RC and LR: Read all answer choices?

westcoastbestcoast

Is this helpful for scoring into the high 160s, and high 170s?

AllezAllez21

Depends.

If your BR score is in the 176-180 range, and you really feel confident in your knowledge of the test, then NOT reading all the answers might improve your timed score. If you are already quite good on the test, then your time is probably best spent on the hardest questions of the test, which--with the right amount of time and effort--you can get during a timed section. Someone at this level is unlikely to mis-identify an answer on an easier question. I began to stop reading all the answers on easy questions about a month ago, and I do believe it helps with the flow of the test. There are 2-6 questions per section where I do not read all the answers.

If your BR score is below 176, especially if it's below 170, you might be more hesitant to skip answers. You might not be able to get the hardest curve breaker questions right without spending 3-5 minutes on them, and this time is probably better spent on easier questions that you could still end up getting incorrect. In this case, I think you generally read every answer unless you are 99% confident in a question. I think that could end up saving a scorer like this a point or two on a section because they were sure to get a few medium difficulty questions right by considering every answer.

Everyone should practice confidence drills. If you think your sense of confidence is dialed in, then it probably helps regardless of where you are scoring to skip answers on questions that you are very confident about. No matter where you are scoring, there are marginal returns to spending more and more time on a question. At some point, going from 85% to 95% confidence about an answer isn't worth it when there are other questions on the board. It's just more likely that a higher scorer will reach those diminishing returns faster and more often.

Alex

I agree with @AllezAllez21 but even when I'm certain I put eyes on every answer choice. It takes a second and it's worth it to avoid silly mistakes. I'm not scoring in that range though...

Paul Caint

LR:

For the first ~10ish questions I'm a bit more lax on my "read every answer choice" policy. Especially for the first 5 questions, if your intuition is developed (WHICH IS A BIG IF, DON'T DO THIS IF YOU ARE MISSING THESE QUESTIONS) then it is smarter to just add minutes in the bank by picking the right answer and moving on. Once you get past question ~10 though, wrong answer choices become more and more attractive, and you gotta stop yourself from just picking and moving on. At least, that's my approach.

RC:

Always read every answer choice. I find RC often ads in 1 word that makes an otherwise perfect answer choice wrong (like absolute language: "invariably," "inevitably," etc.). If you're moving too fast, you may miss that, and if you don't read every answer choice, you may not catch yourself.

Cant Get Right

I think you're asking two very different questions with two very different answers.

@westcoastbestcoast said:
Is this helpful for scoring into the high 160s, and high 170s?

high 160's?
Yes.

high 170's?
I would argue that it is not only unhelpful but actively destructive.

Until you get into about the mid 160's, you've got to be suspicious of your confidence. You're going to be falling for trap answers and you're going to be making mistakes. At this stage, it's important to guard against these things. You have to play defense. Once your BR is consistently into the mid - high 170's though, you have to shift tactics and go on offense. The things that get you into the mid to high 160's are very different from the things that will get you out the other side. That's why so many people plateau at this level: They keep doing the same things that got them there, and those things are 160's strategies, not 170's strategies. You might think that confidence follows from a high 170's average, and that's not entirely wrong. Confidence is certainly reinforced by seeing your average score rise deep into the 170's, but it is also a precondition. I've seen too many students, myself included, jump from the 160's plateau into the 170's just from learning to take the test confidently. If you read ac A and you think it's correct, you have to trust yourself, choose it, and move on confidently. Mark the question number with a slash, and if there's time at the end come back and double check yourself. If not, you probably got it right anyway, but more importantly, it means you allowed yourself the discretion to put that time to better use.

Paul Caint

Just took a PT and missed a super easy argument part question because I didn't read through the answer choices...Would have gotten a perfect score on that section otherwise

Hubris. HUBRIS.

TheMikey

I voted yes, but I just want to say that it really depends.

It depends on your confidence level for a question mostly and if you're seriously certain you have the right answer. For most LR questions if I hit an AC early on that I know I right, I at least scan the remaining AC's.

AllezAllez21

@"Paul Caint" said:
Would have gotten a perfect score on that section otherwise

But is that true? If you had spent more time on that question and less on another, would you certainly get the other correct? This goes back to what @"Cant Get Right" and I said: it all depends on where your level of knowledge is and what you're capable of scoring. If you aren't skilled enough to consistently get the hardest questions right, then yeah spend your time on the easier ones. If you are skilled though, it might be worth it to get the rare easy question wrong due to overconfidence so that you can get the 2-3 hardest questions right nearly every time.

OlamHafuch

If I remember correctly from the videos of J.Y> doing a fresh take on an LR section, he usually does go through all the answer choices.

