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Related Discussions
High-scorer opinions on ThinkingLSAT's advice?
The ThinkingLSAT podcast takes a strong stance on several issues that seem directly counter to 7sage forum advice.
In particular, they say that people should not care about time at all and should instead focus on understanding what they read and "figuring it out". Obviously there is some merit to that point, but it seems to be the opposite of this "skipping strategy" that many 7sagers recommend. Some high-scorers on this forum apparently try to work through an entire LR section in 25 minutes while skipping liberally along the way so that they can spend 10 minutes on the problems that were hard. Thinking LSAT would say that that approach encourages rushing and not thinking carefully enough and places too much energy and focus on timing and thinking about whether one should skip or not. Instead, going in order without skipping and trying your very best on each problem until you are truly stumped will produce a better score, even if you have to guess on whatever you don't get to.
Another issue they have strong opinions on is stimulus first. They assert that understanding the stimulus is the most important part of LR and that reading stem first can interfere with how one reads the stimulus and encourages a highly question type-specific approach that is inflexible. Just understand what you read and think about it critically; you can answer any question and you don't need to know the question ahead of time, is what they'd say.
What are your thoughts on ThinkingLSAT's positions?
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I don't think focusing time on reading and figuring it out and skipping are mutually exclusive. For each question in LR you MUST read the stimulus and understand how the premises support the argument, or just the overall point of the stimulus if there is no conclusion. I personally don't use that 25-26 questions in 25 minutes method because I believe skipping that fast and leaving only the 4 to 5 level difficulty curve breakers to the end will result in lots of careless errors and misinterpretations of the stimulus on easy questions. What I try to do is set benchmarks, like if I have completed the first 10 questions in 10-11 minutes, it often means I'm in good shape. If I can get to the last five questions and still have 10 minutes remaining, rare but doable, that is the most optimal situation.
Also, I have found that reading the question stem is helpful, especially on Main Point questions because you can just underline the phrase and find it in the passage. For example, if you begin reading the stimulus and it's a seemingly complicated stimulus about science, you may begin to get hung up over the intricate details - not that they're unimportant necessarily - before realizing in the question stem that it's a Main Point question.
I think ThinkingLSAT and 7Sage actually are in agreeance with each other based on your description. It's about understanding when and where these apparently competing strategies are used.
The 25 in 25 method you are talking about, the one recommended by 7Sagers, is a tool for practice NOT FOR A REAL TEST. The idea of 25 in 25min is to gauge confidence. If you are picking an answer, and you believe it is right, and are not able to second guess yourself, was it actually right? If yes, you probably have a decent understanding of the concepts behind that question. If no, then you need to really spend time trying to understand what tricked you and what is actually going on in the question. You use this in order to help point out weaknesses in your understanding of a test.
During the actual test you should only be skipping questions that are eating your time. Like you've read the stim twice and the AC twice and still don't understand it. This is when you should skip, all other questions you should be able to at least get a tentative answer. If you finish early then you go back and review what you feel uneasy about.
As for Stim V. Stem that is an LSAT battle that has been fought for a really really long time lol. High scores do both, and recommend both. I am team Stem first, because in my mind, whats the point of reading the stim if I don't know what I'm suppose to be doing. I need to know if I'm weakening, strengthening, looking for a flaw....If I don't do that I feel lost, end up reading it 2-3 times and wasting time. It is preference.
Different strokes for different folks, obviously. It does seem, however, that a larger percentage of test takers find that reading the question stem first is very beneficial. And from this forum, it seems that many test takers swear by liberal skippage (new word!). _
If an inflexible question-specific approach gets you to the answer, it is still working. I think scanning the question stem first tended to save me time at no cost in terms of accuracy. I could do them the other way and often did at first, but found reading the stem to be helpful in telling me what to focus on and therefore saving time. If you found it was stopping you from understanding the stimulus(and I'm not sure why it would) then I think taking their advice would be wise.
