How do I overcome Logical Reasoning Plateau?

Small_victories

Hello,

I've been scoring anywhere between -3 and -6 in each LR section for the past 7 months.
On some lucky days, I have -3 section, but I more frequently get -5 to -6 per section. I just realized that this is a probably score plateau. I use skipping strategies and timing isn't so much of an issue to me.

But I'm starting to think that I'm not improving at this point in LR. Every time I take a fresh LR section, I find it very challenging. I often think, "how am I supposed to tackle all these traps gracefully under 35 minutes?" Too much information to juggle in my poor brain! I've been studying for almost two years, and I've gotten so much better at LR, but it is still so, amazingly difficult!

When you score -3 or under in an LR section, how did you feel when you were taking the section? Did you feel like you nailed it or you had control over it? How many questions were you uncertain of? Did you nevertheless get most of them right?

Based on my plateau experience, I'm sort of developing a hypothesis that in order to score -4 or under per LR section, you shouldn't find the section too challening while taking it. Does LR get/feel easier after you break the plateau?
LSAT is incredibly hard for me, and it's really hard to trust my brain.

I invite a diverse range of scorers to participate in the poll below (vulernable to many flaws, probably :'(). I'd like to inquire into the hearts and minds of other LSAT students and evaluate my own heart and mind.

If you could comment why you selected a particular option and possibly share your score range, that'd be great!

Thank you so much.

Ohnoeshalpme

After you finish a section, you should have a good sense of how well you did. I think most of this comes from skipping strategies and knowing what questions are going to be time consuming. Once you pick all the low hanging fruit in a section, you’ll be able to go back to the easier tier of the questions you skipped and pick those up (with around 70-80% certainty) and finally the ones you still are unsure about. At the end of this stage, you should have a realistic idea of how well the section went because you already grabbed the easy points. You only have to narrow your misses down to the questions that were challenging. It becomes more like BR at this point - answering as many of the BRable questions as you can. Usually I score better than -4 when I feel I aced a section and around -6 when I feel the section went poorly.

keets993

Well, what's your BR score like? Do you film yourself while taking sections? If you film yourself, you should take very detailed notes on what was different between sections you did well in and sections you did not do so well in. Habits are probably a factor in this. For example, based on video footage, it's very easy for me to tell when a section went well as opposed to not well because in the bad sections I wasn't notating, taking time to analyze stimulus before moving on to AC's, I didn't trust my gut and eliminate confidently but spent too long trying to reason to myself why an ac was wrong, taking too long considering each AC on the first run instead of eliminating.

I, personally, haven't yet gotten an accurate 'feel' for how a section/test went after I took it. I find that, I'm always left feeling uncomfortable and that there wans't enough time. But generally, if I'm more mentally prepared (focusing on questions and not scores; not panicking after a section/game/passage went wrong) then I tend to do better. I think your fear of the section probably contributes a bit to underperformance. The LSAT will always be challenging. If you've seen JY's live takes of a section, you notice that in his video commentary, he's constantly critiquing himself in terms of what he did well and didn't. He never goes 'oh yeah I crushed it' but always finds something he can improve upon. Same with the Sages. I don't think I've heard any of them say that the test is easier for them but that they've adapted to it. The key is not to let it overwhelm you while you're taking it.

Small_victories

@Ohnoeshalpme said:
After you finish a section, you should have a good sense of how well you did.

Thank you for responding! I should really develop a sense of how the section went, depending on how well the BR round went and how much I was able to pick up easier points and narrow my potential misses to challenging questions. Do you mind sharing how many questions you circle to BR and how many you are able to BR within the 35 minute time-frame?
I usually circle around 7~8 (sometimes even 11) and I have time to to BR around 4~5 of them. Most of the time, however, I either stick stubbornly to the initial answer choice or go from the initial correct AC to a wrong AC. Coming back to circled questions can be counterproductive sometimes. Is this normal, and if so, does BR accuracy improve over time?

Small_victories

@keets993 said:
Well, what's your BR score like?

Thank you for your feedback! My BR score ranges from 173~175. I will take your advice and compare the sections that went well to those that went sour. So many things can go wrong under pressure, and it's a good idea to take detailed notes on the differences between good and bad performances.

It gives me some relief to hear that it's okay to feel challenged by the LSAT, no matter how long I've studied for it. Having feelings of difficulty don't necessarily mean that I will never be a proficient test taker. I will try each day to acknowledge that the test is challenging but at the same time not be overwhelmed by it. Thank you for letting me know that!

eRetaker

I personally don't feel nervous but I am quite often uncertain. I circle around 5 questions by the end of each section that I feel a bit uncertain about. Rarely do I feel like I destroyed a section when I finish and that feeling of uncertainty gets amplified on test day ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Regis_Phalange63

@eRetaker said:
I personally don't feel nervous but I am quite often uncertain. I circle around 5 questions by the end of each section that I feel a bit uncertain about. Rarely do I feel like I destroyed a section when I finish and that feeling of uncertainty gets amplified on test day ¯_(ツ)_/¯

That is one interesting emoticon you used right there LOL

Ohnoeshalpme

@Small_victories said:

@Ohnoeshalpme said:
After you finish a section, you should have a good sense of how well you did.

Thank you for responding! I should really develop a sense of how the section went, depending on how well the BR round went and how much I was able to pick up easier points and narrow my potential misses to challenging questions. Do you mind sharing how many questions you circle to BR and how many you are able to BR within the 35 minute time-frame?
I usually circle around 7~8 (sometimes even 11) and I have time to to BR around 4~5 of them. Most of the time, however, I either stick stubbornly to the initial answer choice or go from the initial correct AC to a wrong AC. Coming back to circled questions can be counterproductive sometimes. Is this normal, and if so, does BR accuracy improve over time?

