?!?!? Weird PT/BR Phenomenon and Where to Go From Here

AutonomousBarnacles

Hey 7sage community, thank you in advance for your insight.

I will try to be brief in describing my situation. I started with sub-150 diagnostic a long time ago and studied a little bit on my own with PowerScore and came into 7sage with a diagnostic score of 156. I am looking to obtain a 165+ (with a goal of 169) to get into the T-14 schools I'm most interested in applying to. It's been a bumpy journey thus far in taking practice tests. I opened with a 5 point increase, then I went down by 4 points, then up 8 points from diagnostic to my most recent PT where I scored one point below my diagnostic score (tears). I will add that I've also mightily struggled with logic games and that has been a significant reason for my low scores. I've been using Pacifico's method in tackling the bundle and am about 1/3 of the way through it. I felt like I was making progress but when I went through the games yesterday everything felt disjointed and I was lost; obviously scoring 1 point below my diagnostic confirmed my suspicions.

Then an odd thing happened today. I was very frustrated with my performance last night so I didn't do any prep yesterday after the test - I took the day off from work today and decided to spend the entire day going over the test and get to the bottom of what had gone wrong. I went through the questions and noticed that I had made FREQUENT mental errors and selecting answer choices that I otherwise would not select in a normal state of mind -- it felt like someone else had taken the test. Moreover, when I went through the Logic Games again (without looking at the explanation or the correct answer choice) I went through the section easily and only missed 1 question in the entire section. Even more miraculous, I'm 85% sure I would have finished within the 35 minute time allotment despite the fact that I wasn't worried about time and was being more methodical. After going through the test and blind reviewing I ended up with a 169 in my BR (my goal score). This is a significant 6 point increase over my best previous blind review attempts and it's coming off of my worst test. I'm really not sure what to make of this and I'm really not sure where I should be directing my prep before my next PT. Is the BR indicative of my potential? How can Icome to terms with a personal best in a blind review and my worst PT score? Any insight you guys could provide would be extremely beneficial --including your own personal study plan post-PT and especially your study plans after your worst PT.

I am thankful for 7sage and for the community,

Sincerely Yours,

Cant Get Right

Your BR is absolutely indicative of your potential. The kinds of errors you're making sound a lot like rushing mistakes. Under time, we have a tendency to adopt this rushed mentality which is just awful. We try to make up for time through actual, physical speed, as well as mental- thinking really really fast, like we're trying to fast forward or something. This isn't where speed comes from at all though, and when we try to compensate by rushing, we make a lot of these types of errors. As much as I hate to use a sports metaphor, it's like in football when a wide open receiver misses a perfect pass because they take off for the end zone before they actually catch the ball.

It's really easy to do this on the LSAT. I've basically eliminated it from LR, but I still do it sometimes on LG. I'm actually taking a break from PTing now to address exactly that problem.

If that is what's happening, there's a number of things you can do to address it. First, you've just got to understand that speed comes from understanding, not from going really fast. So if you want to work on speed, work on fundamentals. Second, do some untimed drills. Keep track of time, just don't put yourself under any pressure to finish in 35. If you need to go 40 or 45 or whatever, it's fine. It's not a BR, so keep yourself moving, just remove the pressure.

AutonomousBarnacles

@"Cant Get Right" Thank you for the response! I will make sure to iron out my fundamentals and go through drills and try to slow down the rushing. I feel like this may have been a breakthrough but I'm still not sure how it was able to happen in this situation with such a lower score to begin with. Thanks again!

Alex

@"Cant Get Right" said:
First, you've just got to understand that speed comes from understanding, not from going really fast. So if you want to work on speed, work on fundamentals

Best advice ever! Oh how I wish I knew this long ago.