Am I Wasting PTs?

Louis

The past couple weeks I've been transitioning from the curriculum to the practice tests, and I've found that the only thing that is really changing from PT to PT (5 total) is my BR score (trending upwards). Should I keep powering through the PT's and expect something to eventually click, or is there something else I should be doing?

runiggyrun

It's not a lot of information to go on, but I'd say that if the BR scores are improving, you are doing something right. Other things you could do to give yourself the best chance at improving (you might already be doing some or all of them):
- always BR properly (preferably blank copy, not looking at the correct answers beforehand, really engage the questions and answers until you are sure what's correct and what's wrong rather than going "yeah, yeah, this is right let's move on, I want to see my score already")
- use the analytics to figure out what your weak points are and maybe revisit the curriculum/drill those (especially useful for LR)
- if you're not perfect on games, use the foolproof method liberally. I found that daily drilling a couple of sections helped keep my skills sharp.
- develop a skipping strategy - it's possible that your timed scores lag your BR ones because you get bogged down on time sinkers and not have time to pick up all the easy points. There's an excellent webinar on skipping in the webinars section.

I'm sure there will be other helpful advice coming soon from other folks, but I'd say you're on the right path - it's only been 5 PT's, and your BR's are going up - that's definitely progress.

Louis

@runiggyrun Thanks for the advise, I'll be sure to check out the LR analysis data to plan my non-PT studying for the week, and I'll also give the blank copy BR a shot next PT.

As far as more information goes, My cold diagnostic was a 162, and that's still where my PT average is at. I've been able to get my LG up from -9 to -2 or -3, but I've been unable to recreate the magical -1/-5 LR I had for my cold diagnostic. The BR for my last two tests has been 171 and 173 respectively.

I understand that gap isn't going to be closed overnight, and it certainly is going to take more than 5 PTs, but I just want to make sure my approach isn't squandering the finite number of PTs out there.

Zachary Carpenter

@Louis said:
My cold diagnostic was a 162, and that's still where my PT average is at. I've been able to get my LG up from -9 to -2 or -3, but I've been unable to recreate the magical -1/-5 LR I had for my cold diagnostic.

If this is the case, it sounds like you are improving. Perhaps you just got a bit lucky or had good intuition on the diagnostic in LR, and you're simply catching up to that.

Crystall

I'm in a similar situation to you in terms of diagnostic (also 162) but I've managed to break past the low 170's and am scoring in the high 170's now in my PT's. I definitely didn't do much drilling at all during my studying, but I've been doing PT's nearly every morning, and it's definitely helped. After every PT I look over answers I'm unsure of or got wrong in the LR and RC sections in the Manhattan forums, and watch 7Sage videos for Logic Games answers.

Unless you've taken a ton of PT's already I don't think you need to worry about burning through them. I've taken 8 PT's so far and I have more than enough to take one almost every day until the September test.

Also, take a look at the difficulty of the LR/RC passages in the tests that you do if you haven't already. You might have done well on your diagnostic relative to other tests because the passage difficulty happened to be lower. It also matters if you're taking an older or a newer test (newer tests tend to have more difficult LR/RC sections).

MrSamIam

Are there any particular sections that you're having trouble with? If so, your best bet is to drill those sections (by question, game, or passage type), then drill by section type, and finally start PTing again.
An increase in your BR score is always a good sign. If your initial score isn't going up, it may be an issue of timing. That's usually best resolved by exposing yourself to the test under strict timing conditions (drill sections).