Highest Score = Longest Review

K-Magnet

I earned my highest score to date and thus far I have spent more time reviewing this test than any previous preptest.

What I want to encourage everyone to embrace is delayed celebration & deserved confidence. I had to prove to myself that this score was not lucky. I have seriously reviewed every question that I circled, even in sections where I was -0. I have also written my reflections on the comments sections of video explanations for specific questions. Why? Because we cannot rely on luck for our tests, we must rely on a solid grasp of the concepts.

In carefully reviewing each test, including our best ones, we must gain confidence from answering correctly based on our *processes*, not on whether our AC matches the right AC. This is what Blind Review has taught me.

So I delayed celebrating until my complete review & proved to myself that I deserve higher confidence in my LSAT skills. I have finally tasted the tiniest morsel of mastery, not because of the score that I received, but in proving to myself that I absolutely deserved that score.

madeleine

Inspiring. Congrats on your new record!

jeje9999

This is really encouraging K-Magnet . Out of curiosity, how do you deal with questions you get wrong on LR and how do you go about reviewing them? Just in need of some advice because my LR is weak.

ENTJ

Now that's how you truly study. *Fistbump*

alexroark5

Reviewing PT's is how you get better. Actually taking the PTs just measures your progress. It usually takes me about 6/7 hours to review one PT in full. Just by repeating this simple process of taking PTs and thoroughly reviewing them, I have been able to improve my cold diagnostic of 153 to having scored over 170 in 7 out of the last 8 PTs I've taken. It's taken me about 25 PTs to get here and I plan to take another 30 before the test in Dec. Deep, thorough review is absolutely necessary (unfortunately not sufficient) for significant progress.

ENTJ

Alex! You rock! *Fistbump*

alexroark5

AI! You rock at positive energy!

inactive

Thanks so much for sharing this!

ENTJ

Must be the tons of Karma I've been accruing through 7sage! Hahah. ^_^

K-Magnet

Thanks for all of the responses!

To answer jeje's question -- I review LR firstly by Blind Review. Trekking back through all of my circled questions & giving myself as much time as I want to choose the one absolutely correct answer and four absolutely wrong answers. I then use the approach outlined by J.Y. for dealing with circled & correct (good work, you reinforced your process), circled & incorrect (throw away your explanation & seek alternative, better explanations), and non-circled & incorrect (say wha! you totally missed something here -- don't do that again!).

For all of the answers I got wrong -- I cut them out & keep them for later review. For a couple of the answers that I feel I just barely skimmed by with getting them correct -- I also cut them out & keep them for later review. (I do this for RC & LG too... although we should be constantly re-doing LG anyway!)

I think the very surprising but very important aspect of BR (for me) was the idea of throwing away your own logic when it comes to circled & incorrect answers. I think often we are tempted to try to complain about our incorrect answer choice because we still 'feel' it could be right. We even sometimes go as far as to think -- oh there must be a mistake. And sometimes we might feel vindicated by reading that others also circled that wrong AC and also thought that wrong AC may somehow be right. But it is NOT common for ACs to be retracted & our preptests do not have mistakes (http://7sage.com/lesson/one-right-answer-choice/ ). So... we need to erase our wrong thinking & re-learn another approach! I turn to the 7sage video explanations, the 7sage forum, and the Manhattan forum for explanations of the correct answer choice. I checked out the new, free videos from Velocity, but the first minute only explains the correct AC & the rest is pure marketing.

As for those non-circled & incorrect answers -- be happy, you will definitely improve because you are more likely to remember those questions that gave you the WHAT THE... feeling. I remember my first such feeling: Superprep Test A, S1, Q11. This NA Q is about building a space station & the correct answer choice discounts robots building the station. I had immediately rejected robots as the correct AC since no mention of robots existed in the stimulus -- and that was a big lesson: certain question types only let you use info from the stimulus while others allow you to draw on info from 'outside'.

When you review the past questions that you have cut out, you remind yourself of the various lessons those questions have taught you. And if you forget -- seek out the explanations from 7sage again & try to remember next time.

I also suggest that you try LR sections that are completely untimed. See which questions naturally suck up more of your time -- it is these which you have most difficulty with & are more likely to get wrong unless you change your habits/processes. And even if you don't immediately see a trend in 'question type', you might see a trend in your own mistakes (whether missing the conclusion or jumping over key words or mixing up your formal logic rules).

Gracelover

Hey K-Magnet! Congratulations!

maitaisp

Thanks for the insightful comments k-magnet

turnercm

you're a beast!!!

jeje9999

Thank you for your detailed response! Will definitely integrate this into my studying. You rock!!

fifthending

Congrats, that's great! Just out of curiosity, how long did you study roughly before that score increase?

K-Magnet

Thanks fifthending -- I have studied for approx two months, with 75% of my time focused on learning the material, 25% on preptests. Now I've switched those percentages around.

harrismegan

K-Magnet,
How do you blind review for your Reading Comprehension?

K-Magnet

Hi harrismegan,

I BR using the same method I described for LR, including cutting out the passages and questions for later review.

There is a difference between LR & RC though -- Whereas in LR, J.Y. teaches us to cultivate that 'spark of intuition' into a fire, RC Qs don't usually rely on the sort of reasoning intuition we've built up for LR Qs. Instead of relying on sparks of intuition, we rely on sparks of memory.

To cultivate our sparks of memory, we can train our reading speed & our memory recall. You have to decide which method of training works best for you.

The wonderful aspect of RC, yes wonderful, is that the answers are THERE, in the passage itself. So much of LR is implicit & unstated while so much of RC is explicit & stated. This is wonderful because it means we are mostly tasked with a simple mission: search & rescue.

We have to get better and better at searching. For my own review, I recognize what bits of the paragraph I have a tendency to miss & what bits of the paragraph I should be marking for myself. For example, when specific names are used, I box them or when an example is used, I write "ex:" in the margin. These sort of notations that work best for you, as with LG, must be developed by drilling, drilling, and more drilling.

As part of the BR from all of the drilling, you need to notice any trends with your mistakes. I find that I often overlook the first paragraph of a passage in the later questions, when the information was so clearly stated already. I think it is a play of the writers -- in the same way that the last Q in a game might call on you to use a rule that you haven't applied yet & thereby are more likely to have forgotten.

Hope this helps!

lsathopeful

Hey K-Magnet, thanks for the insight! I'm just curious if you can expand on what you mean by sparks of memory and an example of the training you personally use?

Thanks!

K-Magnet

Hi @lsathopeful ,

I chose the 'sparks' as a metaphor related to when JY discusses those 'sparks of intuition' in LR.

What I meant by 'sparks of memory' was the 'aha!' moment when you directly recall where that topic/word/phrase is within the passage. To develop recall, you need to have practiced having that short-term memory with passages or practiced knowing the overall structure so you know at least what paragraph you might expect to have that topic/word/phrase.

If you are careful enough reading the passage at first, then you will have those 'sparks' or 'triggers' of memory for where in the passage that specific Q is beckoning you to go (if it doesn't list the lines specifically). If you aren't having the memory triggers, then you might not be spending enough time upfront to know the passage's general outline.

And it isn't that you need to know *exactly* where something is -- just the general gist, so as to prevent yourself from a long, unfocused search of the whole passage.

Personally, the more I practice RC, the more I start to underline unusual/interesting bits that I expect will be asked about (ex: recently had underlined the word 'rarely' and that was directly asked about in a Q, so I could have that spark of recall right away).

Hope this helps clarify!