General Strategy to score in the Mid 150s consitently?

shannon_beaman1

So I have been studying off and on for almost 3 years now, taking breaks during difficult personal situations and tough academic periods during undergrad. I feel "decent" at LR and LG with a little bit more of a strength in LG, but my RC is AWFUL. I find that I am just generally a slow reader, and can take anywhere from 10-12 minutes per passage and questions which is just super slow. My goal score is somewhere in the mid to high 150s, and I was wondering if any of you wonderful people on 7sage has any advice for me to start implementing during timed sections and PTs in preparation for the June or August LSAT if I am really just trying to score in that range consistently.

canihazJD

Re: RC

Practice active/critical/whatever you want to call it reading. Read, stop, paraphrase/explain inferences, repeat throughout the passage. Sum up every paragraph in high and low resolution, and again at the end for the whole passage. This helps your short term detail retention and translation skills. Translation meaning you are taking something they made purposely hard to read, and changing it into something that will help you answer questions. Your paragraph summaries should produce an LR stimulus-like summary that allows you to answer a method of argument question... for argument based passages anyway. Long form translation - where you type out a paraphrased version of the passage should produce a summary you can use to answer most if not all questions (and is good practice for case briefing).

The ideal end state is where you can read, and with minimal pauses, and paraphrase a passage as you go along... you see the words they used, but you hear in in your own words. Some say to have a conversation with yourself about the passage as you read, or to explain it to yourself. Another helpful mindset is to read each paragraph with the expectation that you have to teach it to someone as soon as you finish.

That said, don't neglect the other sections... a point is a point. Doesn't matter where it came from. If your goal is 155, you can literally get a 0 on an entire section if you kill it on the other two.