Retaking an old PT (a good idea?)

CJ Shin

Hey guys, I have heard from a friend that retaking an old PT (that you have done in the past) under timed condition is a good idea because after all, PTs are scarce and by repeating an old PT, you get to re-engage and consolidate the thinking process.

Good or a waste of time?
Thoughts?

Quinn Nguyen

Hi Chang, I did this and it was useful for a couple of reasons. When I first studied I wasn't reviewing properly and, thinking about it now, that was such a waste of LR questions/opportunities to analyze different arguments.

Retaking was a huge confident boost ("Whoa, cool. I understand why this is wrong versus me randomly circling the first time"). I wouldn't include this in my PT log (exposure to questions inflates your score) but retaking PTs allowed me to see the progress in my thinking.

So I guess it depends on your purpose: do you want to practice or do you want to gauge your score?

CJ Shin

That is a very good point: practicing vs. gauging.
I noticed that after reaching a certain level, I hit a wall and my score is not improving.
So I guess there is no point in wasting more pts before I figure out what is going on.

Justin Giles

What Quinn said sums it up. There's definitely merit to retaking an old test: it lets you reassess your knowledge and attack questions in a different way. Helps with confidence too. The only thing you need to be cautious of is taking the score on it's face value. It's not going to be too far off your actual potential, but it's hard to gauge what an "fresh" test would have given you.

Mark Robin

I would argue retaking is extremely valuable. First, from other forums, it is my understanding many students "burn through" all the PT's too quickly; they just go from one to the next but do not really understand why they missed questions so they do not really improve. Second, consider the strategy discussed in the games section (of redoing a game 10X till you "own it"...the same could be said of a PT.

The trick (I think) is not just going back and getting the right choice - its really grasping why the logic failed the first time or to get that kind of question right within the amount of time. If it is still taking 8 mins to answer a PSA than perhaps something isn't clicking etc.