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New to LSAT: need serious help on RC

robin360robin360 Core Member

I took my first cold diagnostic yesterday and got 150 on LSAT 42. While I understand that the overall score is decent for a cold diagnostic, I have a major problem with RC. To break it down (13/23 on LG,18/26 & 18/26 LR, 9/26 on RC) I am not afraid of my LG score because everyone says it's learnable and that it's just a matter of time. Kinda the same deal for LR which I was ok at my score without practice. But for RC I was shocked at how bad my reading ability was. I almost could not understand any passage whatsoever.

This is my first post so to briefly introduce myself, I am a finance student in 3rd year from Vancouver. I originally wanted to be in investment banking but I didn't hustle hard enough at networking or perform at interviews to land relevant internships so that door is closing. My plan B was to be a corporate Lawyer. I hope to get into Columbia or NYU because I love NYC and know that those two give the best job prospects for Corporate Law. So given that, I am aiming up my score from 150 to 170+ to have a decent chance.

The problem here is that RC is the hardest to improve. I almost never read books, so I can see why I can't read for shit on RC. But I am willing to put in a lot (1.5+ years) of time in order to land 170+ (if that is realistic, lmk). I am wondering how I can improve at RC drastically. I guess I have to improve at reading - in general - but fear that goal is too broad and too unreasonable a task. To get this goal, should I do more than just LSAT RC, but also SAT & GRE RC as well? Or before that should I improve my reading in general by reading complex books? If so, what books or categories of books should I target? Or is reading in general a more innately defined ability that I would be wasting my time to try to improve in less than 20 months time?
If anyone has a strategy to drastically increase RC, please help.

Comments

  • melanie.stewart84melanie.stewart84 Yearly Member
    64 karma

    I'm not sure if this will help much but in terms of increasing your overall reading comprehension I would go for the readings often suggested to students taking the GRE. Publications like The Economist, New Scientist, Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker. There'll be many lists on this on GRE sites. The tips for this with the GRE is to help people not only build their vocabulary, but also just read quicker. It honestly sounds like you just psyched yourself out - you thought you couldn't do it, or you thought the first question went bad so you can't do any, or the first question of each passage, or whatever. And then the panic on top of that you can't increase your reading comprehension. You're setting yourself up to fail. The more you read, the more you'll learn to comprehend without staring at a passage overthinking it. I really feel the problem people have with RC is staring at it, reading each sentence slowly to try and get the exact understanding, or thinking they didn't understand that sentence so let's read it again really hard because it may sound different this time.

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