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Related Discussions
"Freebie" Questions
samantha.ashley92
Alum Member
I tend to finish my LR sections in 24-29 min. However, I average -8 on an LR section and -3 BR. I think I'm spending my leftover time wrong, but I'd love some opinions/personal experience on this.
Typically, I put a tiny circle around the questions that I figured were "freebies" (I don't read all of the answers or don't read them all thoroughly) and come back to them first with my extra time. However, I usually stick with my initial answer when I come back to them. I just get nervous that I missed something and got it wrong. From there, I move on to the questions I skipped, followed by the difficult questions I circled. Should I be mixing up this order?
Comments
which ones do you usually get wrong? do you have any over confidence errors? can you explain what kind of questions you're missing among the 8, and why you miss them?
@username_hello about half of the questions I get wrong are strengthening questions. I'm working on it. The weird thing is, I always do them well when I'm practicing! Today, I printed out the last three problem sets from the CC and got every question right. I practiced about 15 "harder" and "harder" questions from the problem bank and got two wrong-- one just because I misread something. MSS and flaw problems are my other weaknesses. I had the same experience with MSS today as I did with the strengthening questions. For the most part, I mark my wrong answers for BR as I'm taking the PT-- so I know they were tough for me. There's always at least one question that I BR and still get wrong. Now that I think about it, it may be a good idea to revisit the skipped questions first, followed by the strengthening/MSS questions.
Woah. "Not reading thoroughly" seems like a lot of unnecessary risk and bad habit-forming. I wouldn't be surprised if reading errors were a major contributor to that -8. Every word of an LSAT I read, I read as thoroughly as time allows (which is thorough) and with my pencil down (circling, bracketing, underling where helpful). I think you're inviting lots of avoidable errors.
My approach as I worked my way up through the 160s and into the 170s was to read every answer choice, even if I was confident, until I had minimized confidence errors and reached -4 per LR section consistently. I didn't feel my abilities justified skipping material until I was at that point.
The second round should be used to revisit difficult questions IMO. If I stopped reading at the correct AC, it was because I was 90%+ confident in that answer so there was no reason to look at it again at all. But again, I didn't start this aggressive approach until I had a good handle on confidence errors.
Be really careful about using the word "freeby". I think our language influences our thoughts, behaviors, and so on. Nothing is free on the LSAT.
Like I said above, I didn't use my second round to return to questions I was confident in. I aimed to finish my first round in ~28 minutes and only allowed myself to mark 5 questions to return to (circled). If I answered all 5 of those questions confidently in the second round, I would look at questions I decided to miss or questions that I was semi-confident (used a check for these not a circle).
@NotMyName I guess by "not reading thoroughly" I meant that I just quickly scanned through the other answers to make sure nothing else really stood out. If I anticipated an answer, and that answer was in choice A, I didn't spend too much time going through the other answers. Also, I got the word "freebie" from the CC lol but I know what you mean. It sounds like you're saying that I should just spend the time upfront on those easy questions, rather than coming back to them later. Is that right? I do make some reading errors, but rarely, if ever, in those questions.
Assuming that my skipped questions are time-sinkers with my remaining time, do you think it's a better idea to go back to the harder ones that I didn't skip before the ones I did skip? Typically, I get the skipped ones right after I come back to them. They just take me like 2 min each.
Ahh I think I remember JY calling SA freebies for high scorers at one point! I wonder if he would rephrase that. I think what he’s saying is “if you want to be a high scorer, you need to consistently get these right”... the difference in framing seems important.
Sorry if that first post was too direct or presumptuous. Carelessness was a constant battle for me in my prep so that may have been some projection on my part
On the easy ones, yea I think you should invest the time upfront at this point. To break the 170s, you’ll have to change that and be more aggressive... moving on after finding any AC you’re very comfortable w and not returning. But ya gotta get to -6, before you get to -4, before you get to -2 and each of those phases is more aggressive than the preceding.
On returning to harder questions, I always returned to ones I was more comfortable w first. The stimulus that I had no clue what it was saying was saved for last of at all. Question 20 with two ACsk abstract that they sound the same but I had a good grasp on the stimulus would be the first I returned to.
Have you watched the skipping webinar?
