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Please help. Plateau
Guys, I really need you to help me with advice/strategy/tips on how to move forward.
I took September 2016 LSAT and did 154 on official which was right my average. My diagnostic was 142. I did get accepted to top 25 and got waitlisted and then dinged from Columbia in early August (yes, they dragged my ass for long time).
Fast forward to current day, my average is 166. I hit 167 couple times. My breakown is -2LG, -5RC -10LR.
My GPA is 4.07 and I really want to get into top school, thats why I am not giving up and kept working to improve. I am registered for June LSAT. I desperately need to hit that 170.
Please guys, help a girl out here. I am not URM, one year out of college now.
Comments
What does your BR score normally look like?
kind of just stating the obvious here but it seems like you need to work on LR whether it be your timing or better understanding logic
Are there any patterns to the LR question types you tend to miss? If you don't know, you need to enter your practice tests into 7 sage's grader. If there is a pattern, go back to the CC and problem sets for that question type until you are confident you would look forward to it on the real thing.
@"Cant Get Right" it is 170+ with average 172. I do not ran out of time except being really tight on RC.
@"Seeking Perfection" unfortunately there is really no pattern, on every question my percentile is higher than other users. i
Idk if I read this right. Did you say that you got a 154 on your most recent official take? Presuming that you are getting a 166 average, your PT average needs to be comfortably in the low 170s for you to comfortably get a 170. To get into low 170s, you need to get more and more of those harder LR questions on a timed setting. To do this you basically need to efficiently and accurately get through the easy questions, so that you can bank up more time for the harder questions. I would just drill questions of varying difficult from common question types like must be true, NA, SA, weaken and strengthen. A minus 0 on LG is a must as well so you should foolproof that intensely.
@westcoastbestcoast the official test that i took was almost two years ago in september 2016. i did get 154 which was right my average at that time. I have been studying ever since to increase my score.
For LG I did 1-36PT foolproofed them till I got -0 under time, yet that -2LG is still stubborn and with me. I guess I will just keep drilling them every day till official test.
For LR I usually have a minute or so left at the end of each section and the questions I get wrong are tough ones. On my most recent timed PT I got 168 with -7 in LR total (-4 first section, -3 second one). All questions were 5 stars difficulty.
I guess my concern is whether it is possible to make that jump from 166-167 average to 170 in two months? Should I just keep drilling PTs at this point and BR them afterwards with doing extra LG sections meanwhile trying to get that -0? I just need general advice of how to study I guess if it is possible for me to get to that 170 in two months.
Hope that makes sense! Thank you for your help
From talking to 170 plus scorers, it seems that unanimously have at least 5 minutes at the end of the section. I would fine tune your skipping strategy as well as drill the most common LR types so that you can finish them quickly
Hahahaha. I will state that I definitely do NOT have 5 minutes at the end of any sections, especially not Logic Games, and I scored a 171.
I am not sure what your after PT strategy is, but I highly recommend that you take the time to really focus on all of your wrong questions and really go through them. Like, I mean truly understand EXACTLY what tripped you up. It rewires your brain a little each time when you do this.
Lastly, this sounds crazy, but try taking a solid 3/4/5 days off from studying where you don't touch anything LSAT related, then come back cold and write a PT. I'd make a strong bet you will score 167+. This strategy worked for me, every time after a break I would come back and score my highest PT. This was also true for the exam where I didn't even look at an LSAT book or PT for 5 days prior to the exam, and came out with a 171 despite the fact that my previous best was a 169 and it was from over a month earlier.
You got this!
I have the same experience as Terrynicholasj. I scored 170 in February with average PT of 174 but I almost never have time left at the end of sections. I think it's fine to feel rushed at the end if your accuracy is near perfect. Brute force PT/BR can probably get you to 170s by June but you can also just choose to drill LR questions by type since that's your weakest section right now.
Also, are you happy with your bubbling strategy? And have you videotaped a section or test before?
@terrynicholasj thank you for such a great insight! I really agree with the revising each wrong question really in detail. I spend a lot of time doing that and I think thats what got me where I am now. I am a big advocate of that and can really see how it rewires my brain everytime I do it. On my most recent timed PT I scored 168:) The improvement certainly comes as I work more. Unfortunately, I have not implemented this strategy on Reading Comprehension yet... Do you have experience improving in RC? What helped you the most?
@eRetaker yeah, I think my weakest is Flaw LR, so I went yesterday and rewatched CC on that question specifically. I am yet to do timed sections but hopefully it will come. I think I am struggling more with which LR types to really drill though... Any advice on how to identify those? Granted that my percentages on questions I got correct are higher than those of average on each question type in 7Sage analytics.
@lsatplaylist I have no issues bubbling, as far as I know. I have not videotaped myself. Do you have any insight on that?
Thank you everyone so much for trying to help me out. I appreciate it more than you will ever know.
