how long take you -0/-1 in LR? Help please!! (updated)

youbbyun · April 2018

Hey all,

(heads up: many words in this remark, but thanks so much in advance for reading and taking the time to help! i really appreciate it and am very grateful for everyone's thoughtful advice/comments :] )

I started LR usually around -14 total. After about 2 months of doing solely LR (I've also already spent 2 months doing LG), I've gotten LR down to around -8/-7 consistently (this score is after blind review. i usually correctly fix around 4 total Q's during BR, so prior to BR, my total LR misses would be like -11). After BR, my misses are about -4 on each LR sections (if I'm lucky I'll get a -3/-2).

When I do LR sections timed, I try to have a skipping strategy but I end up leaving 1 or 2 Q's (that are hard and I skipped) blank when time ends.

When I'm doing the LR section, I try to go 15 in 15 minutes, and then work from there. I can usually get 10 for 10 minutes, but then as I hit questions like #15-25, I find myself slowing down. I'll finish the section with like 4 minutes extra, but there will be 2-3 questions I completely skipped, and 3 circled questions that I was really unsure of. With those extra 4 minutes, I can usually finish only 1 or 2 of those questions I completely skipped, and then don't have enough time to check other questions I wasn't sure about. Sometimes I run out of time before I can get to 1 question I skipped.

I've gone through CC. I've also read LSAT trainer and Powerscore LR bible, but I think CC was much better and more thorough.

My LR misses have been pretty scattered, but I see that some of my weak spots are flaw, weaken, strengthen. With weaken/strengthen questions, I think one of my weaknesses is causation/correlation. I've missed a lot of these due to not realizing that a question is actually testing causation/correlation, and for failure to properly map out the causation/correlation logic and to think of the correct prephrases (X causes A and B, A causes B rather than B causes A, etc) when tackling these questions.

I've already drilled all of the weaken, flaw, and strengthen Q's in PT's 20-30, but am still struggling with them to a certain extent as I'm doing PTs. Over the past 2 months, I've also already done all the LR sections from PT 29-40.

I blind review after I do the section. As I stated earlier, the above misses (-8/-7) are my blind review scores. I've been getting -8/-7 on LR's for like the past 4 PT's I've taken -- even though I've been blind reviewing after each section and have drilled from PT's 20-30s.

The way I blind review - As i do a LR section, I circle questions that I'm not 100% sure I got right. I usually circle around 8-10 Q's for BR. After time finishes, I go back to those circled questions and then try to re work them out again with no time limit. When I try to rework them again, I read the stimulus, identify conclusion and premise, and then try to identify the concrete reasons why 4 AC's are wrong and 1 AC is right. This is all happening in my head, so I potentially might not be as rigorous in doing this as I should be. For many of these circle questions, I end up changing the answer, and sometimes my new answer is right, and sometimes the new answer is wrong.

My BR misses and misses in general are kind of all over the place. They can fall into several categories: 1) questions I'm completely spoofed where I'll change the answer like 2 times during BR and still get it wrong. 2) I was down to 2 AC's and picked the wrong one. 3) Silly mistake where I should've gotten it right - I just rushed too quickly and chose a wrong AC without clearly eliminating the rest of the AC's. 4) Overconfidence error - where I didn't circle the question in BR and chose the trap AC that 70% of other test takers chose as well (these are often the level 5 questions where there's a very attractive trap AC...an example is PT 40.1.23).

In general, many of my misses are level 3-5 questions, with many of them being level 4/5.

For questions I get wrong, I watch JY's video explanation and scroll through the comments for that question to see other ppl's explanation. I also go on Manhattan's LR forum and Powerscore's LR forum to look at other answer explanations/ways to look at the question.

I'm kinda frustrated that I'm hitting this -8/-7 LR wall, especially after trying to work hard to improve it. I really want to try to get my LR score down to like -2 per section. I've been mostly focusing on my BR score because if my BR score is still -7, how can I get my timed score down to -2? Trying to go step by step -- and to first get my BR score as low as I can, and then work on ramping up speed.

I'm starting to see the patterns/cookie cutters in the various LR sections, but I still get tripped/tricked by the harder questions, which is kinda frustrating. There are always like three or four level 5 questions in a LR section, and I often get a few of those wrong.

I think moving forward, I really want to reexamine/redo/review all of the wrong LR questions I got and just try to redo them in my head, systematically break them down, etc. I think I've done around 25 PT's in total, mostly from PT's 20-40, so if it's an average of like 10 LR questions wrong per test, I'll be reviewing about 250 wrong LR questions these next few days.

Any advice or suggestions moving forward to get my LR score down to like -2 per section?

