Speed or Accuracy

lilseven

Hi there.

I have been preparing for LSAT for 2 weeks and my progress right now is that I finished the Powerscore Bible of LR and also the relevant part of 7sage and I have also done around 8 PTs. So as I practice the LR with the PT, I try to finish the section in 35 mins but if I do that, then I am always around -8. However, if I do take my time and finish it around 45mins then I am around -4. So my question is that, what should be the main concern for me right now, to get more right answers or to try to finish the section in time? Or is there any other right things to do that I am missing right now? Thanks!

Cant Get Right

Hey @lilseven , lots you can be doing.

So during a PT, you’ve got to adhere strictly to time limitations. So in short, the answer to your question is time. But there’s quite a bit more than PTing that you can be doing, and after only two weeks you almost certainly aren’t ready to be taking PTs. To put that into a little perspective, I am not currently taking PTs and I’ve been studying for almost a year and a half now! I was PTing and everything was going fine and then all of a sudden I began consistently struggling on Logic Games. At that point, it was time to stop. Taking PTs really is a high level, advanced study practice, and you want to be very conservative with when you allow yourself to move into that.

So, just to get a little more information, what part of 7Sage have you done? I started out with the bibles as well and found that there was a limit to how far they could take me. The LR one isn’t as bad as the Games bible, but the 7Sage curriculum is definitely far superior on both sections. Whatever you're using though, the curriculum is almost certainly where you really need to be at this point. It’s just too much information for anyone to be able to absorb in 2 weeks.

You want to integrate that phase of study with drills. At this point, focus on problem sets where you do lots of the same problem type. Don’t place a time limit on these, but do keep track of time and work to steadily decrease your time while maintaining accuracy. Once you’ve done that for awhile, studied and drilled every concept and question type, and feel comfortable with the material; then start drilling full sections. What we do at 7Sage is we cannibalize PTs 1 - 35 for drills, leaving 36+ for full length PTs. So take the individual sections from 1 - 35 and drill them. You can do timed or untimed drills depending on what you want to focus on. I really like untimed drills, especially early in the process. You don’t want to take your sweet precious time or anything, just don’t pressure yourself to finish -35 minutes. If you go 40 - 45 it’s okay on untimed drills. Like with the problem sets, keep track of how much time you take and try to bring it down as you improve.

Use these drills to identify your weaknesses. Patterns will emerge. If you have a 7Sage membership, you can just plug your answers into analytics and it will crunch the data for you and identify where you are strongest and weakest. If not, make a spreadsheet and go through the test and identify every question type along with whether you got it right or wrong. As you add more and more sections, sort by wrong answers and see what shows up a lot. It’s a crude but effective way to do it. Once you know where you’re struggling, return to the curriculum and solidify your understanding of the concepts behind that question type. Do more problem sets until you get it. Then do some more drills. Identify more weak spots, and eliminate them.

Go through this same process for LG and RC.

Once you are consistently drilling under time and with an acceptable error rate in all three sections, then you can move into the PT/BR phase.

The pace of all this is largely dependent on your target score. If you are trying to score a 155, you will move a lot quicker than if you are trying to score a 170+. If you are aiming high, you’ve got to move slow. I know I sort of suggested it above, but if you really want to get serious about this test, 7Sage is a seriously powerful resource. If you can swing it, try it out. You get a week or two guaranteed so if it’s not working out for you you can get your money back. But I suspect very few people have actually found that that’s the case.

Good luck!

Alex

Hey @lilseven ,

I think what @Cantgetright said is perfect. I studied for 2 months and was set to start PT’ing before I had this moment where I realized that I needed a lot more work.

Though tempting, PTs like @Cantgetright says are very advanced methods of studying. There are also a finite amount, rendering these tests like little diamonds

But since @Cantgetright basically said everything I can think of to tell you, I will just reiterate something that really helped me. Speed comes with accuracy. So keep doing problem sets of like questions, and you will start to be both more accurate AND faster. I think if you’re missing -8 timed you should probably work on accuracy for now. I realized once I focused on this, I began to noticed patterns and my elimination of wrong answers got more efficient. I think that is when I noticed my speed was increasing. In sum, don’t rush to PT’ing before you’re ready. You don’t want to be doing the majority of your learning/practicing of fundamentals on PTs, but rather problem sets or drills.

lilseven

Thank you all for the comments! Great helps!