A good way to review wrong questions post-practice exam + blind review + fool proof + memory method

Forever Addicted to Coffee

Hi guys,

For those of you with 170+, I wanted to ask a question based on strategy.

Let's say that I take PT70 under fully timed conditions, with an experimental section pulled from an old exam. I blind review (BR) the LR section. I fool proof (FP) the LG section. I do the memory method (MM) for the RC section. This happens immediately after taking the exam timed.

According to some of the webinars that I watched, high LSAT scorers have a tendency to redo the questions they got wrong, well after their initial review (BR, FP, and MM) process. Some look at them after a week. For some, a month. Etc...

Question 1: How frequently do you do this? Why?

Question 2: After the initial review, after some time has passed, do you redo all of the questions that you got wrong in LR, LG, and RC sections? Or do you focus solely on LR sections? Why?

Question 3: If you do look at LR section only, which questions that you got wrong, do you redo? Do you redo the questions that you did not circle to be BRed and got wrong? Do you redo the questions that you circled and BRed correctly? Do you redo the questions that you circled and BRed incorrectly? Why?

For contextual purposes, I would say that LG is my strongest section, followed by the LR, and then the RC being the worst section.

Thank you!

Jonathan Wang

The primary reason is to foster retention. Returning to something after a while forces you to 'fetch' the ideas again, which deepens understanding of the material in question. This phenomenon is well established in education literature.

1. You should do this all the time, modulating based on the difficulty of the question - the more problematic the question, the more often you should return to it. What good is reviewing a question if you don't remember the takeaway/can't replicate the process 7 days later? You have to use your judgment on this, as with all things review-related.

2. You should theoretically do this across all sections, but I suspect that the majority of this work happens in LR largely because it is more easily divisible. In RC and LG you basically have to do full games or full passages because of the structure of the section, meaning that the ones you mark as candidates to return to are very likely the ones where you had structural/big picture problems up front and therefore missed a bunch of questions, rather than making single one-of mistakes. This jives with the more 'big picture' kind of work in those sections anyway. By the time one-of misses become the focus, your score is probably high enough that your entire study process is shifting toward working in the margins more anyway.

3. I would not think of it in terms of whether you got the question right or not and when; I'd think of it in terms of "questions where I didn't fully grasp the reasoning". This starts with every question that you got wrong on BR, of course, but is not limited to that. Questions where you made a choice for fuzzy reasons, or questions that you got right on BR but still aren't 100% sure what makes the wrong answer wrong, for instance, ought to end up getting looked at again as well. The result of the question in terms of right/wrong is only a proxy for understanding at best - as above in #1, you have to use your own judgment to fill in the rest.

Cant Get Right

Yeah, I agree with everything Jonathan said and want to particularly reinforce number three. Top scorers tend to be much less concerned with right/wrong than are students still working their way up. It’s not that right/wrong doesn’t matter—in the end it’s really all that matters—but it isn’t the goal. The goal in studying is understanding. A wrong answer is sufficient to show some degree of misunderstanding, but a right answer doesn’t necessarily count for much as far as your studies go. It’s easy to relax around right answers which is why the Blind in Blind Review is so important. Marking questions for later review should also be done blind. After you grade, add anything you unexpectedly missed, but do not subtract anything just because you happened to get the right answer. Especially as you improve, you should get better and better at picking the right answer with partial or hazy understanding. That doesn’t let you off the hook though, and you’ll plateau if you let these fly.