@NotMyName thanks for the advice! It's just so weird to me that I do so well in my practice problems (sets and question bank problems) but not on my PTs. Like I'll get the questions right that only 35% of people got right, but I'll get questions wrong that 95% of people got right. Maybe I just need to slow down in general. Even though I always finish with leftover time (I think the minimum I ever had remaining was 5 min), when I'm PTing, I always think that this is the one where I'm going to run out of time.
I haven't watched the skipping webinar. Does it go over coming back to questions once you've already skipped them? My biggest struggle atm is RC. Idk how this happened when my diagnostic was -4, but all of my PTs after have been -6 to -10. Again, I go -0 or -1 on each passage when I study. Skipping questions on that, along with reading pace in general, is where I seem to struggle.
Hi @"samantha.ashley92" , I will recommend that you test out my method and see how it goes for you. I almost never have time leftover for LR, LG, and RC but maintained high accuracy of -0 to -1 per section. The way I go about it is that I make sure to eliminate all wrong answers even after I am sure the first answer choice I saw was correct. Since you mentioned unforced reading errors on easy questions I am assuming that this strategy would work particularly well for you. For LR especially I finish the first 15 questions in about 17 minutes and the last 10/11 questions in the final 18 minutes. So yes, slow down, but take extra care to eliminate all wrong answers before moving on. Test this method on a section or two and see if you can find any improvements.
@eRetaker thank you! I just feel like any answer choice that I can anticipate is usually the right answer, so it's hard for me to sink the time into those questions instead of the harder questions. The easy ones I get wrong are ones that I'm not anticipating the answer, but just think that the answer choice is correct when I see it. Reading errors definitely play a role in my score-- probably in one LR question per section. Clearly, that could be a whole point on the test. I'll try slowing down and going through all of the answers to see if that helps. Thanks!
Exactly! I was going through the same thing. To me those statistics screamed reading errors. So I tried going back to my original question approach (reading the question top to bottom, not looking for the question type first) and conceding a certain amount of points at the beginning of a section. What I mean by that is I was only looking to answer 17-18 questions in my 35 minutes. If I could do more, great but no rushing. This helped me worry less about time and more about picking the right AC for every question I got to.
I stopped looking for the question type first because I felt like it was changing my initial reaction to the stimulus, like I was looking for something in the stimulus and not just absorbing what was there.
The idea was to conceded less and less points as I got better, and it's been working for me so far. Hopefully this helps.
@LSATisJustLikeDarkSouls thanks for the feedback! I appreciate it.
Maybe try slowing down...it's helped me quite a bit. I used to do "25 in 25" but I was really unsure about most of the questions and my accuracy wasn't that high. Now I take my time...I usually skip one or two questions altogether in my read for whatever reason and usually reach question 23 at around the 30 minute mark. However, as a result of this switch, I'm much more confident about the answer choices I've picked. I also spend about, on average, 1:10 per question. Which might seem like a lot for the easy questions but I found that personally, I used to carelessly go through easier questions but miss a bunch. Also, by the time I reach the 12 or 15 question mark I'm sufficiently warmed up, so I don't take significantly longer than that average of 1:10 on level 5 questions. I also don't spend too long on questions, never more than 2 minutes total (this includes the second pass, read-through)
@keets993 thanks! Yeah, it seems like I really need to slow tf down, especially considering how much better I do when I BR and practice outside of PTs. Like there's no reason that I should get an extra 5 questions per LR section right when I BR when I have so much time left after I finish the 25ish questions.
I agree with all the slow down talk. Accuracy needs to come before speed. The thing with the "easy" questions is that you can read through the wrong AC often so quickly as to eliminate them. I work on crossing off the specific word or phrase that makes a question wrong so when I go back I know what ACs I need to read carefully. Sometimes I circle specific words in an answer if I think it may make the AC correct or incorrect.
I would recommend completing a few LR sections timed. Basically drilling LR in full sections while you tweak minor aspects of your approach to find what works for you. I often don't have much time left at the end of my sections, maybe two minutes or less to go over a circled/skipped question or two, or sometimes I don't have any time left. But I'm confident my answers are correct. I've been consistently getting -2 in each LR sections.
Different approaches are going to work for different people. Find what works best for you by doing 5 or 6 timed sections and comparing your approach.
Good luck!
