Advice Request - Feb 2017

NotoriousLRG

Hi all,
I am seeking some advice as I have been studying on/off for a little over a year now and am only scoring in the 159-164 range, BR in the 165-170's. I have been planning to take this December exam, but decided to post-pone last minute - now really hoping to write in February 2017. I have taken almost all the recent exams, but can't seem to consistently score in the upper160's or break into the 170's. RC/LR are my weakest, LG is pretty strong. I have been doing the same thing - take the timed PT/BR/review. I also occasionally go back to the CC and take timed sections of retakes, but I haven't really seen any jumps in my score in quite awhile. Becoming quite discouraged and thinking this field may not be for me if I'm struggling this much with the LSAT and when it's only going to get harder from here. Anyway, I think a lot of my struggle comes a lot from the mental endurance more so than being unable to grasp the concepts. Any advice of what I should focus on until February - do recent retakes/drill/timed sections/etc. - would be much appreciated.
Thanks guys.

Alex

@NotoriousLRG said:
Anyway, I think a lot of my struggle comes a lot from the mental endurance more so than being unable to grasp the concepts. Any advice of what I should focus on until February - do recent retakes/drill/timed sections/etc. - would be much appreciated.
Thanks guys.

I'll let the experts jump in, but it sounds to me like you've identified and diagnosed the problem already. I think retakes and targeted drilling is always helpful, but beyond that, where are your specific weaknesses WRT RC and LR?

If you can BR to a 170 than that is your (current) potential. So don't be discouraged!

NotoriousLRG

@"Alex Divine" Thanks for your response! My weakness in RC is not being able to finish all the passages in time. I get really stressed out with timing and so that makes it hard for me to fully process/think clearly when it comes to the passages. LR is similar - I make lots of careless reading errors that I correct on BR. But of course, they're not all "careless" errors as I have about 2-4 Q's that I really couldn't figure out. Right now, my Analytics say that strengthen/weaken/flaw Q's are my worst. When you BR and do retakes, how often do you revisit your missed Q's? Also would you mind sharing what your typical weekly study schedule looks like?

Cant Get Right

@NotoriousLRG said:
I have been doing the same thing - take the timed PT/BR/review. I also occasionally go back to the CC and take timed sections of retakes, but I haven't really seen any jumps in my score in quite awhile.

So if you've been doing the same thing, and your scores have plateaued, that almost certainly means that you need to do something different. Have you developed specific pacing strategies for each section? That would probably be really helpful.

I'd also suspect that your timed PT/BR/review process could probably be done better. That is just something that can almost always be improved on for everybody. After each PT/BR, you've got to identify the weaknesses it exposed. And don't write anything off as careless or a misread. Those mistakes have to be taken very seriously; this is as much a test of language and grammar as it is of logic. Once you've identified those weaknesses, work to improve on them. When you feel like you have mastered every weakness a given PT/BR exposed, only then should you take your next PT. That PT will almost certainly expose all new weaknesses, as well as inform you that you haven't completely mastered some of the old weaknesses. With that information, repeat the process and don't PT again until you feel like you've mastered everything. Slowly but surely, you'll start to nail things down. So focus more on your response to your PTs rather than on the PTs themselves. That's where the real improvements are usually made.

NotoriousLRG

thanks so much @"Cant Get Right" - you're truly a LSAT saint for continuously providing advice and counsel to everyone on this board. As for pacing, I have been skipping, which helps me to get through the section now, but not so much time to review though. I'll try to drill more, but was there anything different you started to do in your study routine when you jumped into the high 160's and then the 170's?

Cant Get Right

In addition to developing an advanced pacing strategy, I also adopted a pretty strict mentality on what it means to BR. I think most people don't take BR nearly far enough and that is really detrimental. Under time, your task is to answer the question correctly in as little time as possible. That means that the moment you achieve the minimal level of understanding sufficient to choose a correct answer choice, it is time to choose that answer and move on immediately. Under BR, the task is very different. Getting the right answer is not the point at all, and this is the mistake that so many people make in BR. The right answer in BR is only relevant in as far as it reflects the true purpose, which is to achieve full understanding. It is not possible to achieve this level of understanding and then choose the wrong answer (assuming there isn't a mistake). So on BR, make sure you're looking for understanding rather than for answers. I frequently spent 10 to 15 minutes BRing questions even after I knew I'd gotten the right answer. Adopting this mentality was definitely among the biggest differences between my 160s plateau and my breakthrough into the mid 170s. That and the discipline to actually follow through with it!

