on them and waste 4 minutes to get it right with confidence. So what I was able to do was to use my collective experience with these questions and develop a really strong feel for both the LSAT writer's tricks as well as my own personal tendencies on these. One thing I did a lot was that I'd get it down to two answer choices, and I'd really like one of them, but just not be able to eliminate the other one. In that situation, the one I "like" is wrong 90% of the time, and normally I can even kind of see in the moment how I might be able to eliminate it. So having learned this about myself through experience, I learned to recognize when this was happening and to make the right decision in that situation. And then there are other times when I just can't even, lol. These were few and far between, but I did learn to maximize my return when I did see them. It's all a matter of knowing the test and the writers. Keep/compile a list of these questions and revisit them frequently. Get a feel for what the writers are doing.

BinghamtonDave

Excellent advice @"Cant Get Right"
Thank you

Q.E.D

It's all a matter of knowing the test and the writers.

so much truth

apublicdisplay

Grasp the structure of the argument and then make analogous arguments. If you know the structure then you can coat it in different colors, which is essentially how the test makers get away with making "new" tests. Relating the central concept to commonsensical everyday ideas you're familiar with helps you reinforce it and see it in different ways.

kacantolina

@"Cant Get Right" This is so comprehensive! Thank you. It actually is kind of a relief to hear that this is normal to encounter even for top scorers. I've been very anxious about these last few questions. It makes sense that I should just focus on the easiest ones that I miss---Occam's razor, I guess.

@sokarpf Thank you! I'll give that a shot. I wish I had equally good advice to give you about the RC section! I tend to just read through and answer the questions, but I read pretty fast because I've been reading non-fiction books and news publications, etc. for entertainment for years. The only thing I can suggest is maybe making sure you read thoroughly, and don't skim, because the places where my eyes glaze over tend to be the places I miss questions, when I do.

Cant Get Right

@kacantolina said:
It actually is kind of a relief to hear that this is normal to encounter even for top scorers.

Totally normal!