how long does it take you to BR?

DEC_LSAT

hey guys, how long does it take to BR and do you have a systematic approach that works best for you? I feel like i need to experiment a bit with my BR process. Thanks in advance!

Nanchito-1-1

A few days. I'm a full-timer, and a write my explanations of why 4 are wrong and one is right-er.

Sprinkles

@"Accounts Playable" said in his webinar that he would PT in the beginning of the week (I believe he said Monday to mimic the June test date condition) and BR the rest of the week. You will find top scorers take as much time as they need to BR - that's the amount of value it holds to your score. I think a BR sesh should take minimum 2 days.

Nanchito-1-1

@montaha.rizeq, I missed that webinar because I was on a 2 week hiatus. Do you know if it was recorded?

Nanchito-1-1

https://7sage.com/webinar/davids-six-tips-on-doing-it-right/
NEVERMIND!!! Watching this now!!!

Sprinkles

@nanchito bruuuuh it was recorded AND uploaded the same day

https://7sage.com/webinar/davids-six-tips-on-doing-it-right/

PS - hope you're doing better now!!

Alex

@montaha.rizeq said:
@"Accounts Playable" said in his webinar that he would PT in the beginning of the week (I believe he said Monday to mimic the June test date condition) and BR the rest of the week. You will find top scorers take as much time as they need to BR - that's the amount of value it holds to your score. I think a BR sesh should take minimum 2 days.

Amen to that. I've been doing timed sections of LR and my blind review usually takes 2-3 hours just for a section. I also like to type out my explanations and I am truly finding this is where and how I am improving the most. It is so odd how easily we pretend of convince ourselves we understanding something when we aren't forced to try to articulate it or explain it.

So I would say each section would take me 2-3 hours on average making BR a 2 day process.

Cant Get Right

Yeah, when I first started, it would take me a day or two. Spent a day on a single question once. By the time test day rolled around though, I had it down to about an hour usually. I had a couple tests where I had no BR at all. It takes as long as it takes, no more no less. What that means to each of us will be different.

zkchrumz

For me, its takes AT LEAST 45 minutes per section to BR.

For a section. I'll do it timed, wait 2-15 minutes, then BR.
For a full PT, I'll take the test, wait 2+ hours/till next day, then BR 2 sections (or 3 if I BR LG) on one day, then the other 2/3 then next day.

For LG: Easiest to BR. Redo games, not under timed conditions, then check out JY's approach after each game to see if he's doing something I'm not. If it was tough, I'll watch the whole video. If it was easy, I'll skip around and skim his explanation.
DON'T move on to grading/explanations until you are satisfied with your answers for a given game.
Generally takes me about 60-90 min (mostly on the videos). But its the most fun part of my BR.

For RC: Medium to BR. Reread the passages, redoing the questions (only marking them on a PDF file on my computer this time, as I don't really worry about time). Pay careful attnetion to the parts of the passage that you KNOW the questions are going to ask about (cause you have the questions in your head from earlier) and try to analyze why the test makers chose those details. This, I feel, helps me better direct my attention to the things the test makers like to ask. Also, search for line references for each question and list line references next to each right/wrong answer choice to get more proficient at locating details. Read explanations after each one to see if there was something interesting I missed.
DON'T move on to grading/explanations until you are satisfied with your answers for a given passage.
Generally takes me about 45-90 min. Usually extremely boring.

For LR: Hardest to BR. Redo the section, untimed. Reviewing my answers as I go, focusing mostly on the ones I circled as unsure or difficult. Then skim explanations for easier ones and focus on explanations for more difficult ones/ones I got wrong.
DON'T move on to grading/explanations until you are satisfied with your answers. Write out explanations for questions that I got wrong or got wrong for the wrong reasons.
Generally takes me about 90-120 min. By far the longest. Not so fun as LG, not so boring as RC, but the time gets me.

Hope this helps.

desire2learn

I'm not trying to cause trouble here but my BR strategy is to not get too bogged down because it starts to affect my motivation/happiness levels. I would say my BR takes 30-60 minutes per section but it is definitely less rigorous than it "should" be in the sense that I am okay with letting go of some questions after spending some quality time on them. I find that when I get too gung-ho about one question it takes away from my overall learning. When I take time after BR to go through questions I try to spend time looking at the last 3-5 PTs to see what trends are showing up as my weaknesses. Then I address those specific weaknesses. For me, when I spend an inordinate amount of the time upfront trying to wrestle with a question that I am clearly not getting (because it is a weakness I need to work on), it affects me too much mentally and I lose the zest for learning about it later as a weakness because it has already beaten me down. I am not saying one should be flippant with BR, but finding a happy medium allows me to work on the weaknesses "down the road" as I review the bigger picture of several PTs while staying sane. This method admittedly means you need to do A LOT of PTs because you are not "learning maximally" from each one until later (in a sense) and the weaknesses that come up can shift over time.

