Warm up strategies - 20+ gap between PT/BR score

Mia Fairweather

So I took PT 52 this past weekend and I knew during the time that I was taking it that things were not good I felt anxious, felt myself getting caught up on questions and instead of reading the stimulus first like I have always done I decided to try and read the question first. I was taking it in the room that I am actually going to be testing in to try and get myself in prime test day conditions but it didn't help that the lights kept going off. To say the least it was a mess. I was feeling really frazzled and stress so I took a break, the next day I did no studying and did my BR yesterday. I literally hadn't done about half of the LR questions so I went back and did those, no stress just tried to do my best. Reviewing over the RC and LG sections I couldn't understand why I hadn't completed them, I could have easily completed the LG section and done more on the RC section. With this being said I think my biggest enemy on this test is myself. After scoring the test My BR score was a 172 and I realized that I was putting the pressure on myself under timed conditions. So what I want to know is:where do I go from here ? Should I focus on drills? Doing timed individual sections ? Increase PTs per week to get my time up? I read in a similar discussions that warm ups help where can I find these?

MissChanandler

Warm ups are short problem sets that you would create for yourself by printing/cutting out a few problems that are easy for you and maybe a simple logic game. The twenty point gap really isn't that surprising since you didn't get to so many questions and then had unlimited time to complete them in BR. A 172 BR suggests that you have the core concepts down pretty well and just need to train your mind to handle timed test taking. Your strategy going forward will probably depend on when you are wanting to take the test. I think that you should work on individual timed sections and do a full PT about once a week. I would also note that if you aren't already practicing with scantron bubbling sheets, you definitely need to, even on timed individual sections. It only takes a couple of minutes to bubble, sure, but a couple minutes is the difference between answering a couple more questions, and you don't want to get used to having an extra couple of minutes on every section just because you aren't practicing with a bubble sheet. Having to bubble in answers definitely makes PTing feel more like the real thing.

Victoria.

I agree with what was said above. Doing timed sections and doing everything with a bubble sheet has helped me to inch (slowly) closer to my high 170s BR scores. I would suggest NOT doing more than 1 pt a week before you see significant progress/notice that you are more comfortable with time after section drills. I made the mistake of thinking I just needed to get used to taking full PTs instead of working on sections separately and I had around 9 160s in a row. Only once I took the a few days off to intensely drill by section for LG and focus on honing my RC approach did I see my first 165 and then my 2nd (took another PT soon after to reassure myself). Timed sections and taking full days off will help you close the gap.

keets993

The things that have helped me make the gap smaller between timed and BR is doing drills. Timed drills help you get used to time and develop an internal clock for when to move on. Untimed drills help with deepening your BR and also just drilling certain question types that you think you're spending too much time on (SA, principle, NA). Things that are cookie-cutter but you don't see them as cookie-cutter like quickly identifying correlation-causation; analogy; phenom/hypothesis; problem-solution; cause-effect etc. If you're not using video footage you definitely should incorporate it into your test-taking. Also depending on where you are scoring, adjust your strategy. So if you're in 150s or low 160s try slowing down instead of skipping aggressively. If you're in mid 160s or high 160s and you want to break into 170s then you need to manage your time more efficiently and be more aggressive.

Mia Fairweather

@keets993 any instructions you have for video footage?

keets993

@"Mia Fairweather" just make sure you can see the page and what you are doing (making notations ) and which answer choices you are stuck on /having difficulty on. Also make sure to record the data on excel so that it's easily accessible to you. Write notes on what you did too so you don't have to rewatch the video footage.