Question for the Sages/170+

The Great White Shark

I am curious to know if your BR process for any of the sections evolved at all once you started scoring in the 170s or once you were consistently hitting your target score. Did you still spend as much time on the "easier" questions during BR?

Thanks!

Cant Get Right

I sometimes struggle with 3-star questions and often breeze through 5-star curve breakers. For the purposes of BR, “easy” is definitely a subjective standard, and I should BR the subjectively difficult 3-star and exclude the easy 5-star. Subjectively easy questions shouldn’t be a part of the BR at all. You only BR the ones you’re not confident about. If it was subjectively easy, you should be confident and forego that question in BR entirely.

Of course, if you end up missing it, then you’ve got some post-BR work to do!

As far as the questions that are a part of your BR, there will be a spectrum of difficulty. Generally speaking, I would expect the greater the difficulty the more time it will take, but I’m not sure how useful that is. I think the time it takes to figure out is the determiner of the level of difficulty. You can’t decide how much time it should take based on how difficult you determine the question is. Because how are you even determining the difficulty level? I’d say the right amount of time is the amount of time it takes to figure out the question. If that’s a lot of time, sounds like a hard question to me. If not, maybe an easier one. What matters is you learn your lesson and don’t make the same mistake again next time. As long as you do that, difficulty is mostly irrelevant to the assessment.

The Great White Shark

@"Cant Get Right" said:
I sometimes struggle with 3-star questions and often breeze through 5-star curve breakers. For the purposes of BR, “easy” is definitely a subjective standard, and I should BR the subjectively difficult 3-star and exclude the easy 5-star. Subjectively easy questions shouldn’t be a part of the BR at all. You only BR the ones you’re not confident about. If it was subjectively easy, you should be confident and forego that question in BR entirely.

Of course, if you end up missing it, then you’ve got some post-BR work to do!

As far as the questions that are a part of your BR, there will be a spectrum of difficulty. Generally speaking, I would expect the greater the difficulty the more time it will take, but I’m not sure how useful that is. I think the time it takes to figure out is the determiner of the level of difficulty. You can’t decide how much time it should take based on how difficult you determine the question is. Because how are you even determining the difficulty level? I’d say the right amount of time is the amount of time it takes to figure out the question. If that’s a lot of time, sounds like a hard question to me. If not, maybe an easier one. What matters is you learn your lesson and don’t make the same mistake again next time. As long as you do that, difficulty is mostly irrelevant to the assessment.

Thanks Josh! This makes sense!

taschasp

This thread from a couple months ago was also on the same question of the effectiveness of BR for 170+, and whether you should change your approach. Take a look and I hope it's helpful!

https://7sage.com/discussion/#/discussion/22379/blind-review-at-170

FindingSage

I am averaging 170 right now. Even at that average my BR is much higher. The difference between my review process now is I am reviewing every question, because I am not just looking at why something is the right answer or the wrong answer but my process, my understanding and execution. For example, if I get question #4 right in 1:20 this isn't a bad time, but what if by reviewing that question the next time I see a question like it I am instead getting that next question confidently in 40 seconds? Look at all the time I have saved to use on a harder question. And while the subject matter may change, we really do see the same flaws and the same bad arguments on each test. By really focusing this way I am focusing on strengthening my pre phrases, honing in on the flaw of the argument ( because lets face it the majority of the test is flawed arguments) faster and more confidently. During BR sometimes I will map out the logic of a must be true question as well,my goal is to rely on POE as little as possible because debating between an answer choice or two tends to be where my time goes.

For LG, I re do the games, often looking for smarter ways like splitting when maybe I didn't in the first place or really trying to make more infernces up front.

Reading comp remains my weakest section, but my BR score has risen recently in that section so perhaps the timed portion will follow soon. During BR I re read the passages, and try to critically evaluate the answer choices. I am working on trying to develop more of a pre phrase for that section like LR so in BR that is something I really try to focus on.

The Great White Shark

@FindingSage Thank you for your response!

After I review an LR problem that took up too much time, I struggle a bit with being able to put into words the takeaway I have learned. It just doesn't seem so clear to me that I can say "Next time I will do _____ so that I will get to the right answer quicker". Are there certain kinds of questions you ask yourself to help you pin point what you need to do differently to get the right answer quicker?

The Great White Shark

@taschasp said:
This thread from a couple months ago was also on the same question of the effectiveness of BR for 170+, and whether you should change your approach. Take a look and I hope it's helpful!

https://7sage.com/discussion/#/discussion/22379/blind-review-at-170

Thanks for your response! Your comment in the other thread sounds like you mark which problems you got wrong before you start to review. Is that correct? Did you start out BRing that way or did you start doing that later on when your score was better?

danielbrowning208

My perspective may not be the most common in this community, but I stopped BRing altogether after I started averaging above 170 consistently. Why? I don't count not knowing the answer to a question on a PT as a "mistake". No matter how much I study, there's always a chance the test writers throw something in the test that I won't be able to figure out completely in an acceptable amount of time.

