Can my actual score catch up to my BR?

Folso102

Hi guys! I am PT ing in the mid 150's (157, 156, 155, 153) but my Br is always mid to high 60s! Time is my WORST enemy. For some reason, my actual score has decreased while my BR has increased. Is this normal or should I be worried?

Do you think it's realistic to have a goal score of 163? I am planning on taking the test in March and June. Any suggestions as to how I should ramp up my studying in the mean time? I really really need to hit the 160's!

Lucas Carter

How many questions per section type are you missing? Are you finishing the sections in time? Lastly how do you feel during the sections; panicked, rushed, etc.?. For us to point you in the right direction we need a bit more details.

mjmonte17

@Folso102 Following. I’m having the exact same problem as you, PTing and BRing in the same range.

keets993

Having your actual score dip while BR increases is natural. It takes time to get used to implementing strategies. If you haven't recorded yourself doing PT then you need to! It'll open your eyes to all kinds of timing mistakes you make, and then you'll have to come up with ways to fix that. Put the data into a spreadsheet on excel as well, that way it's there to always refer to.

akistotle

I echo what @"Lucas Carter" said. I think we need more details.

Speaking from my experience, I started scoring in 160s after my BR scores hit the 170s. I reached upper 160s-170s when I constantly BRed in high 170s.

What is your score breakdown? Do you go -0 on LG? I always recommend maximizing your LG score before focusing on other issues.

Mike_Ross

@akistotle said:
I echo what @"Lucas Carter" said. I think we need more details.

Speaking from my experience, I started scoring in 160s after my BR scores hit the 170s. I reached upper 160s-170s when I constantly BRed in high 170s.

What is your score breakdown? Do you go -0 on LG? I always recommend maximizing your LG score before focusing on other issues.

Hi! I assume you’d agree that it’s important to solidify your understanding of the fundamentals before worrying about speed?

But what about the complexity of LSAT texts?

One of the issues I worry about is dealing with how long it takes to read and understand an LR stimulus before I am confident about going though all the ACs. Does reading speed and understanding/retention improve with time and practice?

akistotle

@Mike_Ross said:

@akistotle said:
I echo what @"Lucas Carter" said. I think we need more details.

Speaking from my experience, I started scoring in 160s after my BR scores hit the 170s. I reached upper 160s-170s when I constantly BRed in high 170s.

What is your score breakdown? Do you go -0 on LG? I always recommend maximizing your LG score before focusing on other issues.

Hi! I assume you’d agree that it’s important to solidify your understanding of the fundamentals before worrying about speed?

But what about the complexity of LSAT texts?

One of the issues I worry about is dealing with how long it takes to read and understand an LR stimulus before I am confident about going though all the ACs. Does reading speed and understanding/retention improve with time and practice?

I think it depends on where you are. I believe that speed comes with understanding and practice.

@NotMyName and @"J.Y. Ping" discuss this in the latest podcast episode, but I do also think that most of the questions in LR are "reincarnations" of old LR questions. Yes, there are always a few questions with concepts that have never been tested before, but it's okay to miss them (unless you want to score a 180 all the time).

If you watch J.Y.'s Live Commentary videos, you can see that J.Y. doesn't really read that fast. He reads the stimulus pretty slowly. (He actually recommends subvocalization.) But he sees the pattern quickly so he can "hunt" for the right answer choice.

As @keets993 recommends, recording yourself can help you understand what you are doing under the timed conditions. Do you read the stimulus multiple times? If so, why is that the case? Is it because of particular grammar or was it because of something else? I generally skip a question if I don't understand what's going on after reading twice.

I also recommend Cookie Cutter Review. @keets993's answer in this thread explains it: How to do LR Cookie Cutter Review
https://7sage.com/discussion/#/discussion/comment/132119

Mike_Ross

Thank you! And thanks @keets993 for your comment on the other forum!

I think I’m starting to know what to “hunt” for with certain question types but ultimately I still take a lot of time to read and understand the stimulus. Grammar and density is of course an issue. I really fear I’ll never be able to attack a difficult LR question in under 75 seconds or so because I will have taken too much time attempting to read and understand the stimulus. Obviously at the moment, my focus is on getting a solid understanding before worrying too much about doing speed but I just can’t shake the thought that there are just going to be unavoidable parts of the test that I have to accommodate. I can recognize patterns and likenuiu say, reproductions of the same types of LR arguments but hey, if it’s a dense and complex stimulus, it’s going to be time consuming to wade through

Guess it’s going to be one of those: “trust in the process and it’ll come with time and practice (after heavy analysis and review)” type of things..

akistotle

@Mike_Ross said:
I really fear I’ll never be able to attack a difficult LR question in under 75 seconds or so because I will have taken too much time attempting to read and understand the stimulus.

You don't have to be able to attack a difficult question in under 75 seconds. You can spend 120 seconds if the time allows. I think you should aim 30-40 seconds for easy questions. I once drilled MP/MC and SA questions until I can always do them under 50 seconds.

Folso102

@"Lucas Carter" said:
How many questions per section type are you missing? Are you finishing the sections in time? Lastly how do you feel during the sections; panicked, rushed, etc.?. For us to point you in the right direction we need a bit more details.

@akistotle said:
I echo what @"Lucas Carter" said. I think we need more details.

