Higher Blind Review than normal PT round - How to get faster and overcome time anxiety?

trinnnnn

Hi everyone! I recently did another PT & BR. I'm discouraged because my BR is 11 points higher than my PT score (think from 145PT to 156BR range). Obviously I want to get to a true score of 156+, and the BR did show me that I have the potential to score well and continue to grow to the score I want (165)....But HOW do I do this?

What are your suggestions to overcome time anxiety? I want to be more precise with my answers, but with the knowledge that the time is running, I make dumb mistakes and miss rules. Also, how did you guys just overall get faster? I keep drilling things but have not hit the speed I need/want. Should I just keep doing drills? More PTs? Any help is appreciated.

GodsPlan

Overcoming time anxiety is usually a product of being familiar to taking PT's. The main idea is that when you see the question stem, you know what to do and how to identify correct answer choices / incorrect answer choices. This process eventually building up to it becoming natural for you to do things like identifying conclusion, sub-conclusions, and premises, followed by a scan of answer choices while POE-ing. On the chance you can't figure it out right away, you also need to train yourself to skip questions and return to them once you've answered the ones you're actually good at (because questions are weighed equally you would want to get the lowest hanging fruit first, then come back to those that are higher up).

The questions you miss should dictate what the next move is. For example, I usually only miss one "level 3" question, and alot of 4's and 5's. So at this point in studying I'm more or less drilling harder questions with the odd level 3's to prep myself for when those slightly more demanding questions are encountered during my pt'ing.

It's different for everyone, the approach I've taken is starting with 55min PT's, and decreasing by 10 mins when I can score under -8 within the timeframe (my personal goal score is 160 so there's alot more room for error compared to someone who would want to score higher).

But ya, it's all about being really familiar with the test. I've been studying and working for 2 years, I thought I was "good" at the stuff but had bad luck for the longest time and while it can be true that some PT's are harder, you are scaled with people who write the same day as you, so push yourself to do the best you can / push yourself to being one of those 165 people.

Goodluck!

trinnnnn

@GodsPlan said:
On the chance you can't figure it out right away, you also need to train yourself to skip questions and return to them once you've answered the ones you're actually good at (because questions are weighed equally you would want to get the lowest hanging fruit first, then come back to those that are higher up).

This is the part I have trouble with!! I feel so bad skipping questions sometimes