TheMikey

@uhinberg said:
If I remember correctly from the videos of J.Y> doing a fresh take on an LR section, he usually does go through all the answer choices.

yeah, he usually at least skims the remaining AC's

westcoastbestcoast

@"Cant Get Right" does your advice apply to high BR scores for retakes on preptests. I have been getting high 170s with a 180 BR on preptests in the 70s but those are exams I have seen before.

lsnnnnn0011

@"Cant Get Right" said:
I think you're asking two very different questions with two very different answers.

@westcoastbestcoast said:
Is this helpful for scoring into the high 160s, and high 170s?

high 160's?
Yes.

high 170's?
I would argue that it is not only unhelpful but actively destructive.

Until you get into about the mid 160's, you've got to be suspicious of your confidence. You're going to be falling for trap answers and you're going to be making mistakes. At this stage, it's important to guard against these things. You have to play defense. Once your BR is consistently into the mid - high 170's though, you have to shift tactics and go on offense. The things that get you into the mid to high 160's are very different from the things that will get you out the other side. That's why so many people plateau at this level: They keep doing the same things that got them there, and those things are 160's strategies, not 170's strategies. You might think that confidence follows from a high 170's average, and that's not entirely wrong. Confidence is certainly reinforced by seeing your average score rise deep into the 170's, but it is also a precondition. I've seen too many students, myself included, jump from the 160's plateau into the 170's just from learning to take the test confidently. If you read ac A and you think it's correct, you have to trust yourself, choose it, and move on confidently. Mark the question number with a slash, and if there's time at the end come back and double check yourself. If not, you probably got it right anyway, but more importantly, it means you allowed yourself the discretion to put that time to better use.

Just to clarify,does your advice also applies to RC? I had several tutoring sessions with Nicole Hopkins and she said she always read all 5 chocices in RC. I guess aggressive pacing in RC depends on question types (infer vs identify details) ...?

Also, for the hardest LR questions, test writers often place really, really attractive choice (those tricky ones that trap even 170+ scorers when they dont consider other ACs) before a rather less attractive right answer. But since the trap answer looks really good, isnt it quite likely that you feel very confident about your choice and thus eventually fail to catch the mistake as you'd rather come back to circled and double circled questions?

Cant Get Right

@AllezAllez21 said:

@"Paul Caint" said:
Would have gotten a perfect score on that section otherwise

But is that true? If you had spent more time on that question and less on another, would you certainly get the other correct? This goes back to what @"Cant Get Right" and I said: it all depends on where your level of knowledge is and what you're capable of scoring. If you aren't skilled enough to consistently get the hardest questions right, then yeah spend your time on the easier ones. If you are skilled though, it might be worth it to get the rare easy question wrong due to overconfidence so that you can get the 2-3 hardest questions right nearly every time.

Yeah, this is a great point. I sacrifice one of these every 3 PTs or so, but I pick up 4 or 5 every test I wouldn't without the time I net from it. Well worth the cost.

@westcoastbestcoast said:
@"Cant Get Right" does your advice apply to high BR scores for retakes on preptests. I have been getting high 170s with a 180 BR on preptests in the 70s but those are exams I have seen before.

I'd likely apply this to you. A retake will always be a little inflated, but to score in the high 170's you've got to know your stuff unless you really do remember all the answers. How did you do on your most recent fresh take? That's your best benchmark.

@lsnnnnn0011 said:
Just to clarify,does your advice also applies to RC? I had several tutoring sessions with Nicole Hopkins and she said she always read all 5 chocices in RC. I guess aggressive pacing in RC depends on question types (infer vs identify details) ...?

Also, for the hardest LR questions, test writers often place really, really attractive choice (those tricky ones that trap even 170+ scorers when they dont consider other ACs) before a rather less attractive right answer. But since the trap answer looks really good, isnt it quite likely that you feel very confident about your choice and thus eventually fail to catch the mistake as you'd rather come back to circled and double circled questions?

Great questions! For RC, I do apply this strategy theoretically, but in practice I tend to follow Nicole's advice. RC is a lot more subtle, so it's not that I alter my strategy, it's that I usually fail to cross my confidence threshold without reading all the ACs. When I do though, I'm happy to bank the extra time.

As far as the harder questions, this strategy will serve as a stress test on your fundamentals. And that's good. To push into the upper levels you need to allow minor cracks in your understanding to be broken open in order to identify them. Mid 160 students are really great at avoiding this by working around their weaknesses. To break the plateau though, you've got to identify and eliminate those weaknesses. I'm not immune to traps, but the frequency with which I fall for traps without any clue that something is amiss is so low I don't think I have enough data to really define it.

One note on those traps: It's important to recognize that the majority of the most successful traps, in my opinion, concern language rather than logic. If you're banging your head against the logic, feel like you really do have it locked down, and aren't seeing any improvements, language needs to be your focus. Make sure you know your terms, and be on alert for any slight changes. Even if they use the right terms, they can abstract them by throwing in something like knowledge ("It is Monday" changes to "Susan knows it's Monday") or prescriptive language ("This law would save lives" changes to "we should vote for this law"). Things like that.