Also, out of curiosity, how long did it take you guys to get your LR section down to -1/-2?

Thanks guys.

goingfor99th · April 2018

Drilling by question type and then drilling timed sections worked well for me. Overall, it took me about 9 months of full-time study to take my average LR section score from a -12.5 to a -2 average on test day with a -1 and a -3 section. In practice prior to my exam, I would regularly score -1/-2 and had a dozen or so perfect LR sections.

Skipping is critical to achieving a perfect section, too. I didn't see you mention skipping or pacing strategies.

youbbyun · April 2018

@goingfor99th said:
Drilling by question type and then drilling timed sections worked well for me. Overall, it took me about 9 months of full-time study to take my average LR section score from a -12.5 to a -2 on test day with a -1 and a -3 section. In practice prior to my exam, I would regularly score -1/-2 and had a dozen or so perfect LR sections.

Skipping is critical to achieving a perfect section, too. I didn't see you mention skipping or pacing strategies.

thank you for the feedback!

Return On Inference · April 2018

I went from -4/-5 a section to -1/-2 a section and eventually to -1/-0 a section all from implementing a strict timing and skipping strategy. There's a super useful webinar that you can watch concerning timing strategies.

Every section (for me at least) there are 2-4 questions where I just don't 'connect' with the stimulus on the first read. Usually I'll come back at the end of the section with fresh eyes and I'll be able to pick out the answer much more easily.

I'm a huge advocate for timing strategies -- for me, it made all the difference. Give it a shot.

youbbyun · April 2018

@"Return On Inference" said:
I went from -4/-5 a section to -1/-2 a section and eventually to -1/-0 a section all from implementing a strict timing and skipping strategy. There's a super useful webinar that you can watch concerning timing strategies.

Every section (for me at least) there are 2-4 questions where I just don't 'connect' with the stimulus on the first read. Usually I'll come back at the end of the section with fresh eyes and I'll be able to pick out the answer much more easily.

I'm a huge advocate for timing strategies -- for me, it made all the difference. Give it a shot.

Thanks!! Can you give me the link for that webinar on timing?

Also, my -7/-8 is my BR score...which means even if I gave myself all the time in the world, I still get around -4 wrong per section. Trying to get that down to like -1 and -2, and then once that's better, start to make efforts on increasing speed.

btate87 · April 2018

I finished the CC in April, and started getting -0/-1 in September I think. Keep up BRing, practice skipping strategies (VERY important - made a huge difference for me when I started skipping right away if a stimulus didn't make sense), and I would also try to take baby steps. Sometimes you can miss more because you're trying to go -0 and you rush. Speed comes with familiarity. If you haven't, I'd recommend doing a few sections where you just go at hour natural pace, observe when time is called, but keep going. If you always go full steam to finish a section too early in prep, you run the risk of cementing bad habits in your strategy.

westcoastbestcoast · April 2018

On top of skipping aggressively, you need to spend as little time qs possible on the easy qurstions while being accurate so u can get the hard questions right

Seeking Perfection · April 2018

What does doing a LR section look like for you? I'm a little concerned from your description that you might just be doing a blind review and not a normal review too.

You should take each LR section timed, circling the questions which you are uncomfortable with as you go. Then you should blind review it with unlimited time trying to prove each wrong answer wrong and each right answer right for every question and marking your blind review answers(maybe with a check mark or a different color). Then you should score the section both for your initial answers and your blind review answers. Then on all the questions where you were unsure to begin with, were initially wrong, were wrong after blind review, or were unsure after blind review, you should find out why each right answer was right and each wrong answer was wrong. It looks like you have ultimate+ so I imagine part of this process will be watching the video explanations at least a couple times for all of these questions until you are 100 percent sure you understand why each answer was right or wrong. If you are not getting to complete understanding with just the one video explanation(which you probably won't usually since these are the questions which confused you), then go back to the CC videos and problem sets on that question type until you understand it.

TLDR: Blind review, but also normal review.

As far as skipping...

I'm unconvinced by the skipping advocates, especially since if I'm reading you right, you gave us your blind review score. Timing and skipping shouldn't really play much of a role in it(though I guess skipping and coming back to a question with fresh eyes still works).

@goingfor99th said:
Skipping is critical to achieving a perfect section, too. I didn't see you mention skipping or pacing strategies.

For what it's worth I think @goingfor99th is a really great model to follow for you for LSAT success, is one of many reminders that 2 months isn't very long to have studied for this test, and shows us that perseverance pays off. That said, skipping isn't critical to getting a perfect section. Many people including myself regularly got perfect or nearly perfect LR sections without skipping. Where skipping does often have a big positive return is if you are struggling to finish sections on time. You want to get the easy questions in first before wasting time on the ones that you might not be able to solve.

s_jricke · April 2018

@simplereally how many questions are you circling for BR per LR section? You might be circling too many, which takes away time from focusing on and figuring out the harder questions or too few, in which case your incorrect answers are due to overconfidence.

