For Re-Takers

alexandra.marlene

Hey all!
I took Sept 17, and got a decent score. Not the score I want or need. But the dilemma begins: how do you shake the "where do I go from here?" vibe?? I did decently, LR being my weak point, and I'm a very self-driven studier. My issue is that so many study plans are focused on starting from square one. I've done the CC twice, am now working with a tutor, but I sit at my desk and kind of just shuffle from one paper to the next. How do you get back into the groove? Having checked out some tips, I did watch a couple webinars, reviewed some CC, am working through the Trainer as a refresher, but I'm terrified of doing worse and learning the "wrong" way. Ay yai yai, help please!

Alex

@"alexandra.marlene" said:
Hey all!
I took Sept 17, and got a decent score. Not the score I want or need. But the dilemma begins: how do you shake the "where do I go from here?" vibe?? I did decently, LR being my weak point, and I'm a very self-driven studier. My issue is that so many study plans are focused on starting from square one. I've done the CC twice, am now working with a tutor, but I sit at my desk and kind of just shuffle from one paper to the next. How do you get back into the groove? Having checked out some tips, I did watch a couple webinars, reviewed some CC, am working through the Trainer as a refresher, but I'm terrified of doing worse and learning the "wrong" way. Ay yai yai, help please!

I think I had a similar issue. I took a long hiatus from studying this year (from like Feb to Sept) and when I came back I felt lost. The first thing I would do is to take a PT. You need to evaluate where you're at in relation to your target score. Once you have that info, come back to the forum and I'm sure we will be able to give you more personalized advice. Generally speaking, you'll likely want to review weak areas and drill those weaknesses. If you've gone through the CC twice, I don't think you need to go back through it again, not in its entirety at least. Besides, you already have a decent score so it seems like you were on the right path.

I think a really important mindset I adopted that not only helped me "get back in the groove" but also stay in the groove was the setting of concrete daily goals. When I first began studying, I would aim to do X amount of hours of prep each day. A lot of that time would be spent figuring out what exactly it was I should be doing. Now I set out to complete tangible goals each day. For example, one of my study session may look like this: try to master/fool proof 2 games and do 1 section of LR w/ blind review. It doesn't seem like much, but it's somewhere to start. And it's something you that you can complete and know you've accomplished.

tanes256

@"alexandra.marlene" take a look at your analytics and drill the LR questions you're weakest on. After you drill BR and then return to the curriculum if you need to. Maybe do 5-10 questions of a few specific question types each day.

pioneer321

You say that LR was your weakest section, so that is the one you should be most focused on while drilling. To me it seemed that the most difficult part about studying for a retake was actually starting. But, like @"Alex Divine" said, start by taking a PT or two to see where you're at, but also to kinda start getting in rhythm with the test.

As far as LR, first of all, make sure that you have grounded and clear cut strategies for each question type, to the point where these strategies turn into intuition. After that, I really believe that it boils down to a simple repeated drill and review process. I have also found that writing my own explanations during BR was helpful in solidifying the reasoning used.

Now, as for being terrified of doing worse, that might just be something that you need to learn to deal with, and trust in your process. As you keep studying and see repeated improvement, that should help too. Personally, whenever I had a really bad section of a low PT and needed some motivation, I would just go back to the analytics page to see that little graph that shows your long time progress to remind myself of how far I've come.