I agree with @westcoastbestcoast that you need to improve your time management. That is going to be your path of least resistance, especially considering your timeline. Don't be so worried about getting to 100% confidence on every question. Set your threshold to about 85%, bank the extra time to pick up the harder ones where you really need it, generate more insightful data on subtle weaknesses based on the few questions you miss that you would normally have been able to correct for, and then address those weaknesses. Good time management took my LR from a -5 average to the -2 range literally overnight. Addressing the subtleties eventually took that to a -0.8 average across my final 10 PTs.
@"Cant Get Right" let me get it straight... so i should generally set my threshold a bit lower for all questions. instead of digging and questioning every question, like the easy ones, i should instead pick the one i feel roughly 85% comfortable with and move on to save the time for those questions which take me a while to understand? It will help me to get more questions right because I will have more time to figure subtle details of question stem and analyze answer choices better?
Please correct me if I am getting it wrong, I just really want to get what you are saying the right way. Thank you!
That's kind of the strategy I use to score 170+. I set a goal of no more than a minute per question to help achieve this. Sometimes you just can't afford to parse out every word in every answer choice, and the confidence to do that comes with doing the test over and over. If you read a stimulus and then the first answer choice perfectly fits what you need, choose it and move on. You can circle it and check the other answer choices if you have time, but if you don't do that and check every other answer choicer, which usually are just trash to try and get you to forgot the original argument, then you'll probably be screwed on the super tough questions that require a careful reading to even comprehend.
Try being the most confident you've ever been on your next test. If you feel an AC is right, choose it and move on. After you BR and grade your test, you can properly gauge whether your confidence was calibrated correctly. If you miss a bunch of those questions you were only 85% confident on, then just take a close look at those questions and figure out how the writers tripped you up. But, if you don't miss those questions, then what you've done is given yourself extra time and a confidence boost knowing that you might be better at the test than you were giving yourself credit for.
I agree that ideally you should have time left to check answers at end of section and/or finish each question under a min. However, speed comes from accuracy, not the other way around. I think you can really benefit from drilling untimed question types if you're averaging around -10 LR questions per exam. Since you mentioned you are struggling with Flaw questions, I suggest you drill Flaw first, Strengthen/Weaken, and then Necessary Assumptions. You will see patterns much faster and realize almost every single assumption family question type is just Correlation does not mean Causation.
Videos, I'm told, can provide data points like spending more than 2 minutes on the toughest questions. I'm glad to hear there are no bubbling issues and it sounds like you've created a good strategy for this.
Yes, this is exactly right, and I think @s_jricke elaborated on the idea nicely. To build consistency in the 170's, you've got to be able to trust yourself on easier questions, or even harder questions that you're just able to see through and break open. If you're 85% confident you should really get that question right. And if you miss it, you need to address that which is best identified by allowing yourself to miss it in practice. (85% is a starting point that may need calibration depending on how exercising this strategy goes.) So with the extra time it takes to bring that 85% up to 100%, you're paying too much to the test for too little in return. Especially when there's curve breakers on the next page that you'll almost certainly miss without that extra time! If you have time at the end, you can always come back to confirm. No big deal. But if you don't have time at the end, aren't you glad you didn't spend it trying to make a marginal improvement on a question you almost certainly had correct anyway?
I will also add that not everyone absolutely must use these kinds of strategies. I've known a very small handful of people who are sharp enough to just take the test from beginning to end in 35 minutes and do just fine. For me though, I'm just not quite that bright, and so I needed to develop a method to deal with my inadequacies. And for LR, good time management is it.
@"Cant Get Right" @s_jricke Thank you guys so so much! I definitely feel like control freak when it comes to questions and make it a point to check EVERY answer and rationalize why its wrong.Now when you talked about it I can definitely see myself rushing through tougher questions without fully understanding it. I think the strategy of moving on faster when I encounter the answer choice I anticipated/fits into whats asked will help me so so much to tackle those hard questions. Cant thank you enough for this advice.
Any suggestions on RC? Time is usually tight. I need to work more on the section of test in general, not sure how to improve at all. Thank you for any suggestions in advance
One thing that has really helped me on RC is trying to answer all the questions without going back to the passage because it soaks up so much time. Sometimes you have to go back to the passage, but just be cognizant that the clock is ticking when you do that.
@Kateryna I was destroyed by RC on my first official LSAT, so I made it my main focus for a while and was able to make great progress.
I read the RC advice in both the LSAT Trainer and the Manhattan book. I think they both do a good job of highlighting the need to read for structure.
I used 7sage’s “memory method” while drilling individual passages. That involves reading the passage straight through, turning the page, writing out a brief summary of each paragraph (think a few words, not a few sentences), then returning to the passage and questions. It’s a little bit tedious, but I did a ton of passages where I didn’t worry much about time, just doing those summaries (so the structure is crystal clear before you hit the questions) and focusing on 100% accuracy.