Either way, go back to those questions you've missed and really think about the arguments in them again and why you chose your answer and eliminated the others. Then break that thinking. I literally say to myself stuff like, "no no no, you dumb dumb idiot. don't do it that way, you'll never make a dime." You really have to break your incorrect thinking habits, but you can be more gentle on yourself than I am. After that, watch the video explanations until it just clicks and becomes obvious why the correct answer is in fact the correct answer and the wrong answers are wrong. If you watch an explanation and it still doesn't make sense, watch it again and try listening in a different way. Once you figure out how you should have been thinking about the question vs. how you actually thought about it during BR, you have to carry that mindset into the next BR session.

This is pretty basic information, but if I had a better idea of what your BR looks like in terms of how many circled, time spent reviewing and etc. then I might be able to give some more specific advice.

keets993 · April 2018

So since you are saying this is your BR score and you aren't really finding any trends in terms of being bad at just one or two questions, there could be a couple of culprits. It could be the grammar in the more difficult question that throws you off, at which point you might need to think back to basic grammar lessons like what the subject of the argument is.

It could also be that you've eliminated everything else and are left down to two answer choices and aren't sure which one to pick. If that's the problem, then I would highly recommend this webinar https://7sage.com/webinar/eliminating-attractor-answer-choices/ which illustrates some of the most common flaws an attractive, but incorrect, answer choice contains.

I agree with the others, until we know the extent of your BR, we won't be able to provide more detailed advice - since these are questions you are missing on BR too.

youbbyun · April 2018

@keets993 said:
So since you are saying this is your BR score and you aren't really finding any trends in terms of being bad at just one or two questions, there could be a couple of culprits. It could be the grammar in the more difficult question that throws you off, at which point you might need to think back to basic grammar lessons like what the subject of the argument is.

It could also be that you've eliminated everything else and are left down to two answer choices and aren't sure which one to pick. If that's the problem, then I would highly recommend this webinar https://7sage.com/webinar/eliminating-attractor-answer-choices/ which illustrates some of the most common flaws an attractive, but incorrect, answer choice contains.

I agree with the others, until we know the extent of your BR, we won't be able to provide more detailed advice - since these are questions you are missing on BR too.

thanks so much for the feedback! I just updated my original remark above to explain what my BR process is. Thanks!!

youbbyun · April 2018

@s_jricke said:
@simplereally how many questions are you circling for BR per LR section? You might be circling too many, which takes away time from focusing on and figuring out the harder questions or too few, in which case your incorrect answers are due to overconfidence.

Either way, go back to those questions you've missed and really think about the arguments in them again and why you chose your answer and eliminated the others. Then break that thinking. I literally say to myself stuff like, "no no no, you dumb dumb idiot. don't do it that way, you'll never make a dime." You really have to break your incorrect thinking habits, but you can be more gentle on yourself than I am. After that, watch the video explanations until it just clicks and becomes obvious why the correct answer is in fact the correct answer and the wrong answers are wrong. If you watch an explanation and it still doesn't make sense, watch it again and try listening in a different way. Once you figure out how you should have been thinking about the question vs. how you actually thought about it during BR, you have to carry that mindset into the next BR session.

This is pretty basic information, but if I had a better idea of what your BR looks like in terms of how many circled, time spent reviewing and etc. then I might be able to give some more specific advice.

thanks so much for the feedback! I just updated my original remark above to explain what my BR process is and add some more info. I usually circle 8-10 for BR. Would be grateful for any other feedback! Thanks!!

youbbyun · April 2018

@"Seeking Perfection" said:
What does doing a LR section look like for you? I'm a little concerned from your description that you might just be doing a blind review and not a normal review too.

You should take each LR section timed, circling the questions which you are uncomfortable with as you go. Then you should blind review it with unlimited time trying to prove each wrong answer wrong and each right answer right for every question and marking your blind review answers(maybe with a check mark or a different color). Then you should score the section both for your initial answers and your blind review answers. Then on all the questions where you were unsure to begin with, were initially wrong, were wrong after blind review, or were unsure after blind review, you should find out why each right answer was right and each wrong answer was wrong. It looks like you have ultimate+ so I imagine part of this process will be watching the video explanations at least a couple times for all of these questions until you are 100 percent sure you understand why each answer was right or wrong. If you are not getting to complete understanding with just the one video explanation(which you probably won't usually since these are the questions which confused you), then go back to the CC videos and problem sets on that question type until you understand it.

