Keep missing early 20's questions in LR

Going2lawlschool

Hi y'all!
I hope y'all can give me some advice. I have done several practice timed sections, untimed sections, and PT's and I have noticed a pattern when I look back at my scantrons. I have been consistently missing the early 20's questions in any LR section!! For example, I will nearly always miss questions from 19-25, and unfortunately, sometimes I just miss all of those.. The rest of LR has been going pretty good. occasionally, I'll miss maybe one question before #19 but I catch it during BR and it's actually a silly mistake.. After that, it's just awful. It's not a timing issue either, as I have been doing this timing strategy: 15 mins for questions 1-15 so I have approx one minute per question, then I can take up to two mins per question on question 16 and after. Generally, i don't use that much time, but it's nice to have that cushion and the timing strategy really works for me! Is there something I am missing about these questions? Are they the hardest of the section? During BR, I can usually get them right my second go, but some of them have left me stumped. so I watch JY's videos, and then I get it. I have also checked Q types and i can deff say it's not a specific Q type (besides MSS and SA... those are my weaknesses annoyingly). I also do skip Q's and they are almost always 1-2 of this range of questions. At this point, I have been missing 5 or 6 on both my LR sections in JUST THESE QUESTIONS which is driving me up the walls!

TL;DR: is there something special about the 19-25 questions in an LR section? How do I fix this strange problem of mine? Should i switch up my timing method? Am I overthinking these last few questions and thus costing myself points?

Zachary_P

Hi @Going2lawlschool, so you're actually not alone here. I would venture to guess that the reason you're missing the last questions is simply because these questions are more difficult. Especially on the older PT's, the LSAT would start out easy with #'s 1-10, grow moderately harder #'s 11-18ish, and then put the hardest questions at the end. While the modern tests have a bit more variation in terms of where the hardest questions are placed, they still follow the general rule that the section gets more difficult as you go through it.

What does this mean for you? It means that the "curve breaker" questions are the one's you're probably missing. These are the questions that separate the average LSAT taker or a lucky guesser from those who have a true mastery of logic and logical reasoning. Especially given that it isn't a timing issue for you, to answer these questions correctly, you'll have to sharpen up your fundamental understanding of what is going on in these questions and how to find the correct AC's.

Something that helped me improve on the most difficult questions what utilizing the question bank. I would search through old tests (PT's 1-35) and only do the 4 and 5 star difficulty questions in drills. I would do the questions, thoroughly blind review them, watch the video, and then take note of why I answered it either correctly or incorrectly. Once I took this approach, I began to see more patterns in terms of what the LSAT expects on some of the most difficult questions and the result was an increase in my PT scores. My main takeaway in terms of dealing with difficult questions is this: slow down. Take the extra 10 seconds to thoroughly read the stimulus and summarize its parts before moving onto the AC's. Sometimes questions are difficult simply because the AC's are uber confusing so that by the time we get to AC C we forget what our task is. Taking time upfront to understand the stimulus and knowing what our goal is ends up saving time in the end.

Going2lawlschool

@Zachary_P thanks for your reply!! That all makes a lot of sense.. I will take your advice and do drills/ slow down on those last few.. I also haven't gotten up to the more recent PT's yet, so this could change, but will definitely slow down. I need those curve breaker questions!! thanks again!