@LivingThatLSATdream thanks! I actually do that with ACs pretty frequently. It really helps me, especially if I have to go back and look at them a second time. And I think you're right; I'm going to have to do some drilling and see what works best for me.
Really agreed with everyone above here. Although I don't think you mentioned (sorry if you did), those 8 or so that you miss in a section: do they usually come from one category? Either the "easy" ones that you go through really fast, or they're harder ones that you come back to for a closer read through? If a lot of them are falling into one category like that, I think we might have another clue on if it's your actual technique or rushing through reading, or something else.
@"Leah M B" on the last PT I took, 6 out of the 15 LR questions I got wrong were strengthening questions, 3 were MSS, and 3 were flaw. Clearly, I know what to focus on there haha. As for the ones that I perceive to be easy, I go through them quickly because I anticipate the answer, find it, and move on. I pretty much always get them right-- even if they are a level 4 or 5 question (though 5 doesn't happen often). Even with my solid record of success using my anticipated answers, I tend to revisit the questions later. I think that I really just need to slow down, commit to them, and don't come back to them. When it comes to questions that I skip and come back to, I usually get those right, as well. Typically, I had to skip them because I misread something the first time, and I catch the mistake the second time. The ones that I tend to get wrong are ones that I couldn't decide between two answer choices, and I picked the wrong one. This could be any level question, depending on how crazily I try to analyze everything lol.
It doesn't seem unusual to me that you would perform better on drills than PTs, which are considerably more complex and stressful than drills. I think you need to implement a consistent timing strategy. Here's a brief sketch of mine when I was in the 160s:
Finish the section in 30 minutes or less. The number of questions you can return to is proportional to the amount of time you have left which means you may have to choose questions to strategically miss. With 5 minutes left for a second round, you gotta know that it's unlikely you'll have time to give more than 3 questions their due (if that). Since each question is worth the same (1 point) you should prioritize the questions you have the best chance of answering correctly.
I only returned to questions that gave me difficulty, but I read every answer choice for any question I attempted (this will change as you progress into the upper 160s). I soon realized that difficult questions were almost always far easier in the second round, so I didn't want to waste time in the 1st round wrestling with tough ones. If a question didn't go well on the first read, I'd go through the stimulus and AC again but if still nothing I skipped. Avoid time sinks at all costs. My sweet spot for LR while I was breaking through the mid 160s was finishing my first round in 29 minutes and returning to 5 questions.
Hm i don't remember if the webinar covered that specifically.
A disciplined RC timing strategy gave me a nice jump in scores. More than any other section, I find that time sinks in RC are disproportionately punishing. 2-3 time sinks in the first 3 passages could lead to 3-4 unnecessary misses in the fourth passage -- suddenly you're -10 when you could have been -6. It was really difficult to discipline myself and learn to cut my losses but it paid off big time. The 2nd passage on the July test was a comparative beast and there's no doubt it was placed there, instead of last, as a land mine.
You mind find it helpful to determine your natural reading cadence for RC and set some strict timing limits for yourself. My sweet spot was 3.5-4 minutes for reading a passage and 4 minutes for the questions.
@NotMyName thank you so much for all of that! I actually just got the LSAT Trainer book in the mail last night, so I'm learning some new RC strategies to test out. I've spent a few hours going through it, and my guess is that I'll wind up mixing some strategies in with my 7Sage strategies. Time sink questions are definitely something that I have been trying to pay more attention to recently. Since the LSAT is not a computerized adaptive test, it doesn't make sense to spend 2+ min on a question the first time around. As for LR, would you suggest that I use my "extra" time on time sink questions that I skipped or going back to the more difficult questions that I'm 50/50 on?
Happy to share my experience : )
This is a tricky question to answer. A 50/50 question can easily become a time sink attempting to differentiate between ACs and figure out what you're missing. Ultimately, you should return to questions you're not sufficiently sure you got right (CantGetRight speaks about this in more detail in his webinar on post cc I believe) or outright skipped but feel good you can get during a second look. But the second round needs to be addressed with the same timing principles as the first round: you still don't get to entertain time sinks. That could mean returning to a question in the second, spending a minute but making no progress, skipping AGAIN, and returning a third time. It's iterative.
@NotMyName you make a good point in that I may have to skip/not answer a question twice. Thank you!