Advice on BR score

kdeel296

Hey guys, so I am having trouble with logical reasoning. On every section at this point I get at least minus -10, more like 11 or 12. However when I BR I get them all correct, sometimes maybe 1 wrong. I'm just wondering what this means. It's very frustrating because when I BR I feel like I know the correct answer and don't understand why I didn't choose it the first time.. Does this mean it is more of a timing issue and I need to focus on recognizing correct answer choices more quickly? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

runiggyrun

-10 timed to -1/0 BR is certainly unusual. It's going to be difficult for any of us to diagnose what's going on, short of sitting down and watching you take a PT while you speak out every thought that goes through your mind, but we can certainly try to help you figure it out for yourself.
A couple of questions that would be useful to answer:
How is your pacing for LR during a timed test? ("Slow and accurate in the beginning, then run out of time at the end and have to wildly guess on the last 10" would be a different issue from "rush through everything but end up using all my saved minutes on a couple of time sinkers"). If you can't remember, recording yourself on video as you do a section would help.
How many PT's have you taken?
How do you feel when you're taking PT's? Panicky? Frozen? Calm and sure you're doing great only to get a disappointing score?
Is there any pattern at all to the questions you're missing - certain type(s) of question, certain kind(s) of trap you fall into repeatedly, misread the stimulus, forgot it was an "EXCEPT" question etc.
Don't despair. Your BR scores show you have a good understanding of the logic, and there's a high chance that whatever's going wrong during the timed test it's something you can improve on with conscious practice.
Good luck!

Cant Get Right

@runiggyrun basically covered it. Considering your BR score, it sounds like your fundamentals are strong. You need to look at it more holistically, because it seems like the questions themselves aren't necessarily the issue. Whether it's panic or time or whatever, do whatever it takes to figure this out though. While I'm sure this is discouraging, it's actually a great opportunity. Identifying and correcting this issue will earn you upwards of an additional 20 correct answers over the course of a test. That's a game changer. Good luck, and let us know what you figure out. It's easy to get too close to see what's going on, so some outside perspective can be really useful. Answering some of Iggy's questions will give the community here a better idea of what's happening.

kdeel296

Thanks guys, to answer Iggy's questions,

My timing seems OK. I normally finish within the time limit. I do sometimes feel rushed at the end. I have only taken about 5 PT's as I have just recently finished the curriculum and am moving into PT's. When I'm taking them I feel pretty calm, not really panicky at all. Sadly there is not a pattern to the type of questions except that the majority of them are 4 or 5 star. I think I tend to get tripped up on the more complex ideas (like scientific arguments) even though I know thats not what really matters.

I am wondering if I should do about 10 sections of LR untimed to develop a more solid foundation and then head in again to PT's? It is just frustrating because I know I have the skills to get the correct answers. Thanks for all of your input!

noobie1

I'm curious how you're doing your BRs? Do you grade before BR? Are you using clean sheets? Are you only redoing questions you've circled?

DumbHollywoodActor

Relatively speaking, 5 PTs is just a drop in the bucket. I have a few procedural questions. Are you circling questions and only BR-ing those questions or are you BR-ing EVERY question? In other words, is BR score skewed because there aren’t any confidence errors? Are you using POE on every question or are you coming up with a pre-phrase and hunting for a question?

@klyons29 said:
I am wondering if I should do about 10 sections of LR untimed to develop a more solid foundation and then head in again to PT's?

I would advise against this since that’s what BR is for. Some part of your process is insufficient for a timed test. You need to figure out what that is. Taking PTs without time won’t tell you the information that you need to know. Collect data. I’d advise recording your PTs, note the times, and start categorizing questions. I’d also watch Corey’s Timing webinar to learn more about categorization. To get a 170+ score, you need to be able to answer a handful of questions in 30-50 seconds, so that you’ll have extra time on those questions that take 2:00-3:00. To be able to do that, you need to see the cookie-cutterness of certain questions (i.e. correlation-causation, necessary-sufficeincy, valid arguments, etc...) immediately. Once you start collecting data, you’ll have a much better idea of what you need to work on.

