Eliminate all answer choices or lock in on an answer when you found one?

Joe DCastro

Hello:

During blind review, I find myself getting the correct answer on many "difficult" questions because I moved on when I found what I figured out to be the right answer. This technique has helped me go past questions that aren't that difficult but do present with well written wrong answers. Any thoughts from the community?

extramedium

Sure. @"Cant Get Right" came up with the 80% strategy, which I've bumped up to 90% for a bit more certainty. I think he basically says that when you're 80% sure you've got the right answer, don't bother checking the others. Select it and move on, come back if you have time.

After discussing it with someone else though, I decided it's worthwhile to have a glance at the other answer choices, just to make sure I didn't fall into a trap.

On some questions, like main conclusion or occasionally sufficient assumption and argument part, you pretty much already know what you're looking for, so the extra step might not be needed. But even then I typically have a quick glance just to sure I didn't miss anything.

Ever since I started studying, I've had the adage that "the trick answer sometimes comes right before the correct answer" stuck in my head, so on most questions I think it's worthwhile to have a look at the other answer choices, although there are definitely exceptions like I mentioned.

NotMyName

Ditto to what @extramedium shared.

At this point, I miss very few questions in BR. So, timing is key. Skipping questions, circling and moving on -- these seem to be very important skills to develop if we want to score 165+. To that end, I share your curiosity here. The truth is that it always depends on the situation and your confidence level. "Soft" questions (MSS, Weaken, etc) where A seems to be correct and I am 80%, I may still QUICKLY scan the remaining AC just to be sure that I haven't lost track of my assumptions.

That being said, if you are "beyond" the fundamentals of the LSAT (learning Lawgic, identifying argument parts, etc), and you're BR is significantly higher than your target score, you may consider doing some "confidence drills". That is where you complete LR sections with 100% aggression -- very little to no diagramming and selecting answers that you feel are right without looking at the remaining AC. The goal is to establish how accurate your confidence is. I think for most us, once the test begins to "click", we underestimate our abilities and allow ourselves to get dragged down rabbit holes (over-analyzing wrong answer choices instead of mercilessly eliminating them, for example). Following the confidence drill, you may get burned and find that you missed a lot. That means you go again but dial is back; maybe 90% aggression. The ultimate goal is that you find the sweet spot where you are tightly calibrated to your confidence/accuracy level and have plenty of time to return to any questions you circled because you didn't waste time on questions.

JustDoIt

I agree. I also think that it is different for RC. I think it is worth it to read all of the answer choices there regardless because you are faster, more accurate and more confident that way. But for LR and LG, the 80% or 90% certainty should work, especially where you should have a general idea of what you are looking for.

Alex

I really like @jkatz1488 's explanation/advice above.

I too utilize and suggest @"Cant Get Right" 's 80% method. However, I always looks at and quickly consider the other answer choices no matter what my level of certainty is. And also, it is going to vary from question type to question type and person to person.

TheMikey

It kind of depends on feeling tbh.

On LG I just choose an answer and move on for every question, for LR and RC I tend to read all ACs but I speed up once I have found an AC that I am very comfortable with.

Like I said, I think it just depends on the person.

danielznelson

I try to establish a sense of what it feels like to be, in my mind, 100% confident, with an obvious awareness that I may be wrong. For me, if I'm in my mind 100% correct, there's by definition no sense of looking at the other answer choices. The problem is, we're often wrong in feeling 100% confident, which is why, whenever I do NOT do POE, I mark the question with a little cross to indicate I did not do POE. At the end of BR, and after I've graded my take, I check to see how accurate my sense of 100% actually was. If it's not 100% accurate across all questions, I messed up somewhere (e.g. was overconfident). I then try to work on how I can improve the reliability of my sense of feeling 100% confident.

Again, I stress this in order to not look at other ACs. If I'm not in my mind 100% confident, I basically have to look at the other answer choices, because I'm not absolutely confident that they're all wrong.

On test day, I want to have empirical data informing me of how accurate my sense of feeling 100% actually is. If it's, say, 95% correct, whenever I feel 100% confident, I'll move on. If by test day, it's much lower (and outside of the fact that I shouldn't be taking the test), I would check the other answers, according to where I'm weakest.

For Main Conclusion Questions, for example, I don't even read the entire stimulus. I hunt for the main conclusion, scan the stimulus to see if it serves as support, find the answer, and move on. I do this in about 15-20 seconds, and it has never failed me. So for MC Questions, I'm confident that when I'm in my mind 100% accurate, I almost surely am.

I do this for many SAs, MBTs, Bridge NAs, Bridge Strengthening, Flawed Method of Reasoning, and much less frequently for the other questions types.