For me, a mistake is not skipping a tough question appropriately or not being optimally efficient in my approach. For this reason, I would rather spend my time reviewing my approach and strategy on a given test than spending an immense amount of time on a bunch of individual questions in BR. I still spend a significant amount of time reviewing PTs, but I review after I have seen my timing breakdown and missed questions. That way I can be efficient in the way I attack my review for a given PT, especially since I review a day or two after taking the test and what I struggled on might not be at the forefront of my mind.

I am also confident that, given enough time, I can figure out almost any question on this test. This confidence in content understanding allows me to focus on the application of this understanding during test conditions. Under test conditions, there are many cases where I won't have adequate time to truly understand and dissect a super curve breaker question.

If you are not extremely confident in your understanding, you still want to BR in the manner @"Cant Get Right" mentioned above.

I hope this offers a different perspective on BR!

taschasp

@Stellaluna said:

@taschasp said:
This thread from a couple months ago was also on the same question of the effectiveness of BR for 170+, and whether you should change your approach. Take a look and I hope it's helpful!

https://7sage.com/discussion/#/discussion/22379/blind-review-at-170

Thanks for your response! Your comment in the other thread sounds like you mark which problems you got wrong before you start to review. Is that correct? Did you start out BRing that way or did you start doing that later on when your score was better?

I would actually still BR! I would just do what I wrote there after doing a traditional BR.

When I first started studying I did normal BR only. Later on in my progress, I would still do BR but follow it up with this "semi-blind review" of questions I got wrong without looking up the answers.

Cheers

FindingSage

@Stellaluna said:
@FindingSage Thank you for your response!

After I review an LR problem that took up too much time, I struggle a bit with being able to put into words the takeaway I have learned. It just doesn't seem so clear to me that I can say "Next time I will do _____ so that I will get to the right answer quicker". Are there certain kinds of questions you ask yourself to help you pin point what you need to do differently to get the right answer quicker?

I had a a hard time with this initially but found my issue is typically caused one of a few issues:

• Not having a strong enough/ clear enough pre phrase

• Jumping into the answer choice with having little or no pre phrase ( test anxiety and feeling like I am running out of time has been an issue for me)

• Finally the last one is under confidence/ not being aggressive enough.

During my BR I try to identify if any of these impacted my answer or the time it took me to get to the answer choice.

• If I didn’t have strong/ clear enough prephrase I take the original question and break it down. I don’t look at the answer choices and really focus on the gap in the reasoning. Depending on the question I might then try to find questions like it and drill those. So if it is a flaw question I might still some flaw questions or I might even google the specific flaw and find questions with the same kind of flaw and review them.

• If I didn’t pre phrase at all because I am falling into old habits of jumping into answer choices I again break down the argument but after that I might work on some untimed work and then move back to take some practice sets where I am working on some easier questions ( like 1-10 or 1-12) and then covering the answer choices and pushing myself to work on developing my pre phrase.

And for the third one, I really wouldn’t implementing this strategy until you are really solid but for me to move from the 160’s to 170’s I had to get more aggressive. This is something I have to be thinking about still at this point. If I read the stimulus and had a solid pre phrase and read answer choice A and it matches I am not going to read the other answer choices- at least on round one. I am working on flagging those questions and moving on. During blind review if I never got back under timed conditions I might read the other answer choices but if I read answer choice A, was confident in my answer choice and then took the time to carefully read and maybe even debate the other answer choices that may indicate a conceptual gap so I try to review these closely.

Now I am able to look at the majority of questions and review this way but there are some where I just didn’t understand the question or answer choices and that also leads to more review.

Perhaps some of this seems like overkill but test anxiety and confidence has been a big issue for me so taking a lot of time to Br this easy helps me. Sometimes I do mix it up and do Camo review or vary my method.

The Great White Shark

@FindingSage @taschasp @danielbrowning208 Thank you all for taking the time to share your thoughts and processes! I greatly appreciate how helpful the sages and everyone here on 7Sage is! Truly a unique community.

Mike_Ross

Just to add to other comments here:

1) In the beginning I would always BR ANY question I felt iffy on or even if I just wanted to resolidify/test my reasoning. There is always something to be gained by running through questions and critically evaluating them (this is wrong because ... why would we need ... it is irrelevant because...rather what I need is___)

I would type out everything according to this standard, for EVERY question I flagged

2) nonetheless I still found my improvements slow UNTIL I became more deliberate. Let me explain:

Every time I made an error, I would spend a lot of time self-diagnosing and realized that “oh I see. I feel for C because I did ___. Next time every time I see X I will do Y”

In other words, identifying weaknesses and crafting strategies that I would employ next time so that I would avoid the same errors.

Then I’d Add this to my flashcards for daily review. Eventually, I’d be able to quickly ID the same types of issues and quickly move through them. What would’ve taken 2 mins before eventually took only 30-40 secs.

So curve breakers may not have become easier, but easier questions did in fact become easier so that I could spend more time to get the hard ones

3) I never gave up on a question. Even I didn’t understand it in BR, or say If I got it wrong in BR, I’d spend all the time I needed to review and understand where I went wrong. Eventually, I would see it and I’d add that to my flashcards for review and avoided the same types of errors

I would say that all this helped me meticulously improve

Best of luck!

The Great White Shark

@Mike_Ross Thanks for your input!