Strategies for bumping PT scores to meet BR scores? Not seeing much change.

BenjaminSF

As the title states, I am feeling very stuck in the PT phase of prepping for the Feb exam. I am consistently scoring in the high 160s from my first PT post-curriculum with some variance toward the low 170s. However, I am finding that the more PTs I take, the more consistent my score is +/-1 points, which isn't really a bad thing. At least I know ahead of time about where I'll land, but it can get a bit disheartening not seeing any consistent improvement.

I am able to see using the test analytics what areas of the LR section I need to focus on, and I have done some drilling between PTs. Admittedly, I have not kept a very consistent routine for my PT, BR, and review phases. The one thing I noticed with this is that my time management has gotten a bit worse during testing. With that being said, I do not consistently have one section that is my weak point. Some tests I am -3/4 on each section, sometimes I ace all but one section on which I get a -8. They don't seem to correlate with the difficulty scores assigned by 7Sage, either. TBH, I was expecting to see more of a consistent trend after finishing 10+ PTs.

The other thing is that I get 175+ on my BRs. When I go through for BR, I rarely change a correct answer, and the questions I am hesitant on are usually very clear. When I spend time on these, I can suss out the correct answer nearly every time, though my confidence is usually pretty low in my answer.

I'm really kicking myself for missing the most recent webinar as well, as it seemed to be a relevant topic to this issue I am having.

What do you all recommend? Here's three main questions I have:

1. Have you found any study habits that have helped you to eek out a few points here or there? How do you study between PTs?

2. Have I not taken enough PTs yet to observe clear weak points in my prep?

3. How much emphasis do you put on time management when taking a test? I try to implement the low-hanging fruit analogy from the curriculum, but I'm not leaving answers blank, so it seems more of an issue of where I allocate my time per question.


Any suggestions or feedback would be most helpful.

Cant Get Right

@publicbenjamin said:
I'm really kicking myself for missing the most recent webinar as well, as it seemed to be a relevant topic to this issue I am having.

Haha, yep. Covered this in pretty good detail! Should be available soon!

Until then, here's the gist:

You're in phase 2 of 3 in the PT process. That means your BR score is above your target score (I'm assuming), but your timed score is below it. That means you've got the skills to do it, and now you've got to learn how to execute those skills under time.

Try some confidence drills. These are timed section drills where you really live dangerously. The second you think you've got the right answer, go with it. Select it and move on without further consideration. If that means not reading the four other answer choices, fine. The exercise is to fly with reckless abandon to see if you can push yourself to the point where you start making mistakes you shouldn't be making. You want to find that point which means that you haven't pushed far enough if you don't make mistakes. Once you find that threshold, pull back and stay just on the right side of the line. Use this to develop a specific pacing strategy and then keep drilling it until you're comfortable with executing it.

The other thing you want to start doing is filming your drills and reviewing. This provides you with an objective overview of your work which is an absolute revelation. Make a spreadsheet and mark down how much time you spend on each question. Use that to identify and eliminate time sinks.

By doing these two things, I went from (usually) finishing right as time was called, to finishing LR in 25 minutes flat. This gave me plenty of time to go back to questions I'd skipped or rushed.

BenjaminSF

Thought I'd give you an update- After applying the move-as-fast-as-comfort-allows technique to some practice questions, I found that I was much better at skipping questions that I took even a little pause on. As a result, I was much less discriminating with what questions I skipped; anything that would take more than a once-over I came back to at the end.

As a result, I was finishing a section in around 25 minutes and returning to 4-6 questions. Usually 3 of these I skipped without reading them because the amount of reading looked like a time sink e.g. parallel MOR stems. I could spend the last 10 minutes really dissecting the curve-breakers and the questions that were my personal time sinks with the comfort of knowing I wasn't wasting precious time.

The results were excellent! On my first PT, I beat my previous high score by 3 points, and I felt much more confident during the whole test, which helped immensely. I had to take several days off due to illness following this PT, but I feel so much better/confident with this style of test taking. Hopefully the trend will continue in this direction.

Thanks for the suggestion!

Cant Get Right

Glad it's proving effective PB! You should only get better with practice!