Closing the BR Gap

JustDoIt

I know I am not the only one who is having this problem, but it's kind of bugging me given its persistence. So there is roughly a 10-15 point gap between my actual test score and my BR score. I was just wondering what some of you have done in order to try and close the gap as much as possible because...this kind of sucks. Thanks!

emli1000

Drill, Drill and Drill oh. and BR BR BR lol I'm also seeing this on my end so I know the feeling.

JustDoIt

That's what I'm doing! I just have a few questions. When drilling do you do whole sections from past tests then BR or do you do question types from Cambridge? And are drills supposed to be timed or do untimed (which seems to be my issue)?

mpits001

Does anyone else BR the whole test besides me? Yeah I circle the one's I'm not sure about, and I give those extra time, but I also check all the other questions. Doing so allows me to reinforce the right/wrong answers.

nicole.hopkins

@mpits001 I think what you describe is the ideal. BR'ing circled answers is sort of a bare minimum—but with that said, everyone's time is limited. Ideal situation is keep on track with one's learning/drilling schedule and BR tests and drills as you've said; great-not-sacrificed-to-perfect situation is keeping on track with said schedule and BR'ing circled answers in drills and PT's.

In the absence of BR'ing (And I've experienced this first hand) ... astonishingly little learning actually takes place, at least when compared to the potential for learning (almost a guarantee from diligent BR).

blah170blah

@mpits001 I do something in between hahaha. I BR the questions I miss but also make sure to review the logic behind every single question I got right as well.

@JustDoIt Just keep reviewing! Review is the key to seeing the source creating the gap between your BR score and your performance score.

Jengibre

I definitely feel there was a moment for me when something "clicked" with logic games, because of review. I used to only be able to complete 3 games on time, but now, after taking a PT and watching the videos of the all the games, I do the full section again, timed, twice. By the third go, I can do the easy games around 3-4 minutes and the harder ones usually 7-8. I space this process out over a couple of days, so I'll redo the section the day after the PT and again 2 days later. Now I can usually finish a new LG section with about 5 minutes to spare.

I am still waiting for the "click" with RC, which, although I have improved a lot, still gives me the most trouble time wise. My strategy is review, review, review. Reread passages, watch the video explanations, thoroughly understand all answer choices and why they are correct or incorrect. Pay careful attention to structure as you read and constantly ask yourself, "why is the author writing this?" "how does this sentence/paragraph/quote fit with the rest of the passage?" "whose opinion is this and does the author agree?"

LR has consistently been my best section, but I still sometimes miss those "curve-breaker" questions. I think the key is to understand the logic so well that you can consistently and immediately anticipate possible correct answers (in many cases it helps to quickly think of more than one, for instance, in the case of a weakening question). Also being able to confidently and quickly eliminate wrong answers is essential. The more questions we do, the more patterns become apparent. The subject matter changes (and repeats a lot!) but the underlying logic is always there. No magic bullet exists, but it definitely sounds like you are on the right track, @JustDoIt!

alexroark5

@justdoit obviously the reason for the 10-15 point gap is the time constraint. Don't feel bad, the LSAT time constraint is formidable even for elite test takers. The challenge is to get faster while minimizing a decrease in accuracy. Here are some ways you can do that in regards to LR (50 percent of the exam):

1. Get fluent with conditional and formal logic. If you have put in the work, questions that demand diagraming CL/FL should be cookie-cutter gimmes that you can dismiss with quickly. Yes, some of the more challenging questions are difficult precisely because they are designed to suck up time. Still, if you put in the work, you will finish these questions faster relative to most other test takers and earn yourself valuable time in the bank.

2. Pattern recognition, just like chess players. The LSAT LR has A LOT OF PATTERNS. Once you get through about 10-15 PTs you have already seen 99% of what the LSAT will throw at you. Some examples include: Necessary/Sufficiency confusion, ad hominid flaws, causal flaws, term shifts, refuting an argument on the grounds that an insufficient argument has been offered, all of the common valid argument forms, all of the common invalid argument forms, and there are many many many more. When you come across a familiar pattern, it is just time in the bank because you immediately know what you are looking for. The more studying you do, the more you will recognize some of the LSAT patterns that are a bit more rare/subtle. One example would be in principle questions/SA assumption questions where the answer choice represents a smaller subset that belongs to that of a larger set in the stimulus.

One exercise I found worthwhile was going through PTs 40-50 (i had already taken them) and went through every single LR question untimed. I catergorized as many of them as I could into certain categories of patterns that I had recognized in the past and organized them in a big binder with tabs indicating which pattern they belonged to. Some questions have more than one pattern in them and therefore went into more than one place in my binder. It's just so I can see "oh ok, this is what this pattern looks like, I'll recognize this next time I see it even though the topic and the words will be entirely different). You'd be surprised how some of the lengthiest stimuli boil down to the simplest patterns!

3. Learn to recognize difficult questions and skip them without hesitation only to return to them if given time.

Numbers 1 and 2 are critical the better you get at them the less you will have to employ number 3.

good luck!

JustDoIt

@mpits001 @nicole.hopkins I BR the whole test also. I find that while doing so there may be some questions that I thought I knew but I actually didn't so I usually print out two tests and do one timed and the other BR as methodically as possible. I just started writing out why the right answer is right and why the wrong answers are wrong with questions I get incorrect after BR and it significantly helps with improving understanding.

@blah170blah will do! Thank you!

@Jengibre That RC advice sounds like it's right out of the trainer! I am still waiting on that click too but I feel like it is so so close given my high BR scores. Also, I totally agree that the more questions you do the better your pattern recognition gets, both with LG and LR. Thanks for the encouragement!