TLDR: Blind review, but also normal review.

As far as skipping...

I'm unconvinced by the skipping advocates, especially since if I'm reading you right, you gave us your blind review score. Timing and skipping shouldn't really play much of a role in it(though I guess skipping and coming back to a question with fresh eyes still works).

@goingfor99th said:
Skipping is critical to achieving a perfect section, too. I didn't see you mention skipping or pacing strategies.

For what it's worth I think @goingfor99th is a really great model to follow for you for LSAT success, is one of many reminders that 2 months isn't very long to have studied for this test, and shows us that perseverance pays off. That said, skipping isn't critical to getting a perfect section. Many people including myself regularly got perfect or nearly perfect LR sections without skipping. Where skipping does often have a big positive return is if you are struggling to finish sections on time. You want to get the easy questions in first before wasting time on the ones that you might not be able to solve.

Thanks so much for the feedback! I just updated my original comment to answer your question. Let me know if you want any more info, and I would be grateful for any additional feedback

youbbyun · April 2018

@keets993 said:
So since you are saying this is your BR score and you aren't really finding any trends in terms of being bad at just one or two questions, there could be a couple of culprits. It could be the grammar in the more difficult question that throws you off, at which point you might need to think back to basic grammar lessons like what the subject of the argument is.

It could also be that you've eliminated everything else and are left down to two answer choices and aren't sure which one to pick. If that's the problem, then I would highly recommend this webinar https://7sage.com/webinar/eliminating-attractor-answer-choices/ which illustrates some of the most common flaws an attractive, but incorrect, answer choice contains.

I agree with the others, until we know the extent of your BR, we won't be able to provide more detailed advice - since these are questions you are missing on BR too.

thanks so much for the feedback! I just updated my original remark above to explain what my BR process is and add some more info. I usually circle 8-10 for BR. Would be grateful for any other feedback! Thanks!!

youbbyun · April 2018

@s_jricke said:
@simplereally how many questions are you circling for BR per LR section? You might be circling too many, which takes away time from focusing on and figuring out the harder questions or too few, in which case your incorrect answers are due to overconfidence.

Either way, go back to those questions you've missed and really think about the arguments in them again and why you chose your answer and eliminated the others. Then break that thinking. I literally say to myself stuff like, "no no no, you dumb dumb idiot. don't do it that way, you'll never make a dime." You really have to break your incorrect thinking habits, but you can be more gentle on yourself than I am. After that, watch the video explanations until it just clicks and becomes obvious why the correct answer is in fact the correct answer and the wrong answers are wrong. If you watch an explanation and it still doesn't make sense, watch it again and try listening in a different way. Once you figure out how you should have been thinking about the question vs. how you actually thought about it during BR, you have to carry that mindset into the next BR session.

This is pretty basic information, but if I had a better idea of what your BR looks like in terms of how many circled, time spent reviewing and etc. then I might be able to give some more specific advice.

thanks so much for the feedback! I just updated my original remark above to explain what my BR process is and add some more info. I usually circle 8-10 for BR. Would be grateful for any other feedback! Thanks!!

goingfor99th · April 2018

@"Seeking Perfection" said:

@goingfor99th said:
Skipping is critical to achieving a perfect section, too. I didn't see you mention skipping or pacing strategies.

For what it's worth I think @goingfor99th is a really great model to follow for you for LSAT success, is one of many reminders that 2 months isn't very long to have studied for this test, and shows us that perseverance pays off. That said, skipping isn't critical to getting a perfect section. Many people including myself regularly got perfect or nearly perfect LR sections without skipping. Where skipping does often have a big positive return is if you are struggling to finish sections on time. You want to get the easy questions in first before wasting time on the ones that you might not be able to solve.

I will note that I have achieved perfect LR sections without skipping. The consistency with which I scored perfect or near-perfect sections was greater when I would employ skipping strategies, however.

Maybe "critical" isn't the right word. If you are a really strong reader, skipping is not critical to a perfect LR section. A great skipping strategy increases the odds that you will answer more questions correctly, which increases the odds that you will score -0/-1. For the vast majority of us, I think it is a far more practical approach to employ and invest in skipping strategies than to not.

AudaciousRed · April 2018

Have you tried, during your BR, to write out an explanation of why your selection is correct and why the others are wrong? Sometimes, we forget our line of thinking/reasoning, and then when we watch the video, we absorb the video's message and then dont remember what we were thinking when we chose that answer. This might help you discover any recurring logical errors you are making in your decision making, and might shed light onto what the core problem is, and then you can address it

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