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Related Discussions
How to go back to curriculum
I recently watched the "Post CC Strategies" webinar and something that he had mentioned as apart of the first phase of taking PTs is that we should be going back to the curriculum as we are studying our BR answers. I recently took a practice test, BRed, and now there are a handful of questions that I got wrong and need to review. I normally just watch the videos and review where I went wrong, and then move on to another PT. This isn't working for me, I want to dig deeper.
My question is - how should I be reviewing the CC while I'm taking PTs? For example, I missed a Necessary Assumption Q. Should I go back through the entire NA lesson or just watch the broad lesson videos (before specific Q examples)? Or should I be drilling and while I'm drilling, what should I be looking for?
Right now this concept seems super overwhelming so I'm wondering if anyone can share their strategy. Thanks!
Also.. what is a cookie cutter review????
Comments
@Hamaseh_S great question. I loved to hear an answer from a Sage @AllezAllez21 @LSATcantwin @"Cant Get Right"
Hey, that’s a really great question, and I’m glad that you’re looking to go deeper to get more out of your PTs! So, what really matters is not necessarily what you miss so much as why you missed what you did. So with the NA question, why didn’t you get that one right? There’s a lot of different possible answers. Maybe it was because you conflated two distinct terms. Maybe you ran out of time or there was relative language that you didn’t fully understand, or maybe you don’t fully grasp what a necessary assumption question is asking you for. If it’s this last one, then you need to return to the CC and review in greater depth. Otherwise, this is not likely to be the right response. If you ran out of time, maybe this question wasn’t the problem at all but rather an earlier question that you spent three minutes on. That’s a very different problem with a very different solution. So you have to diagnose your errors with greater insight than just question type. Your ability to correctly analyze exactly what went wrong is maybe the most important skill to effectively study for the LSAT. I’ve found that, more often than not, question type is an unsatisfactory explanation once students progress beyond a certain point. If you only missed one NA question, I’d be really surprised if that were good enough. So look at it closer. Why did you really miss it?
For cookie cutter review, I’m going to tag @Sami because it’s a drill I stole from her and she explains it better!
As for the question of what cookie cutter review is, I would like to wait @Sami to respond, but if you'd like to see some examples, I think I made cookie cutter reviews for all the questions in PT44.S4 (Starting from Q1) and PT49.S4 (Starting from Q1).
But for every question, I tried to find cookie-cutter elements of the stimulus. I tried to find similarities with other arguments (structure-wise). And for flaw questions, I labeled each AC like this:
Flaw -
(A) circular reasoning
(C) uses terms unclearly/equivocation
(D) cause-effect confusion
https://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-55-section-1-question-14/#comment-61460
And there are arguments in which premises and conclusions are talking about different sets. This is actually common regardless of question types.
Divergence of sets
https://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-50-section-4-question-12/#comment-61722
Convergence of sets
https://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-50-section-4-question-09/#comment-61721
Also, there are common argument types such as:
Phenomenon-Hypothesis
[Other people's argument]. However, [Author's argument]
I personally think you should always be reviewing/drilling.
If you get something wrong only once on a timed PT, you likely don't need to return to the CC. If you get it wrong on BR, then it's probably a strong indicator that you should, at the very least, review that question type. Otherwise, I think it's hard to rationalize how you missed a question with unlimited time, if you fully understood your task and have effective strategies for solving said question type.
@Sami is the master of cookie cutter review and someone who helped me immensely in that regard. So I too am going to defer to her to explain that
I'm going through the CC for the first time. I am correct that I shouldn't be starting drilling until I'm done with the CC?
Just had to mention I hear there's a webinar on LG drilling and foolproofing next week and I bet it'll be helpful for review exercises in general.
I think you should be doing at least some of the problem sets after each lesson. I really think that you need to be practicing applying what you're learning to be able to improve. It will also help you determine whether or not you're really understanding the lessons.
Correct! Announcing soon!
Excellent!
I'm really looking forward to it!
@Alex I am doing the problem sets after each lesson. Right now I have the starter pack but once I finish the CC and some of the practice tests I'm going to upgrade to Ultimate+
Sounds like you're on the right path!