Best of luck.

kdeel296

I go through the regular timed section after finishing and mark all the ones I've circled on the second set. Then I go through untimed and do them all. That is what I consider my BR...Is that correct?

I realize 5 PT's is really not a lot and am also wondering if it is something that will just work itself out over time as I progress and see what questions I am strongest/weakest in etc.

I am using POE on every question. Thanks for all of the help!

DumbHollywoodActor

No. You only BR the ones you circle. By not circling the question, you’re essentially saying you’re 90-100% certain that the answer for that question is correct. In doing so, you’re training your confidence in your test performance. Confidence correlates pretty highly with effectiveness in timing. In the end, you want to get so good at this that the only ones you circle end up being the ones you inevitably get wrong. (I wouldn’t worry about that for now.)

And actually, I think it’s ok that you didn’t do this for your first 5 PTs. You now know that you have a very good understanding of the content of the LSAT. Now, you have to get good at performing it. To analogize, you now know all of the notes of Bach’s Cello Suite no. 1, but you’ve still got a lot of work to do before Yo Yo Ma starts sweating.

runiggyrun

If you're doing BR properly (as @noobie1 pointed out), then I don't see a lot of benefit doing sections untimed, because you don't have a problem doing them untimed. You have a problem doing them timed. So can try and drill several old (1-38) LR sections with a stopwatch instead of a timer and see how long it takes you to comfortably finish (don't take as much time as you would for BR, try and move at a brisk pace but without worrying about finishing in precisely 35 minutes. See how long that takes, and whether your score is closer to your BR or closer to the timed score. If it's close to the BR score and it takes you 35-38 min, then you most likely have an issue with performing under pressure, and more practice can help with that. If it takes you longer than 40 min to get a score closer to your BR, then you need to work on timing. Drill some more extra (old) sections, starting with the time limit that takes you close to BR score, and then try to shave off a minute or so for each subsequent section until you get down to 35 min, without sacrificing too much accuracy (3-4 wrong would be OK for this stage).
You haven't taken a lot of PT's, so I suspect you're suffering from a combination of lack of confidence (which might waste you some time on easy questions where you should just know you're right and move on) and falling into attractive traps (the more difficult questions have the sexier traps, so that would be consistent with your pattern).
Pay extra attention to what makes your original answer wrong when you BR - there are a few tricks that the LSAT writers use over and over, like making a comparison when the stimulus didn't have one, talking about "all" when the stimulus says "some", "always" instead of "usually", "must" instead of "likely will", "cars" instead of "vehicles" and other such subtle but reliable indicators that an answer is wrong. Also make sure you pay attention to what the question is asking - if it's asking for a Necessary Assumption, one of the wrong answers might be a Sufficient (but not necessary) assumption.
Drilling some of the old sections should help you get some more practice with the LSAT trickery without eating into precious new material - whatever you do, don't use new PT's for drilling (PT39-77).
Keep us posted, I'm looking forward to seeing you progress past this obstacle. Like @"Can’t Get Right" said, an extra 15-20 correct answers would be huge!

kdeel296

sorry I didn't word it correctly, when I said I do them all I meant all the ones I have copied down to the clean sheet that are circled, not all of the questions. Thanks!

noobie1

From what I gather, you are circling all the question you are getting wrong (at least 11-12 circles per section). The fact you are circling so many questions suggests a speed issue. Especially since you can answer those very same questions confidently when untimed. A good way to improve speed is increasing familiarity with all the different question stems. If you're not already doing this, I also suggest not bothering to read all the answer choices for questions (after identifying the correct answer) that are obviously 1 or 2 difficult level.

twssmith

On average how many questions are you circling during each section -
edited to add - where are you on RC?