The idea of skipping always annoyed me as a high scorer. I knew I was going to either do all the problems or have a bad test compared to my average so I felt skipping was a waste of time and a distraction. Every moment you spend thinking about skipping or not skipping is a moment spent not thinking about the test. I think some 7sagers forget these costs of skipping which I believe outweigh the benefits for good LR takers. However, there are benefits especially for weaker LR testers. You want to get the questions that you can understand right and not waste time failing to understand questions you won't get right anyway. As far as just paying attention to time on the LR section, I looked down at my watch every 5 minutes or so. This was just to make sure I was on pace to finish. Usually I was and if not I just cut out any checking of my answers and didn't bother eliminating wrong answers after I had the right one.
I do also think that the strategy of skipping may reduce improvement from PTs since you don't learn how to do the hardest questions during PTs if you don't make it back to them. You would still get to them in review, but that is not the same.
TLDR:
I don't think they are completely right or wrong, but you can definitely try their suggestions out for yourself.
As time goes on with your studying, the things that are effective for you will likely get more clear.
First, let me concede that everyone is different and of course use the strategy that works for you, not what others suggest. If you can score a 180 by closing your eyes and channeling the force, kudos, and go f*** yourself, haha!
That said, I think some skipping is necessary. Unless you're a savant who can answer ALL 5 star questions in a minute or less. Fine-tuning my skipping strategy helped me immensely. It allows you to guarantee a date shot at the easy questions, and usually extra time for toughies. My nightmare is hearing the 5 minute warning when I still have 12 questions left, and skipping eliminates that scenario. Plus I think coming back to a question can really help your brain mull it over and attack it somewhat fresh.
As for stem vs stim, I prefer stem first. That's how I started out, it works for me, and it follows the KISS law. I've tryed the opposite, and I can see the appeal, but it's just not for me. I think this question is less cut and dry, 100 percent personal preference. I will say I think maintaining a consistent approach is important, whichever you choose.
As far as skipping, you should experiment with different skipping routines, to try and figure out which will work better for you. There is a difference between tackling each question carefully, and wasting time just starring at answer choices when you clearly see that you can't figure out. I tried going through LR sections in 25 minutes, with more liberal skipping, but realized that it wasn't working for me. Instead I did something more like you say: going through each problem carefully (spending a bit longer per question than many others here) until I either was sure or saw that I wasn't getting anywhere. If I did get stumped, I would choose the most attractive answer, and circle the question to come back to in the end. For me this would usually be only 1/2 questions per section, and since I tended to finish in about 32 minutes, I would have enough time to look them over. My LR scores were typically -0/-1. Obviously the more sections you take, and the better you get at the test, the less questions there will be for which you aren't sure. But again, that is the strategy that worked for me, after experimenting with other approaches, and I do feel like most people would benefit from experimenting with strategies to see if any of them align with their natural approaches better.
Whether to read stimulus or the stem first has been a debate as long as the LSAT has been around and I know that there are people in both camps who scored 180s. I've always read the stem first, partially because that's what LSAT Trainer told me to do when I first started, but also because stem should absolutely change how you read the stimulus. Some of the most complicated stimuli I've ever seen on LR were "Main Conclusion" type questions. By reading stem first I was quickly able to see that I don't need to process the arguments in these as thoroughly as when working with NA or Strengthen types, and shave off some valuable time. There tons of question types for which you shouldn't be critical of the reasoning used vs the ones for which you should, and only by reading the stem first are you able to determine which mindset you should have. But again, I believe that an answer to this is simply experiment, try both, give each strategy a fair shot, and see what works better.
I sort of generally like the Thinking LSAT but I vehemently disagree with them on several points. But as most people said above, certain strategies work for some people and not for others. Also, partially what I disagree with them about is that they are 100% certain that their methods are the best, full stop. I understand where some people might be fine reading the stim first. But it's not a ridiculous, time-wasting concept to read the stem first. It works for lots of people, myself included.
They also advocate basically only studying by doing timed sections, and I've heard them make fun of doing a BR and also saving newer prep tests for studying closer to your actual test date. Maybe their methods are more nuanced in their full classes, but in my opinion, I don't know how you are supposed to improve without thoroughly reviewing your mistakes. And it's really logical to not use all the modern prep tests right when you begin studying and then have nothing but old ones as you get close to test day.