Depends on the answer about why you missed it? It could be that you saw what was wrong with the argument but didn't know exactly how to figure out which answer choice would be necessary. In that case reviewing how to find the necessary assumption in core curriculum would be helpful.
But if you missed it because you had trouble with the argument, it may have been because you need to work on understanding the argument type. In this case figuring out the cookie cutter nature of the argument would be really helpful. Was the argument conditional, causal, phenomena hypothesis or a particular flaw type? There are lessons on the big argument type in the core curriculum. So if you argument happens to be one of those it would be easy to review. But if its a particular flaw like hasty generalization, just reviewing that flaw would also be helpful. After you are done understanding the argument, you want to draw a parallel argument based on the nature of the argument. This helps you export the cookie cutter nature of the argument in different contexts and see for yourself if you truly understand this argument type. I wrote more details about cookie cutter arguments and how to drill them at the bottom.
It could also be because you weren't able to parse out the grammar or didn't see the referential phrasing. In this case, a review of the grammar fundamentals would really help.
But it could be that you spent only a minute on question that required a second round and additional time or you spent to long on that question when you should have skipped faster and come back to it. As that would have given you time away from that question and helped you see what you just couldn't see.
It could also be that you everything was right except you had a pre-phrase that was too narrow. So your form needs tweaking about how you approach answer choices and consider each of them and how they interact with the stimulus.
It's really is about answering for yourself why you missed those questions. The answer is personal and it could be different for different questions. The answer to that question should determine on how you should review. Use the above examples to see what you should do when you figure out why you missed a particular question.
Cookie cutter review is seeing the pattern of argument behind the stimulus. The pattern is likely to repeat on different question types. There is a lot of focus in LSAT prep about drilling by question type. What we tend to miss is that LSAT writers are actually using certain argument types, writing them out in different contexts, and then asking us to perform an operation like strengthen or weaken. So while it is helpful to know how to strengthen and weaken a question it is also extremely important to know what that specific argument behind the stimulus is and how to perform different operations on it.
For example 33.1.25 which is a weakening question and 31.3.9 which is a strengthening question have the same cookie cutter argument. They both go from correlation to causation. So if you realize you couldn't identify what was wrong in an argument or you didn't know how to strengthen or weaken an argument because of that particular flaw you want to review that flaw and in addition draw your own parallel arguments to solidify that understanding. The next step is to use the stimulus and perform different operations on it. For example, when doing a question that gave me trouble I like to test my understanding of that argument by seeing if I could fix that argument completely (sufficient assumption), find whats necessary (NA), strengthen/weaken it, or just flat out state what the flaw is -all on the same stimulus. I also like to look through other PT's and see if I could find the same argument regardless of the question type. This helps me see the pattern LSAT writers use in writing out that cookie cutter argument.
Personally I like to do cookie cutter review on each question I missed or I was just slow at answering. Cookie cutter review can be really helpful in helping us get faster at arguments because as soon as we see it we realize we have seen this argument before. Because the argument type seems second nature, cookie cutter review helps us focus on other aspects of a stimulus like grammar which can be key in going through answer choices.
I hope this helped. Let me know if you have any additional questions.
Yup!!!! Coming soon!
@Alex @akistotle @"Cant Get Right" you guys are really sweet. I completely believe y'all would have answered about cookie cutter drilling as well as I would have
. Hugs.
Oh my gosh thank you all!!!! This is soooo helpful ❤️❤️❤️
@akistotle Will definitely be referring back to your examples. I've seen your reviews before but I guess I never understood what the "cookie cutter" label was for (until now)
much thanks @Sami
@"Cant Get Right" @Alex What I started doing before I saw all your answers was writing all the errors I found, or places that I was stuck, in a list on the side of the passage. I think aside from my most common missed Q types (flaw, parallels, etc) I've identified that parsing out the argument is my biggest struggle. I knew this before, and spent a lot of time in it before/during CC, but I am going to work on it more. The philosophical/law/human nature sh*t is gibberish to me lol
I think I am going to combine all your ideas - especially thinking of drilling Q types and doing cookie cutter review for all those drills so that I can see any consistencies that I might have been missing before.
Thank you again for all your suggestions, I will be referring back to this a lot❤️