Confidence drills?

amw26

Hi everyone,

So like some have mentioned, I also underperformed on the Sept LSAT. Attempting to re-study again, I'm really trying not to be stubborn and trying to study this time around in a very strategic way, with reinforcing all the fundamentals again first and not burning through PTs like candy. I've just watched the post-CC webinar. Could someone explain the confidence drills to me? I haven't quite gotten the explanation for it even after searching the forums.

My understanding is that you take a section timed and every question you answer with 80% confidence. So does this mean that upon reading the ACs, the first one that supposedly pops out at you for the right answer is the one you choose and then just immediately move on without reading the rest of the ACs? Someone also mentioned decreasing confidence after a while, from 80 to 70 to 60%, but I'm not sure what this means. But how do you judge what level of confidence you're at? I'm terrible at judging my confidence... Overall, I'm a bit confused lol.

Are you guys using PT1-35 range for confidence drills? Thank you!

Alex

@amw26 said:
Hi everyone,

So like some have mentioned, I also underperformed on the Sept LSAT. Attempting to re-study again, I'm really trying not to be stubborn and trying to study this time around in a very strategic way, with reinforcing all the fundamentals again first and not burning through PTs like candy. I've just watched the post-CC webinar. Could someone explain the confidence drills to me? I haven't quite gotten the explanation for it even after searching the forums.

My understanding is that you take a section timed and every question you answer with 80% confidence. So does this mean that upon reading the ACs, the first one that supposedly pops out at you for the right answer is the one you choose and then just immediately move on without reading the rest of the ACs? Someone also mentioned decreasing confidence after a while, from 80 to 70 to 60%, but I'm not sure what this means. But how do you judge what level of confidence you're at? I'm terrible at judging my confidence... Overall, I'm a bit confused lol.

Are you guys using PT1-35 range for confidence drills? Thank you!

Hey @amw26 ,

I think you seem to have a good idea of confidence drills. From my knowledge, there really isn't a set way to do these. I think this is something JY came up with.

When I personally do them, I just set out to do the section as quickly as possible. That usually means being overly aggressive and circling the answer you think is correct without really eliminating or even sometimes looking every answer. When I do confidence drills, I guess my standard of confidence is rendered binary; if I'm confident (at all) my answer is correct, I choose it. Now as far as me being confident, yeah, I think somewhere around 80% confidence is right around where I feel confident in my answer. When I do a confidence drill, however, my standard of confidence is certainly lower than it is on a regular timed section. It's hard to put an exact percentage on, though.

As far as not being good at judging your confidence, well, I think confidence drills help with that. When you go back and review you'll be able to see where you can afford to be confident and where you need to slow down.

If you want to hear more about confidence drills in specific, check out @"Cant Get Right" 's webinar on post CC study strategies. I believe he goes more into detail about how to best go about confidence drills.

Cant Get Right

Hey, happy to help! I'm planning on another webinar to detail a lot of my drills and exactly how they're done and what the objectives are. In the meantime, here's a version of the blurb I send to my students when I'm assigning confidence drills:

Confidence Classification Drill Max Tier

The specific focus of the confidence classification drill should be on learning to feel comfortable moving on at what is going to feel like a very low threshold of confidence. This threshold is the point at which it will take too much time for too little improvement on your confidence assessment. For some questions, you will likely achieve very high confidence very quickly which will leave insufficient room for significant enough improvement to warrant further time. For others, it will take too much time to achieve meaningful improvement at all, and you will need to move on as quickly as possible. As returns diminish on each question, we bank the remaining time to be used with greater discretion in subsequent rounds. As we move through our first round, our goal is not only to bank time but also to classify questions in order to return to them with maximum efficiency.

For marking the questions, let's use a four tier system:
Double circle for no/very low confidence.
Circle for 50-70% confidence range.
Tilde for 70-80% confidence range (You think you have these right, but just have a bad "feeling.")
Slash for 80-90% confidence range.
For 90% + confidence range, don't mark. You will never come back to these and they don't need to be classified.

Goals:

Don't rush. Read carefully, even slowly. We are trying to manage time, not race against it. Speed comes from acting confidently and decisively in the answer choices.

First Round: Finish in 28 minutes or better. Classify all questions. Mark at least three questions with a double circle, spending an average of 60 seconds each on double circles. Advance each question as far as you can without crossing the threshold of diminishing returns.

Second Round: Return to all circles and work quickly to either answer confidently, or upgrade to a double circle and skip.

Third Round: Bring double circles up to an average 65% confidence.

Fourth Round: If there’s still time, confirm tildes.

Cant Get Right

@"Alex Divine" said:
From my knowledge, there really isn't a set way to do these.

Been working on that, lol!

Alex

@"Cant Get Right" said:

@"Alex Divine" said:
From my knowledge, there really isn't a set way to do these.

Been working on that, lol!

I'm very much looking forward to that!

amw26

@"Alex Divine" @"Cant Get Right" Thank you both, that makes a lot more sense now!

Grace...

This is great, @"Cant Get Right". This is exactly what I needed. I will try it today. Thank you.

gaia_fulchierimalta1

I did not really understand it