Tips on reaching a 180 BR

danielznelson

What are some of the strategies and techniques you all use to reach a perfect 180 on BR? What is a typical range for questions circled for further review? What do you do with questions you didn't circle but actually missed? What for questions you missed after a BR? What are some of the best ways to collect previous missed questions for future review?

Below are some of the strategies I've used. I haven't scored a perfect one 180 on BR, however, so others' tips would be much appreciated!

- Chronicling the reasons behind my wrong answer choices, tallying the number of times this happens, and recording the PT number on which a respective mistake was made.
- This may seem like an obvious one but wasn't a strategy I adopted until later - I examine my relative strength in each question type (especially for LR) for my five most recent PTs. From there, I review the core curriculum for the question type at issue, review previous missed questions of that type, and drill specifically on that question type.
- Coming into each PT with full awareness of what I am weak at and possibly reviewing these areas beforehand. This way, I am prepared to avoid the many past traps in which I have customarily fallen.

MrSamIam

Your tips are spot on. The way I see it, the best way to reach a near-perfect, if not perfect BR score is to learn from your mistakes. Coincidentally (not really) that's the whole point of BR.

1) Know why the wrong answer choices are wrong, and what makes the correct one correct. And by knowing why, I don't mean "Because LSAC said so." Be able to explain to someone who has no understanding of the LSAT why a correct AC is correct, and why an incorrect one is incorrect.

2) Don't fight with the LSAT writers. If they say it's a wrong AC, then it's a wrong AC. Focus your time on understanding the question, the answer choices, and what they mean. I've noticed that many people who argue that the test writers made an error more often than not misunderstood the AC or stimulus.

3) Know your weaknesses, and address them. I had trouble with this. I hated LG and RC...still do. So, I took the path of least resistance and studied LR. 3 months later, this bit me in the butt. We're not talking a little chihuahua-type bite...think: hungry pit bull.

4) Don't give up. BRing in the 160s doesn't mean that you'll never learn or master the LSAT. It just means that you haven't, YET.

allison.gill.sanford

In general, my best BR scores came later in my prep, and I would spend the major part of a day on my BR. I took a very conservative approach and circled for review every question I had any doubt about - often 3/4+ of the whole test. I hit 180 on BR four times, but in my analytics there is a clear trend toward the high 170s and the highest frequency of 180s at the end of my prep.
I think at a certain point in your prep, some questions will elude your understanding. Once you're above 20 PTs with quality BR, you should expect to push your BR scores higher (I think this amount of exposure to questions usually corresponds with greater understanding of the task at hand).

Cant Get Right

@danielznelson said:
Chronicling the reasons behind my wrong answer choices

This has been a major strategy for me. For every question I BR, I write out a full analysis. It’s important to write it too. A lot of times I think I’ve got something and then I try to write it out and I can’t really explain it. Major red flag that I would miss every time if I wasn’t forcing myself to do this. If I can’t put it into words, I simply don’t understand it well enough. So first I write down the question type, then I break down the stimulus. If there’s conditionals I diagram everything out. Then for each answer choice, I write out a detailed explanation of what the answer choice is saying and then the reasons why it’s either right or wrong. This is an agonizing and time consuming process, but the first time I plugged in my numbers and saw that 180 pop up on my screen, it was well worth it.

danielznelson

I'll have to start doing that, @"Cant Get Right". Did you write or type your explanations out? And @allison.gill.sanford I am WAY under-circling for review, which has led me to miss many questions not circled and to end up with a BR score only a few points higher than my timed score. In the past, I stupidly reviewed every single question regardless of whether I circled it for review, which has made spotting potential misses harder. Circled questions were generally for me questions I planned to go back to to double check; they weren't circled so much for the fact that I had erased the possibility of the other answer choices. I'm really only circling 15% of all questions, give or take, and I do this without having actually gone through and eliminating all other answer choices in many cases.

I also think my BR has suffered because of my unfamiliarity with the newest tests. Even PT 69, which many of us reviewed last night, had a few questions that I immediately recognized as questions incorporating new(ish) ideas. Regardless, I'm setting myself up to fail if I can't review the majority of the test due to not circling questions.

Cant Get Right

Remember back to the lesson on BRing and which questions to circle. To not circle a question, there is actually a really high bar you’ve got to clear: 100% certainty. So that means you have perfect clarity on the stimulus, you know why the right answer is right, and you know why each wrong answer is wrong. This last one gets me a lot. My process is often easily eliminating three answer choices and then choosing a winner between the two remaining contenders. I either see why one is correct, choose it and move on; or see why one is incorrect, eliminate it and move on. What this means is, I don’t arrive at 100% certainty on one of the two. So, if I recognize the correct answer, I’m really only eliminating the other because I know there can’t be two correct answers. Well, that’s not good enough. For the next curve breaker, I may not be able to identify the correct answer, so I sure as hell better be able to eliminate the incorrect one. And vice versa. I circle a LOT of questions because of this scenario, and for me anyway, these moments are really where a section is made or broken; so it is incredibly important to be well practiced there.

And I write out my explanations on paper. In pencil of course!

stepharizona

@danielznelson said:
Did you write or type your explanations out?

Write it all out, everything. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-learning-secret-don-t-take-notes-with-a-laptop/