LR. Is it normal? And how can I improve?

Millennium Falcon

I understand for some people it can take up to a year to go from 140s to 160s. But is it normal to not show any improvement in Logical Reasoning sections after the first 10 timed Prep Tests?

During Blind Review I can get 20 correct out of 25. While taking timed Prep Tests I am only getting 11 correct. I do relatively well on the first 10 to 12 questions but after that I am a mess.

Timing is certainly an issue for me. But for the moment I am more concerned about getting as many questions correct as I can answer.

Right now I have the foundation to get 160 -165 during Blind Review. I’m just not performing well on Logical Reasoning sections when I set the timer.

Are there any techniques or exercises I can do to improve timed LR sections?
What sorts of drills should I be doing? And should I do them timed?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Happy New Years to everyone.

Leah M B

Absolutely there are things you can do. I’d start by taking a break from PTs. You need to focus on drilling.

If you haven’t done them already, I’d start by going back to the LR practice sets in the curriculum and work on them untimed. If you’ve already done all those, then just make your own set using the question bank.

Basically, you need to focus on the fundamentals and practice drilling by question type. The second part of what you need to do is probably take longer doing BR. It’s not just about getting the questions right, but diagnosing why you got them wrong. If you’re getting questions right during BR but wrong when it’s timed, you need to really think through why you got it wrong the first time. Did you misread the question or answer choices? We’re you overconfident - selected the first answer that seemed right without reading all the options? Those might tell you that you need to slow down when you’re being timed. If you’re really only getting it right on the second try by guessing or you already knew the first answer was wrong so you selected the next best option, then you actually don’t understand the question and are just making educated guesses.

It could also be helpful to write out explanations for questions you get wrong. For every question you got wrong, after you get to the right answer, write out an explanation of why you chose the wrong answer initially, why it was wrong, and why the correct answer is right. It helps to understand things by putting it into your own words. This will help identify what pitfalls you keep hitting and how to avoid them, and helps internalize the correctthought process.

For a while I think you should take a break from taking entire PTs and focus on drilling questions by type and then move up to timed sections. It also helps to start first by practicing a whole section with a stopwatch vs a count down. In other words, find out how long it takes you to do a LR section accurately instead of trying right away to jump to doing it in 35 minutes. If it takes you 50 minutes, then start there and try to get your time down.

Hope some of that helps!

Millennium Falcon

Thanks for the advice Leah. This week I will apply what you said.

Alex

Totally agree with @"Leah M B" !

Revisit the CC, re-do lessons, make sure your fundamentals are solid, and do untimed LR work. I stopped doing timed sections until I could basically always go -0 on untimed LR sections. If you learn to do something right, practice doing it repeatedly, the timing will largely take care of itself.

Another thing that is important to note is that there is always room for improvement on even the most basic fundamentals. Often, understanding on this test is not binary, (that you either know it or don’t know it) but is on a sliding scale. So while you may know your conditional logic translations and how to spot flaws, there is likely tons of room for improvement.

Best of luck!