Also as for skipping, it's mainly meant to be used to not waste your time working out one particularly difficult question, as JY discusses here: https://7sage.com/lesson/why-you-must-skip-questions-on-the-lsat/
For example, once I figured out that I always get hung up on rule replacement questions in LG, I went in with a strategy of skipping those questions and coming back to them if I have time. My average score immediately went up by about 4 points. I had been wasting time on those and then I'd run out of time and not even get to the last game. Once I skipped, I'd get at least 3 or 4 correct on the last game, and then sometimes have time to figure out the RR questions I'd skipped. Or, I'd fill in guesses. But overall, I was having to randomly guess on much fewer questions, which was an immediate score increase. If I followed Thinking LSAT's strategies, I would be losing out on several points per test.
In any case, things like looking at your watch or reading stim vs stem first are really personal preference. You can try both ways and see what works best for you.
I had a tutor who scored 180 on his first attempt. I don't believe he skipped questions. He advocated using aggressive process of elimination to get the rigbt answer which helped me get questions that even he found difficult correct.
I think there are great arguments for both approaches to the LSAT. There are really great arguments for reading the stim first. I tend to follow 7Sage's stem first approach because it just makes sense to me on an intuitive level. I know Powerscore has you read the stim first. Great. But now what? 7Sage stem first strategy has an entire flow chart of what to do after you've read the stem and determined what type of question you're dealing with.
As far as timing goes, same thing. I can't speak on the timing argument because I'm not too familiar with Fox's thoughts on that matter. Do you have the podcast where he mentions that by any chance? I'm pretty curious to here what he has to say about it. Until then, I'll reserve my judgement.
Be that as it may, there's more than one way to skin a cat, as the saying goes. And when it comes to the LSAT you'll find that top scorers don't always agree on how to do things. Sometimes their thoughts are completely the product of what's worked for them. Most prep companies are actually pretty good and won't steer you wrong. 7Sage is obviously the best, but that's not necessarily because JY's way is the only way to do things. In my opinion, it's because JY is a star and can explain/teach how he does things in a way that's conducive to learning effective strategies we need to do well on the test. Also, the fact reasonable and talented LSAT minds disagree on a few things tells me that there probably isn't one best way for everyone.
I feel like it comes up a lot on their podcast. I believe his philosophy boils down to: time spent looking at a watch is time not answering questions. Keep your nose down, go through questions methodically, and get as far as you can get. Don't worry about finishing a section, just answer as many correctly as you can. (He frequently mentions not focusing on finishing entire sections, you can get a really good score without answering them all.)
While I think there's some good advice in that, I feel like a lot of their strategies are for scoring good but not great on the test. Yes, if your goal is a 160-165, you don't need to answer every question. But if you are aiming for a 175+, you need to learn to answer every single one and very quickly. That doesn't necessarily mean looking at your watch all the time, but time is a factor to contend with.
Ahhh ok that makes sense. Thank you for the clarification!
There’s a lot to say here, but it seems that I have differences with a few of the other 175+ ppl on here.
I think one point of agreement is that glancing at the question is helpful and not a time sink at all once you practice a bit on it. Of course, there’s a question of how helpful it is comparatively. I thought it was helpful and, anyways, am extremely skeptical of claims that it interferes.
I think one point of disagreement is skipping. Without skipping i don’t know if I would’ve been able to jump out‘ve the mid-high 160s. And I certainly wouldn’t have been able to answer 22-24 questions in 25 or 26 mins under test conditions without incorporating some skipping strategy into my practice. A lot of the payoffs, though, may be indirect—for instance, there’s actually less meta-processing (e.g., worrying about times) when you get good at skipping. Also, the time that you lose by deciding when and when not to skip is negligible when you get good at it.
In the end, there’s no one way to do it nor is there some silver bullet such that, if anyone used it, they’d score 175+. Having strong opinions on these things based purely on personal experiences is a bit strange.—A.c.S