Finishing vs Focusing

LSATisJustLikeDarkSouls

For the last couple of timed section practices I've changed my strategy from finishing the section to focusing on each question. I'm not worrying about spending too much time on a question. I just spend what time I need to really understand the stimulus and answer choices, no skipping. I've only done this a couple times for LR sections so I don't have much data, but so far I've seen no substantial difference in score. The difference is in the pattern of my wrong answers. They used to be pretty evenly spread through out the section and were generally due to misreading the answer choices. For the latest two, all my wrong answers come at the end. It was really satisfying and empowering putting down around18 happy faces in a row even though the rest were sad faces.

I know ideally we ought to want speed and accuracy for this test but I'm interested in what ya'll think about one or the other. For me, my main issue is misreading right now so it seems logical to work on being meticulous.

Thoughts?

btate87

Your new strategy is definitely the better of the two! I would suggest looking into skipping strategies as well. Eventually you want to be comfortable spotting questions that are likely to be the most difficult for you as soon after beginning them as possible. You just have to be careful not to make skipping cause you to rush.

ebalde1234

It's a fine balance of knowing when to time and when not to time yourself, if there are specific areas of concern definitely focus on those and evaluate your thought process and then look at the explanation of the question.

Doesn't make sense to time yourself for material you haven't mastered.
Once you see the questions enough time won't be an issue, 7sage and people on this forum state time and time again speed comes with mastery and practice. good luck

Ohnoeshalpme

I agree with what is stated above. I think that for many of us, the first impulse (with no training) is to work slowly and methodically through the section. Unfortunately, this method doesn't work because you simply run out of time. Eventually we realize that there are some small patterns in the questions and use this to over-simplify and race through the questions so that we can at least see each one of them before time is up. This practice makes us inaccurate, as you say, and we tend to start missing key words such as "unless" or "some". I believe that by slowing down, we can start to be more precise with the questions we are capable of answering, and also more discerning about the questions that we ought to skip and come back to.

NovLSAT2019

This came to my mind when I was on a break from studying:

Efficiency -> Effectiveness.

efficiency is: achieving maximum productivity with minimum wasted effort or expense.
effectiveness is: successful in producing desired or intended result.

I think being efficient means being effective with minimum wasted effort (falling for trap answer choices, time sinks, etc.) or expense (getting questions wrong, losing time, etc.). You can be effective (answering correctly) without being efficient but you must be effective in order to be efficient.

btownsquee

I have had the same trend! Following this threat to see what advice others give.

Now, I'm in the process of finding the sweet spot of focusing while not misreading anything, also while not running out of time.

LSATisJustLikeDarkSouls

@ebalde1234 said:
It's a fine balance of knowing when to time and when not to time yourself, if there are specific areas of concern definitely focus on those and evaluate your thought process and then look at the explanation of the question.

Doesn't make sense to time yourself for material you haven't mastered.
Once you see the questions enough time won't be an issue, 7sage and people on this forum state time and time again speed comes with mastery and practice. good luck

I actually don't think there is much of an argument for not timing yourself on a section or full PT. Regardless of your mastery of the content, your first pass of a new section should always be timed and then you can spend as long as you want on review. By not timing yourself you are wasting virgin material (couldn't think of a better word but it works for what I mean). Sure you need to learn some way beside the CC, but I see no reason to waist a limited resource like the PTs by not timing yourself. No matter how long you wait before retaking a PT it will never be as true a representation of a score as taking a PT for the first time.