Speaking from my experience, I started scoring in 160s after my BR scores hit the 170s. I reached upper 160s-170s when I constantly BRed in high 170s.

What is your score breakdown? Do you go -0 on LG? I always recommend maximizing your LG score before focusing on other issues.

On average I'd say I'm missing:
LR: -8 LG: -5 RC: -12
Either JUST finishing or not finishing every section. LR I sometimes have 2 or 3 I have to just fill in D. RC the science passage (usually my worst so I skip at first) I only ever am able to fast skim. LG the last game is very rushed and more prone to errors because of time. I wouldn't say I'm panicked, but I definitely know that I am too slow and I think knowing that I'm behind stresses me out a little bit when I'm testing.

Is there a recommended way to improve my speed without sacrificing accuracy? Or should I just keep PTing and hope it comes with practice? I was thinking maybe some drilling on question types that are especially difficult for LR would help, and then reading some hard science passages. But should I be timing these too?

akistotle

@Folso102 said:

@"Lucas Carter" said:
How many questions per section type are you missing? Are you finishing the sections in time? Lastly how do you feel during the sections; panicked, rushed, etc.?. For us to point you in the right direction we need a bit more details.

@akistotle said:
I echo what @"Lucas Carter" said. I think we need more details.

Speaking from my experience, I started scoring in 160s after my BR scores hit the 170s. I reached upper 160s-170s when I constantly BRed in high 170s.

What is your score breakdown? Do you go -0 on LG? I always recommend maximizing your LG score before focusing on other issues.

On average I'd say I'm missing:
LR: -8 LG: -5 RC: -12
Either JUST finishing or not finishing every section. LR I sometimes have 2 or 3 I have to just fill in D. RC the science passage (usually my worst so I skip at first) I only ever am able to fast skim. LG the last game is very rushed and more prone to errors because of time. I wouldn't say I'm panicked, but I definitely know that I am too slow and I think knowing that I'm behind stresses me out a little bit when I'm testing.

Is there a recommended way to improve my speed without sacrificing accuracy? Or should I just keep PTing and hope it comes with practice? I was thinking maybe some drilling on question types that are especially difficult for LR would help, and then reading some hard science passages. But should I be timing these too?

I recommend that you stop PTing for now and focus on section drills until you see some improvements. First, I think you should foolproof all the Logic Games in the PTs you've taken following J.Y.'s Fool Proof Guide and Pacifico's method. If you have access to LGs PT1-35, I recommend foolproofing them too. You definitely should aim for -0 on LG by foolproofing as many games as you can.

And then, I think you should first aim for -5 per LR section, which I think is completely duable. The last few questions in the section could be easy questions where you can pick up some points, so you should at least attempt them. It's important to find out where and how you lose time, so I recommend recording yourself. If you're spending more than a minute on an easy question, you might benefit from confidence drills:

@"Cant Get Right" said:
The specific focus of the confidence classification drill should be on learning to feel comfortable moving on at what is going to feel like a very low threshold of confidence. This threshold is the point at which it will take too much time for too little improvement on your confidence assessment. For some questions, you will likely achieve very high confidence very quickly which will leave insufficient room for significant enough improvement to warrant further time. For others, it will take too much time to achieve meaningful improvement at all, and you will need to move on as quickly as possible. As returns diminish on each question, we bank the remaining time to be used with greater discretion in subsequent rounds. As we move through our first round, our goal is not only to bank time but also to classify questions in order to return to them with maximum efficiency.

See more on https://7sage.com/discussion/#/discussion/13346/confidence-drills

Scoring LG: -0 LR: -5, -5 RC: -12 would lead you to a 163 in 40% of the times. (See Score conversion statistics: https://7sage.com/lsat-score-percentile-conversion/)

I also recommend reaching out to some of 7Sage's approved tutors: https://7sage.com/discussion/#/discussion/4760/7sages-approved-tutors/p1

keets993

I think @akistotle covered pretty much all there is to say, in depth.

What's your average BR score breakdown? I think that would really affect the strategy you should approach in terms of solidifying your fundamentals. Personally, I was scoring in 170s in BR when I hit 160s in timed PT which did play a role because I had the confidence that I knew the material.

Also, that -12 in RC, how much of that is from the last passage and how much is from the rest?

For yourself and @MikeRoss I think once you start viewing video footage that can help answer a lot of questions in terms of taking too long to read stimulus. It's a subjective thing. For example, if you take 50 seconds or a minute to read the stimulus for even all the easy questions then I'd be more inclined to suggest that that's an indication of underconfidence. People are afraid of sacrificing accuracy for speed, but you won't know if that's a sacrific you'll make until you try it. Again, this is all subjective in terms of BR score and how thorough your BR is.

really fear I’ll never be able to attack a difficult LR question in under 75 seconds or so because I will have taken too much time attempting to read and understand the stimulus.

You don't have to do it under 75 seconds. Part of having an effective timing strategy is to get those easy questions done fast and recognizing which questions are time sinks so you have more time for round two. You don't have to get every single right, even if you're shooting for a 180. Depending on your long-term goal score, your current score, and your short-term goal score you can skip a couple LR questions altogether.

Mike_Ross

Thanks @keets993 !

I’m still in the drilling to solidify the fundamentals phase—post CC. Will be spring times sections in a few weeks and will definitely apply everything you’re suggesting above!