Frustrated with Speed!

dyacoubi

Hi everyone,

The whole time I’ve been studying for the LSAT, I was under the impression that once my accuracy was good, my speed in answering questions would just fall into place. My blind reviews and untimed practice tests have increased to the 174-177 range, but my practice test scores are stuck in the 164-169 range! I feel like I understand the material decently now, but that I’m stagnant in my actual test performance.

I’m super frustrated and I’m wondering if maybe I’m just too inherently slow, which is super demoralizing. Has anyone else faced this issue?

cdot9000

once you get good enough at diagramming - practice not having to physically write it down during a timed test

if you see an answer you like - pick it and move

TheStoicLSATer

I'm facing this same issue and am averaging around -0/1/2 on untimed LR vs 2/3/4 on timed LR. As for RC, I recommend just timing it in general -- but you can split it up timing and breaking for each specific passage vs drilling the complete RC section timed.

For me, my issues are simply a matter of reading too quickly or failing to process the information worrying in the back of my mind that if I should continue thinking or skip ahead to the next question (because of possible lack of time).

As the aforementioned poster said, learning when to diagram and when you can make a specific inference/choice in your head is a big time saver. Additionally, it helped me to set a timer on my "untimed practice test" and just do them with the implicit knowledge that I shouldn't spend too long (3-5mins) per question and treat it like a quasi-timed drill helped my speed.

The fact that you are BR-ing in the mid-high 170s but practice testing in your range isn't a consequence of a fundamental lack of understanding of the material -- it's more of the way of how you mentally process solving each problem within the time constraints of a test vs without the constraints. I think training your mind to remove the distinction of timed vs untimed problem solving-- primarily through quasi-timing would help in some sense.