tanes256

@NotoriousLRG I think BR is your answer. As mentioned above, I think for the most part we all breeze through BR just to say we've done it so we can get on to the next PT. BR is super tedious but you probably won't see much improvement until you make yourself do it. I'm still not really on a set schedule because BR can throw things off sometimes. What I started doing for BR was writing my thinking process for each AC and writing why I chose or eliminated an AC. For me this helped see what I was doing wrong as far as thinking and sometimes even strategy. I do this for all circled questions and then after scoring I go back and do the same for questions I got wrong but didn't circle and those unfortunate circled ones that I still got wrong. I definitely return to the curriculum for the questions I got wrong but didn't circle. If I notice that I'm still missing a particular question type I try to look at my written explanations to see if I'm continuously making the same errors or any other patterns. Sometimes I can figure out what I'm still doing wrong. I don't see this every time but it helps. I think we get so set in our ways that we don't really want to change. I just had to stop lying to myself and admit that I was not fully committing to BR and just do it. I also had to let go of the thought that I've already been through the curriculum x amount of times and just return for zillionth time!

Frostbyte

As mentioned above, return to the curriculum? When I plateaued I went back to the curriculum and went over all the reasoning sections. I also reviewed Mike Kim's guidance for each LR type. My PT score started breaking into the 170s when I returned. In my experience it can be a combination of fatigue + forgetting the basics. Make notes for each question type so you don't forget what you learned in your rerun of the curriculum.

Mike Kim's RC technique is also much, much more detailed than 7sage's (for example, I learned from him that "according to the passage" means something is literally written in the passage, whereas "the passage suggests" means it will require an inference). It's may also be helpful for you to force yourself to finish each passage with the following markers that high scorers tend to use: 8-16-24-32 min. Spend 4 minutes max reading each passage. To speed up, don't get bogged down by the details. The details don't matter so much as understanding the role a certain sentence or paragraph is playing relative to what the author is trying to convey in the whole passage. If a question asks about some weird details you didn't understand, you can always return to them. But don't waste time trying to understand some confusing science experiment---that's a trap and that's not the goal. The goal is understanding why the author included that science experiment, i.e., the role of that paragraph (strengthening someones argument, weakening it, a counter argument, providing background, explaining the consequences of an event, application of a hypothesis/theory, question, answers to a question, or main point.). At the end of the passage, spend 10 seconds just going over the role of each paragraph in your head, the main point that emerges, and the authors opinion. Thinking of the passage in these abstract terms will speed you up. It will also make it less necessary for you to annotate everything using special notations (I definitely overdid that and it costs time. You may notice JY doesn't annotate much, and also that a lot of questions focus on structure rather than details). It's helpful to go through some practice passages just to test reading for structure (I.e., the roles above) and marking it---after you've tried that with a couple and become comfortable with it, try it on an actual passage with question--see if it speeds you up and helps you in the questions.

bbutler

@NotoriousLRG I agree with @"Cant Get Right" that BR is your biggest weapon in your arsenal right now for both LR and RC. As tedious as it sounds take the time to and "Fool Proof RC" as in your notation strategy and everything. Nicole Hopkins had a great webinar a while back about notation strategy but coming up with your own is key. Then going through and watching the passage done by @"J.Y. Ping" and go back and do it again just the passage. Idk about you but whenever I hear JY do it I'm like I understand it so much better but it just comes with repetition. Sometimes in a day I might just get through 1 section of RC going through each passage 2-3 times with notations and then going through the questions. Reading for structure, author's tone, and basic understanding is all you need.

As for LR what do you believe the problem is? Are you falling for traps, misreading the question/answer choices, down to 2 answer choices and then psychologically saying I'm wasting too much time and then picking an answer choice? Is it a particular question type that you're missing as well? All of these questions will dictate what you need to do, if it's a particular question type then spend a day or 2 and drill some of those question types but you can never go wrong with BR, if it's done correctly.