Questions on Blind Reviewing guesses on PTs

ssmith9664

I've been taking some PTs lately in which I fail to answer all the questions in time so I just usually guess all D's or E's. I've seen quite a lot of discussion on if this is a good thing or not to do on PTs because it might mask your real potential or make you look like you did better or worse than how you actually performed.

In my eyes, I attempt to mirror my PTs as much as I can to the real thing, and I do think if I took the LSAT tomorrow and still had time allocation issues that I would surely guess. However, I also understand the importance of Blind Review in order to really increase my potential and see where I am making mistakes and wasting time and using bad logic. That said, if i'm guessing on say 5 or 6 questions in a section on a PT, is it worth truly blind reviewing those if all I am do is solving the questions with infinite time? Would it be a better practice to ignore blind reviewing questions I purely guessed and only concentrated my BR efforts on understanding the logic better for the questions I did answer?

Super Saiyan

I think it is worth blind reviewing them, and I will tell you why. Those questions you end up leaving up to chance by guessing, they aren't guaranteed to be that exact same type that you leave on the table, come test day. They could end up being questions of the same logical structure or weird abstract wording that you encounter towards the middle of a section on a new test. So, in short, my answer is definitely focus on the questions you did encounter, that way you can gauge your thought processes under timed conditions, etc, and come up with test taking strategies that work best for you. However, you should still have the logic of the unattempted questions down too. The more familiar you get with as many of these questions as possible, the more likely your chances of recognizing a support structure or mechanism for a specific question type... it could result in speeding you up and maybe getting you more answered questions under your belt in the process down the line as well. Look, BR SUCKS. I actually enjoy taking timed tests, trying to get a new personal best, etc. BR takes a while, and it's tedious, but as a former skeptic and lazy student, I can attest to the tremendous benefits in speed that BR has granted me.

ssmith9664

@"Super Saiyan" said:
I think it is worth blind reviewing them, and I will tell you why. Those questions you end up leaving up to chance by guessing, they aren't guaranteed to be that exact same type that you leave on the table, come test day. They could end up being questions of the same logical structure or weird abstract wording that you encounter towards the middle of a section on a new test. So, in short, my answer is definitely focus on the questions you did encounter, that way you can gauge your thought processes under timed conditions, etc, and come up with test taking strategies that work best for you. However, you should still have the logic of the unattempted questions down too. The more familiar you get with as many of these questions as possible, the more likely your chances of recognizing a support structure or mechanism for a specific question type... it could result in speeding you up and maybe getting you more answered questions under your belt in the process down the line as well. Look, BR SUCKS. I actually enjoy taking timed tests, trying to get a new personal best, etc. BR takes a while, and it's tedious, but as a former skeptic and lazy student, I can attest to the tremendous benefits in speed that BR has granted me.

Very fair, I think I got really discouraged the first few times I was doing BR because I either circled so many questions or just guessed a lot in a single section. For some reason my time allocation is actually getting worse with more practice, possibly because i'm trying very hard nowadays to get all questions right and giving ample time to understand the stem and question language. I know it's a hurdle I will probably just have to get over for now while I continue to learn. I'll definitely try BR-ing the last PT and see how that works out.

Super Saiyan

@ssmith9664 Hey, listen, take this from a multiple taker. BR SUCKS. And I think BR stings a little more once you have gotten to a level where you're testing in the mid 160s-170s, or if you have been testing your best for a streak. Then all of a sudden you get blindsided with a below average score for yourself, or you end up circling like 11 Qs on an LR section. I think as we move through the test and progress, that we kind of start to doubt ourselves and overanalyze our decision making. Like "oh that one felt too easy, I'm circling." "I know POE got me this choice, but Iiiiiii Dont know, I'm gonna circle." Doesn't matter if it seems daunting. You have to look at this as a step towards reinforcing certainty in yourself and your game time decisions. Best of luck! Paralysis by analysis can keep you away from work for days. Just dive back in and take it by the horns.

jmarmaduke96

I would agree with all of the above. It is most certainly worth it to BR the problems that you did not get a chance to do timed. If you aren't able to get to all the problems under timed conditions then your handle on the fundamentals likely still isn't as firm as it could be. The BR will just help to give you additional practice getting familiar with the test and the fundamentals, which in turn will translate to greater speed. I agree with @"Super Saiyan" that BR is tedious and frustrating. In my tests I generally am under-confident and circle many more questions that I end up missing, but because I was under-confident I spent too much time on those problems and not enough time on the problems that I actually did miss. So, even if a question seems easy or was just a reading error, if I wasn't 100% sure under timed conditions about my answer I will type out a full explanation and break down the stimulus just to try to immerse myself in the logic of the test as much as possible. Hope that helps!