When it came to doing full sections, I made sure to keep track of the time that I spent on each passage. I noticed that there was often just one question (or two) that was an incredible time sink, which would lead to serious time pressure later in the section. Being aware of this issue helped me recognize those questions and skip them, leaving them for the end if I have time. I’m comfortable with skipping 1 or 2 time sink questions because it means getting to all of the questions I have a good chance at answering correctly, and I almost always have time to at least take a crack at the question(s) I’ve skipped.
Finally, I experimented a fair amount with strategy on this section. I went from fairly heavy notation to almost none, and all of the drilling that I did with 7sage’s method helped me automatically do a low-resolution summary of the passage while reading. For a while I kept track of how long it took to read the passage, and I found a balance between reading quickly while being able to build that summary in my head. Knowing whether I was taking 2:30 or 4:30 on my first read through the passage really helped me understand where my time issues were coming from. My natural reading pace is 4:30, but I realized I could glean all of the relevant information by pushing through in about 2:30 (but not less).
I now average -1 on timed PTs, and improvement on RC alone accounts for most of the difference between my first official score (169) and my most recent (175). I’ve heard plenty of people say that RC is tough to make progress on, but after all of those steps I took I was happy to see 2 RC sections on my last test day. The nightmare of my first test helped me achieve a dream outcome on my last one.
Going from your September 2016 score to your current average is already a fantastic achievement. I hope you keep pushing and reach your goal. Good luck!
Like @terrynicholasj and @eRetaker I also scored in the 170s (a 172 and a 180), but did not always have extra time at the end of sections. In fact on my 180, I finished one of my two LR sections with about 5 minutes to spare, one with less than a minute, both the real RC passage and the experimental RC with less than a minute to spare and the logic games with about 3 minutes left.
I think the people saying you need 5 minutes at the end of the section are the people skipping and doing the hardest questions last instead of just going in order. It would make sense that they would need more of a time buffer since they don't know exactly how long the hard questions will take, but they will probably take longer than just however long the last questions take.
That's not to say skipping can't be valuable. If there is a chance you won't get to a question you want it to be a hard one.
@Brian_LSAT, This comment is so awesome: "The nightmare of my first test helped me achieve a dream outcome on my last one." I think it applies to earlier phases of studying as well. Thanks for this.
When I skip a question, I return to it after the next 2-3 questions, sometimes after just one. Leaving the harder questions for last isn't the only reason to skip.
I'm sure you know this, though?
In my opinion it is the best reason to skip. There are other advantages. You come back to questions fresh. But these are pretty heavilly outwieghed by the disadvantage that you had to waste time and effort thinking about skipping instead of thinking about answering questions on the test.
Why on earth would you come back to the skipped questions before making sure you will get through all of the easy questions?
I have to admit I never thought to try out a skipping strategy which took away the main advantage of skipping so maybe I'm just missing something...
However, the fundamental point ought to remain that you don't need to have an extra 5 minutes left at the end of your section to do well.
I don't think the main advantage to skipping is that you save the most difficult questions for last. My second reading is always much stronger, and I'm pretty sure that's because our subconscious minds work through the logic of what we read in skipped stimuli in the time it takes us to tackle the next couple questions after we skip. This is one of the reasons it can benefit us to return to skipped questions more immediately than at the end of the section after we've attempted every question. If we return to questions only after seeing all others, our re-reading of the stimuli will likely require more mental effort than it would have if we had returned relatively soon after skipping. If I had to guess why, I'd say it's because our working memories can only hold onto so much at a time. Think of it as a '5-question attention span.'
Disclaimer: I am diagnosed with ADHD, so it's possible this skipping strategy is more practical for me than others. All of our brains work a bit differently, naturally.
I definitely agree that re-reading can take up time. I think if they are hard questions and you expect to miss some of them anyway that could be worth it to tackle them last.
The subconscious mind tackling the problem in the background sounds hard for me to rely on. I have definitely come up with solutions to things when I wasn't actively thinking about them, but not regularly enough to trust on a test. Maybe my subconscious is just a lot lazier than my concious mind though.
I could see ADHD maybe making skipping more worth it and staying with any one question too long a little less worth it and therefore skipping more beneficial(although I'm definitely no expert on ADHD).
It seems to me that what should be gleaned here for us all is the value of experimentation. You tried out a couple different kinds of skipping and found one that worked for you. I tried skipping and found it to waste my precious test time. (When experimenting with a skipping strategy we do have to give it enough chances to get used to it before discarding it as wasting time).
And back on the OP's question some people find that timing it so they finish with 5 or more minutes left works well. Others just need to time it out so they will definitely finish. Once we figure out what work s for us we have to repeat it enough to make it second nature.
Yes, I like all of this.
I'm sure your subconscious mind is not lazy relative to your conscious mind, though. :]