On a good section, I'll circle around 6 and review all of them. On a bad section, I'll circle around 8 and get to most/all of them before time ends. Generally it comes down to time at the end though. The more I circle, the more I skip, the more time I have at the end. So when I have only circled a few, I probably have only 5 minutes left, if I circled 8 I probably have about 10 minutes. Have you ever filmed yourself doing a LR section?

Rigid Designator

My LR average is -2.1 Range is -6 to -0 (10+ PTs). Very rarely do I feel I totally crushed an LR section. I think that's partly because you don't have the luxury to answer every question with 100%, bet-your-life-on-it certainty. This means that for some relatively easier questions I have them very lightly circled for BR.

Generally speaking I never find an LR section hard, just individual questions. If I feel the whole section was hard this would indicate that I've badly mistimed the section, which in turn suggests I should have employed a better skipping strategy. To employ a better skipping strategy you need to be honest with yourself when you aren't making progress on a question, which takes confidence. This is especially true on "easier" questions which come earlier. On a recent PT I can distinctly remember being stuck on question 4. Psychologically you don't want to skip because it's early and you expect early questions to be easier. But you just have to.

I voted for "I feel nervous, but confident enough to think straight." because I think some elements of LR are out of my control. For instance, if the curve breaker is a Point at Issue/Disagreement question, I'll be overjoyed. But if it's a Parallel Flaw, I would struggle more.

Rigid Designator

In terms of overcoming the plateau - and this might sound dumb - I tried going through sections as though I was J.Y. You know how people ask "what would Jesus do?", I ask "what would J.Y. think?"

If you watch enough of his video explanations you can get a feel for how he approaches questions. It's hard to say exactly what this entails, but a few things jump to mind: aggressively eliminating wrong or off-topic answer choices; really understanding the stimulus before going in to questions; using point of emphasis to speed things up.

A big break through for me was watching how much contempt J.Y. showed for some wrong answer choices. The LSAT is always right, but that doesn't mean they don't throw in some garbage wrong answer choices. I tried to internalise this and it's helped me push for those extra couple of marks on LR. I know this sounds so daft... lol.

EDT: somewhere in the CC he touches on this when he explains how there is only ever 1 right answer choice, and 4 horrendously wrong ones. Once you know to look at every LR question knowing only one answer is even close to right, you can start to "feel out" the right one.

samantha.ashley92

I'm kind of in the same position as you, where I've gone -4 LR section 1 and -7 LR section 2 on my last two PTs, and -4/-8 the time before. I have actually put a pause on PTing so that I can tackle the core issues here. I'm working on nailing specific question types, which is going to be more impactful than taking PTs over and over. If I can get one question type down, and that happens to get me another question or two right consistently, why not do that? Did you purchase a 7Sage course? You can use the Analytics page to see where your opportunities are.

Small_victories

@eRetaker said:
I personally don't feel nervous but I am quite often uncertain. I circle around 5 questions by the end of each section that I feel a bit uncertain about. Rarely do I feel like I destroyed a section when I finish and that feeling of uncertainty gets amplified on test day ¯_(ツ)_/¯

That's really neat that feeling uncertain about some questions doesn't lead to nervousness. I should try to be more like you!

Small_victories

@Ohnoeshalpme said:

On a good section, I'll circle around 6 and review all of them. On a bad section, I'll circle around 8 and get to most/all of them before time ends. Generally it comes down to time at the end though. The more I circle, the more I skip, the more time I have at the end. So when I have only circled a few, I probably have only 5 minutes left, if I circled 8 I probably have about 10 minutes. Have you ever filmed yourself doing a LR section?

Yes, I film my LR sections! Reading your comment, I just realized that one explanation as to why I finish some sections with 5 minutes left and others with 7~8 minutes. It may depend on how many questions I skipped. So having more time at the end of a section doesn't necessarily mean that section was easier; it can mean the opposite, if that was the result of skipping more challenging questions. I will re-watch my LR performances with this in mind. Thank you!

Small_victories

@"Rigid Designator" said:

Generally speaking I never find an LR section hard, just individual questions. If I feel the whole section was hard this would indicate that I've badly mistimed the section, which in turn suggests I should have employed a better skipping strategy. To employ a better skipping strategy you need to be honest with yourself when you aren't making progress on a question, which takes confidence.

It makes so much sense to find individual questions, rather than an entire LR section, hard. As you said, the difficulty of an entire section probably stems from mistiming the section that results in rushing and panicking. And the cause of mistiming a section is getting stuck on super tough questions or spending too much time on easier questions. All these minor and major strategic errors in aggregate makes a section challenging overall. Thank you for the tips on overcoming the plateau. I will try to internalize the contemptuous elimination method!

Small_victories

@"samantha.ashley92" said:
I'm kind of in the same position as you, where I've gone -4 LR section 1 and -7 LR section 2 on my last two PTs, and -4/-8 the time before. I have actually put a pause on PTing so that I can tackle the core issues here. I'm working on nailing specific question types, which is going to be more impactful than taking PTs over and over. If I can get one question type down, and that happens to get me another question or two right consistently, why not do that? Did you purchase a 7Sage course? You can use the Analytics page to see where your opportunities are.

Thank you! I'm quite uncomfortable with Parallel Reasoning question types, so I plan on drilling those. I agree that it's a good idea to focus on some core issues instead of taking PT's and PT's. I use the Analytics to check which QTs give me most trouble. Thank you!