How to assess/evaluate personal progress?

jjwang120

I have recently completed the core curriculum and the first PT out, I have scored a raw/timed score of 165. Now, I also BR-ed at 170. I want to know how I should be thinking through my scores, if that question makes sense? So, from B.R. I definitely know that timing is an issue (I lost the bulk of my points due to my inability to complete sections) (how do I improve timing? More timed PT's? Because I am a re-taker, I only have ~13 fresh PT's left)...I want to score at 170+, particularly because I am a nervous test taker. I don't know if this is answerable, but what do you guys think about my progress? How should I be studying now, as I'm entering the next stage of PT-ing?
Thank you.

Alex

< analytics >@ analytics said:
So, from B.R. I definitely know that timing is an issue (I lost the bulk of my points due to my inability to complete sections) (how do I improve timing?


Nice! You did great on your first PT after finishing the CC, so take pride and be happy with that

Going forward since timing seems to be an issue, locate exactly where you are losing time. Is it during game set ups? Or a certain question type or RC passage type? If so, drill your weaknesses and use the analytics to pin point where they might be.

As far as only have 13 fresh tests left, don't be afraid to do retakes and re-drill past sections you have already done. I am of the belief that one can learn more from doing 10 tests over and over than from doing 100 tests once each. So re-use old tests and re-drill sections and seeing the patterns will bring your speed up.

Make sure you have thoroughly fool-proofed the games so inferences are second nature and no time is wasted!

If you can BR to a 170 then you absolutely have the potential to score a 170+

Cant Get Right

What's your section breakdown? I really hope you're -10 in LG, but even -3 or 4 is great. Wherever you're at on LG, if it's not -0 it's not good enough. If you want to break 170, that's just where you've got to be. Period.

You also need to bump up your BR score. Let me qualify that by saying 165/170 is incredible for your first test out of the curriculum. Congrats on that. Your BR score is your max potential though, and if you want to score a 170, then you really don't want to have to rely on achieving your max potential on game day. Identifying where you miss points in BR is going to be a big part of your study strategy moving forward. If you want to break into the 170s, aim for a 180 BR.

For pacing, a few things:

You're definitely correct to place special value on the few clean takes you have left. Don't waste those while you're still figuring things out. Use your older retakes to develop your 170 pacing strategy, and don't take a clean test until you're comfortable with it.

You are at the level where you want to start thinking about under confidence errors as much as over confidence. There's a point at which the unders become just as serious as the overs. If you get a 1 star question right but take 90 seconds to do it, that's really, really bad. For a 170 pacing strategy you need to be confident enough on the easy questions that you can just pick the answer and move on immediately. This is where it really helps to record your takes and review the footage. Analytics can't pick up on under confidence errors because you're getting those questions right, so the only way to do it is to review your actual takes. Turn that 90 second under confidence error into 30 seconds. Eliminating even four or five of these is obviously a huge difference.

Skipping is also a huge component of a high level pacing strategy. You just can't let yourself get bogged down. The faster you decide to skip the better. For me, I'm just itching to skip. Give me a reason any reason and I'll skip the shit out of a question. I'll skip three questions in a row I don't even care. It feels really bizarre and scary at first, but once you combine an effective skipping strategy with eliminating under confidence errors, you will start finishing your first run through in -25 minutes. With that kind of time left you won't have any worries. You'll be confident that you'll have plenty of time to return to every question and knock it out on your second look.

jjwang120

@"Cant Get Right"
My score breakdown for the PT 36 was so:


PT36 1 LR -6 -6
PT36 3 LR -6 -3
PT36 4 LG -4 -3
PT36 2 RC -2 -0

*(second number on the right is the BR score)

@"Alex Divine"
Thank you for your input!

Cant Get Right

That looks really encouraging Jonathan [Edit] Josephine!. If pacing is your main issue in LR, you can improve a lot there just by developing a high level pacing strategy. What happened on your LR1 BR though? That's the only thing I see that worries me.

LG is exactly what I wanted to see. Put yourself through an LG intensive program and get that down to -0. It sounds hard but it's really more just a lot of work than anything else.

RC is great, you're fortunate to have that pretty much down!

MrSamIam

Your PT score is essentially what you can expect to get, +-3 on the official test. As @"Cant Get Right" mentioned some time ago, your BR score is what you can potentially score with more practice.
If you feel comfortable with the core curriculum, and your issue has to do with timing, keep PTing and BRing. If you're having trouble with a particular question type or section, drill/review accordingly.

jjwang120

@"Cant Get Right" Thank you so much for your input! (and I hope by Jonathan, you mean me! haha) I'm excited to improve. And like you have said, I will work hard to BR 180!

Cant Get Right

Are you not Jonathan Wang Jr, @jjwang120 ? Lol, my bad!! There's a guy in the BR Group named Jonathan Wang, I just assumed you were him! Who are you?

jjwang120

@"Cant Get Right" Haha, I am a Josephine

Cant Get Right

Lol, we've got too many J. Wangs to keep up with. Sorry about that Josephine! I think I commented on a post of yours before, and totally thought you were the dude from the BR Group. Glad to have that straightened up!

jjwang120

@"Cant Get Right" Last question, but what would a "high level pacing" strategy look like? I feel sort of at a loss of how I can drill my weakest section (i.e. LR). I understand how to tackle LG and even RC, but I need some help on formulating an intensive program for LR. Would you have any tips?

Cant Get Right

So the main thing that concerns me is the -6 BR on 36.1. That tells me that you've got some gaps in your fundamentals, so you've really got to find out what's going on there and fix it before you start focusing too much on pacing. High level pacing will compound those issues and make you even more vulnerable to those errors. You can use an accelerated pacing as a drill to start getting the feel of it. Seeing what you miss on that is additionally beneficial because it exposes things you may know but aren't as solid on as you thought.

Right now, I think your best approach is going to be a combination of timed and untimed drills. With your untimed drills, work through a section keeping time with a stopwatch rather than a count down timer. This will tell you what your natural pace is and allow you to work through a section without the time pressure which is great for reinforcing fundamentals and learning how to avoid rushing. Rushing is speed without any return. It's easy to try to make up for time by tmoving and processing information really really fast, but that's not quite how it works. So just work through sections at a comfortable speed. If you go 40 minutes or whatever that's fine.

On your timed drills, you'll start developing your pacing strategy. A lot of this is about confidence. So if you read answer choice A and you're 90% confident that it's the right answer, choose it and move on immediately. You don't have time to devote even a second to the other four answer choices to bump 90% confidence to 99-100%. 90% is a great bet and the time you save is way more important than that extra 10% certainty.

So eventually, high level pacing combined with a good skipping strategy will allow you to finish with 10+ minutes to spare. You can use that time to return to your skips and then to reconfirm your least confident answers.

It's a lot of work, but you're positioned really well to be able to do it. You're way more advanced than I was on my first PT out of the curriculum. So stick with it and put in the work and I'm really confident you're going to get there.

jjwang120

@"Cant Get Right" Thank you so much, always, for answering my questions in depth! I'm so glad I am part of such a great community

Cant Get Right

I may not know who anybody is, lol, but always happy to give out LSAT advice!

Before I got to 7Sage, I made every LSAT mistake there is and really disadvantaged myself. I think maybe that's a big reason why I try to stay so active on here. I just wish I had found this place sooner and I'd have been in a much stronger position now. So, I hope I've helped some of y'all avoid at least a few of my errors.