Timed: 167-170; BR: 179-180. Help with study plan?

kimpg_66

Typically I go -2 to -0 on LG, -4-5 on LR, and -2-5 on each LR. Right now my schedule looks like this:

Sunday: 1 LR & LG timed section; BR
Monday: 1 LR& RC timed section; BR
Tuesday: 1 LR & LG timed section; BR
Wednesday: Full PT; BR
Thursday: 1 LR & RC timed section; BR
Friday: 1 LR & LG timed section; BR
Saturday: Full PT; BR

I'm also a full time student with a part time job, so I probably miss one day a week, but I kinda see that as a mental day off tbh. For those of you who have made the 170 jump, do you remember when it clicked? If you had been doing anything specific?

Rigid Designator

Looking at this from an outsider's perspective, I'm a little surprised to see that you BR your PTs on the same day you take them, especially given that you are doing two PTs per week. Do you usually have very few questions to BR? What is your BR process like? I'm in the same ball-park of scores as yourself, and I usually have a boat load of question to BR, so I find I don't have the time to do a proper BR on the same day I take the test.

EDIT: For instance, I did a PT yesterday and one LR section had 10 questions circled for BR. For BR I type out a distilled stimulus, what I anticipate for the answer choice, then I go through each AC and type out why it is right or wrong. I also watch J.Y.'s video. Assuming these videos are 5 minutes long on average, that's close to an hour just watching video explanations. Doing my BR process for each question is at least 15 minutes I'd say, so that's another two and a bit hours. So already, just to BR one section of LR I'm looking at 3 hours+ work. This is why I can't fit in a full BR on a PT day.

This isn't to say you ought to change your process. It might be great for you. It's just something that jumped out at me is all.

acsimon

The jump to 170s from high 160s? I would think you would naturally make the jump soon, but I would say probably take some of your LG time to focus on one of your other sections. It would probably be most helpful to get LR down to not more than three missed on any given section. But, yeah, that particular jump was a waiting game for me--A.c.S

Seeking Perfection

That is an astonishingly high blind review score. Over my last 20 tests my average blind review score was a 178 and my PT average ended up at a 177. I scored a 172 on my first take and a 180 on my retake.

If you are blind reviewing at a 179-180 you just need to work on timing a little. Your understanding is clearly there. You just need your PT's to catch your blind review.

First of all, I would look for patterns in the questions which you miss during the real test and get right during blind review and questions that you just spend too much time on while taking the test. See if they are of a couple main types(especially with LR). If they are, drill these types of questions. You obviously know how to get them right since you can get them in blind review. It's about working through the logic just a little quicker.

I there is not an obvious pattern to the (misses/time consumers), then just literally make a copy or take a picture of every one of these questions and go through them proving each right answer right and each wrong answer wrong whenever you have a spare moment.

Good luck!

kimpg_66

Thanks all! I think I've decided that instead of doing as many LR and LG sections, I'm going to focus on RC and drilling problem types in LR. I also haven't been doing cookie-cutter reviews, which I think is important and I'm going to start doing this for each question

Harmmanb-1

I am in the exact same situation as you are - 167 - 170ish on my pts. I can get almost everything in BR for LR and LG, but my BR isn't improving much in RC. How is your RC BR score compared to your timed PT score?

sakox010

My scores range from around 167-174 on PTs and my blind review is in the 175-180 range. Personally, my blind review process involves going through each question, not just ones that I circled. I find this helpful specifically for LR because even on questions where I'm easily able to find the right answer, spending the time afterwards to fully understand why one answer choice is right and the other 4 are wrong has helped my LR in general. I then keep track of questions that are difficult or ones that gave me some sort of trouble when doing them during the timed test. For each PT I make a drill set of all the LR questions that I added to this list while blind reviewing.

It's hard to really pin-point exactly when and how it happened for LR, but for a while I was typically getting 4 or 5 wrong on each LR section and then something clicked and I am consistently getting 1 or 2 wrong on each LR section.

As far as LG, you should make it your goal to get -0 every time. This is by far the easiest section to improve.

RC is the section I struggled most with and for a long time I was stuck getting 6 or 7 questions wrong on this section. What changed for me was reading for viewpoints and constantly thinking about what role each paragraph plays for the passage as a whole. Now I'm usually around 2-3 wrong for RC.