@alexroark5 I totally agree that it is the time constraint. I do have a few questions with point #2. You mentioned that you would group similar questions together in a binder. How did you isolate each given question in order to characterize it? Do you write them by hand, type them, or just leave them as they are formatted in the PT? I find that I can recognize the patterns during BR, but I think it would help a lot if I could characterize them in the way that you mentioned in order to increase speed and accuracy. Thanks!

emli1000

@mpits001 i BR the entire PT

alexroark5

@justdoit
I print out the page that the question is on, cut it out and glue it to a blank computer page ( i fit about 4 questions per page)

for example, look at the following questions:
30.2.20 (must be true question)
31.3.22 (most strongly supported question)
33.3.22 (parallel reasoning question)
36.3.25 (flaw question)

notice how all the "questions types" are different. If you were drilling based on question type, you might overlook a very common pattern between all of these question types. I've grouped these under what i've just sort of arbitrarily called "expected state of affairs"

each stimulus basically says "if this expected state of affairs, we would expect to observe so and so phenomenon" if the critics werer right about this, then there would not be...or one would expect to find only a single version of this gene if....if relativity theory is correct no object could travel at the speed of light....if popularity of music scales were socially constructed, we would expect diversity...

but then in all of these questions they go on to offer evidence that runs counter to what we would expect to observe based on the assumed state of affairs. Basically they all boil down to if A then B but then they offer evidence to show not B so you have make the deduction not A. Even in the somewhat challenging 31.3.22 question, it just boils down to this very simple form of the contrapositive of IF A then B. And all these questions are presented in a way where they present a state of affairs "X" and then say based on that we would expect to observe phenomenon "Y" but then offer evidence for "not Y" and then its just "not X".

Question 36.3.25 is also a great example of a question that fits in more than one category. I also have it in a section of my binder called "the false choice flaw" where the stimulus assumes only two possible choices to the exclusion of other possibilities.

Take away lesson, these are all different "question types" but they all have similar patterns. You will find these patterns EVERYWHERE not just in the stimuli either, you will find them in the right answer choices, in the attractive wrong answer choices, etc. Look for the patterns, connect the dots, and you'll start to crack this beast.

GSU Hopeful

@JustDoIt I know the feeling. I'm battling the same thing. When I blind review, I take the test over again in its entirety. I spend more time on the questions that I originally circled, but taking the entire thing over again helps me reenforce the reasoning and helps me to pick up on the patterns. I've taken three PT so far (June 07, #36, #37) and BRing this way has helped a lot. Diagnostic timed was a 146 and BR of 155. The latest was a 150 and 165 BR. It takes a ton more time, but I feel as though it is helping. Good luck!!

nicole.hopkins

Another option—screenshot the question (Windows users, http://getgreenshot.org/ ; Mac, Command-Shift-4 and click/drag around what you want to capture), copy/paste the image into a Word doc. Or take a picture of it with your phone and make an album called "LR Misses" or something like that.

GSU Hopeful

@nicole.hopkins This was a wondeful idea, but I have a question regarding exactly which questions to include. I'll take a timed test, print the exact test out, and take it again but untimed. Usually, a great deal of my mistakes on the timed version are taken care of and correct after BR. However, there are some that I miss both times. I know these are the type of misses to include in the ideas above, but should I include my original misses that were corrected after BR too?

nicole.hopkins

@"GSU Hopeful" That's up to you. I'd say if you're not feeling 100% confident ... Revisit at a later date.

emli1000

@nicole.hopkins screenshots work. I've been actually typing out the questions i've missed! Oh man! I feel like it helps me type out the answer so I can catch the mistake. It's time consuming but I've noticed that it works. I think I'm going to go back to screenshots soon

alexroark5

@emli1000 I used to do that too, and yes it is very time consuming. I found some template someone had created on TLS and used that. I think it is definitely worthwhile to do in the beginning bc it really forced me to dig deeper into my analysis of the questions. After a while I felt like it wasn't as necessary because I understood how I needed to think moving forward.

Nilesh S

If that isn't time consuming enough... I used to BR and then had a note book in which I posted cut out copies of all the questions that I got wrong from extra copies sets... this was a huge waste of paper... (well I used to recycle the scraps) any I used to WRITE out which answer choice was right and for what reason it was right and why each wrong answer choice was wrong... I also used to maintain an excel sheet for all the questions I used to get wrong... with questions number PT/ Set - type of question and often my problem with it. These tools turned out to be incredibly helpful later on in getting my testing total closer to my BR score.

alexroark5

@"Nilesh S" haha I used to do the same thing (writing out why the answers werer right vs wrong!) I went through this entire how to score a 160+ thread on TLS and several people had suggested doing that. I used to actually write out in the margins next to the cut out question my stream of consciousness like I was talking to myself "alex, this is what you were thinking, this phrase set you on the wrong train of thought, you didn't realize this part of the stim was irrelevant, etc etc."I have gotten away from being that thorough, but perhaps I shouldn't have...

Nilesh S

@alexroark5 I also cut it down later on... but that was way into my prep...

emli1000

@alexroark5 mind sharing that template?

alexroark5

@emli1000 Sure! It was over a year ago so I'll look and see if I can find it!

alexroark5

@emli1000 found it, what's your email?

alexroark5

@"GSU Hopeful" the key is to recognize patterns in your mistakes. Take note of the types of questions you are missing and collect them, review them, learn to recognize them in the future.

emli1000

@alexroark5 Thanks!