High Performers' Blind Review Performance

NorthSide60660

Question to those who are scoring in the mid-170s and up: Are you getting close to a -0 in blind review? Or are there always a small number of questions that evade you--even when you have unlimited opportunity to review questions? Thanks!

RaphaelP

I'll try to give the perspective here of myself (when I was a student scoring mid- to high-170s on PTs) and my high-scoring students.

LG: Yes, you should be -0 here, regardless of your score. Even a mid-150s scorer should be able to brute force every single game in BR; it just will take a long time.

LR: I would typically be -0 here in BR. However, this was not always the case. Often, if I missed a question timed, I'd miss it again untimed - as you get to be a higher and higher scorer, your timing improves a lot. I'd usually finish with at least 15 min left overall to pour into the harder questions, which meant I could spend 5+ min on the 1-2 absolute hardest, if necessary. So, I'd have had ample time on the "hard" questions timed already and missing it would often not even be due to time. If I missed it in the timed section, looking again in BR would not change my fate.

RC: Same as LR, except I'd usually end up -1 here in BR. Timing was quite a bit tighter for me on RC than LR (I'd rarely finish with more than 10 min left), so I'd usually be like -2 or -3 timed, with perhaps 1 of those being due to time pressure and 1-2 being actual substantive mistakes on a curvebreaker.

Overall, towards the end of my studies a "typical" test was probably a -0 LG, -0 or -1 LR, -2/-3 RC timed, maybe fixing 1-2 of those errors - so a 175-178 timed and 177-180 BR. I rarely had more than a 1-2 point gap between my timed and BR. I will also be honest and say that I didn't always spend as much time on BR as I should have (or as much as I encourage my students to do), even towards the end, so I may have different mileage had I been a bit less lazy.

My students who were in a similar score range were, mostly, the same, although I did have one student who would almost always BR a 180 - it was because their fundamentals were rock solid but they'd always miss 1-2 per section due to being rushed. They were diligent and would spend hours BRing, despite being so high level.

I hope this perspective helps! Happy to answer any follow-ups.

NorthSide60660

Great answer. Thanks very much. JW

Cant Get Right

I had two styles of BR depending on what I was focusing on. If I was focused on substance and fundamentals, I’d strictly adhere to the 7Sage method where you must be 100% confident in order to forego review. I was very strict and would BR anything below 100%. If I was 100% certain of my understanding of the stimulus, 100% certain of why my answer was right, 100% certain of why three of the wrong answers were wrong, and 99% certain of why the final answer was wrong, that question got marked for BR. What’s that missing 1%? In BR, I would find out. Using this method, I was always BR’ing at 180 by the end of my studies.

The other method focuses more on process. It really isn’t even BR, but I think it’s an important part of addressing your question. Under timed conditions, there’s no way I’d ever invest any more time on the hypothetical question above. 99% just has to be good enough under time. My second review method is more concerned with getting through the whole process for each question. The process doesn’t always terminate with the right answer. It terminates when you’ve done everything you could hope to do. So this method is more comfortable with wrong answers. A wrong answer isn’t necessarily an error depending on the circumstances. So instead of working the question to the right answer, I reviewed it until I’d been able to do everything I’d ideally want to do under timed conditions.

With this method, my review score fell from my 180, but it converged with my timed score as it helped me increase my timed score. By the end, my timed test average had gone up to a 176. My review score had gone down to a 176. And on test day, I scored a 176. I think this degree of consistency had a lot to do with the shift of focus from substance to process. Substance has to come first though. If you want to consistently score in the high 170’s, I think it’s important to be able to 180 a strict, disciplined, and determined BR. Any slip from a perfect BR at this level is fine, but it will warrant a very serious response. You’ve got to treat any substantive error like a complete catastrophe. So it’s just a matter of appropriate follow up. But the process becomes more and more vital as you work your way up. That is how you close the gap between your timed and untimed scores.