Sprinkles

@desire2learn I'm officially kicking you off the forum! Lol Jk. I don't even have an entitlement to do that lmao. Anyway, I like how you're doing what works for YOU. Not to mention you understand the flip side of doing BR your way is to take more PTs. If it ain't broken don't fix it lol. Thanks for sharing an alternative. Variety is the spice of life

desire2learn

@montaha.rizeq If you let me stick around here I'll sneak you and @"Alex Divine" back into the Old Timers thread. I'm fairly certain the rest of the old fogeys in there are too senile to notice.

Oh...hi @"Cant Get Right" and @stepharizona Uhhhh...what are you doing here?

Uhhh...we're not doing much. Just hanging out 'n stuff.

stepharizona

@desire2learn said:
Uhhh...we're not doing much. Just hanging out 'n stuff.

typical kids... bahahaha

Connor180

I've played guitar almost my entire life and I see some of the similarities to learning guitar as to learning the LSAT. I see similarities in the learning of guitar that apply to blind review...

In guitar, a common mistake for people who stick with it for a while is to jump to fast. Its more fun, exciting, and gives you skills to show off to people (girls) to learn a dazzling solo or the latest song everyone knows. Often times, people will dig into the most common scales for soloing but they don't learn all of the boring details of those scales, like the different placements (you can play the same scale up and down the neck in many different places) and they don't learn the scales in all of the keys even the most obscure ones. This in the long run puts you at a disadvantage because you miss out on the nuances like approaching scales string by string, attacking solos diagonally, up and down, half in one position half in another, etc, and the different nuances that only sound good in different keys, tones, different guitars, etc You basically develop holes in your playing that sometimes aren't noticeable but at times your all messed up because you've never encountered that type of a situation to play in. Its like if you always play in the same position in the key of Em and you need to play in F#m in one of the 10-14 different positions, playing in that same position might not work. You just kind of sit there like, what am I doing. It's hard to describe in writing but its a feeling of being stuck and you don't know what notes / chords will sound good in any given moment and anything you try will sound bad.

Although, they aren't perfectly analogous, my point is that with the LSAT I've found that its not about how much you get through really, its about building up the fundamentals and not creating holes that can or cannot hurt you in the long run. In the long run are spending a year (plus/ minus) and making sacrifices for a short test that we don't know what is going to be on it. We want to be ready for whatever the LSAT throws at us that day. So we don't want holes. We don't want to be stuck at something come test day we want to be ready for every challenge even challenges that won't come up on the test (thats due to the unpredictability of the test).

To me, blind review does this. I actually don't think we should only focus on just the hard questions or the easy questions. We also shouldn't think about doing it for 1 hour or 5 days, just whatever it takes to understand every detail from every question easy or hard. IMO, its more important to go through fewer and slower than more and with less time.

My process though takes a really long time. I BR the proper way (like circling), but I also go over every single question, whether I thought it was easy or not) and write out on the sheet why each answer is correct or not for LR. For, LG I full proof just about every game (that's because I'm still awful at games), and RC, I BR, then review every question, then I watch JY go over the video for the passage, then I check the answers again (seeing if I've changed again), then I watch the video explanations and reveal the answers. Some of the harder RC passages, I've gone back and reviewed them again weeks later just to refresh myself. Some of them I mentally can't though because spending a couple hours on one passage makes me hate the passage forever. Like I despise some topics when I see references to them in real life.

The most helpful thing for BR for me has been taking the hard questions, cookie cutter questions, or questions I found interesting (yes I admit some of them are interesting), giving my Mom a bottle of wine and then I teach her the RC passage or the LR question. I aim to synthesize JY's explanation, Account Playables if available, and my own thoughts when I explain each aspect of it. Needless to say, she can't wait for me to take the LSAT and go to law school. But this teaching process has been what led me to dramatically break my initial plateau for LR and RC (though I still have tonnnns more work to do).

So for me, after that long winded story, BR takes 3-4 days without the teaching all RC's and the harder LRs. If thats included, I will have never stopped blind reviewing the test because I constantly go back to the ones I've saved on my comp and either re teach them or go over them myself.

Take that all with a grain of salt, I keep pushing the LSAT back and have been studying for over a year (not that long with 7 sage) and will be taking it in June. I've taken a break and gone back to certain parts of the CC I wanted to brush up on (SA, Games, and RC), but I plan on getting back into the swing of PT in December.

Alex

@desire2learn said:
@montaha.rizeq If you let me stick around here I'll sneak you and @"Alex Divine" back into the Old Timers thread. I'm fairly certain the rest of the old fogeys in there are too senile to notice.

Oh...hi @"Cant Get Right" and @stepharizona Uhhhh...what are you doing here?

Uhhh...we're not doing much. Just hanging out 'n stuff.

Hahaha!

Sprinkles

Omg @desire2learn LOL that's my life long dream. Thank you.

tanes256

BR takes for d@mn ever! But, it really just takes as long as it takes. You don't want to do a BR and still not know why you got one of those questions right or wrong. That defeats the purpose. You also do not want to still get a question wrong after BR. Extended amounts of time will let you know that your foundation probably isn't firm though so you'll know what you need to go back and review and drill.