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Related Discussions
Started skipping strategy- massive points drop
cqas190517
Alum Member 🍌
I started using the skipping strategy that the Sages talk about in the webinar on a timed drill section today and got TWICE as many wrong as I usually do. What gives?
Comments
You might have confused skipping with rushing. As in, you were so focused on skipping that you were lapsing into bad habits like not marking the support structure, not reading answer choices properly, etc. That's just a theory though.
Can you elaborate more on how you made the decision to skip and how many questions did you skip? How much time did you have left after you first laid eyes on all the questions on the first round? How many questions did you go back to on the second round and did you address them as priority-based or numerical based [so do question 3 before question 5]?
Also, just remeber that it's one sample. It's totally normal to see a dip in scores when you try out new strategies. That's why its recommended that you don't try new strategies on PTs or on the real thing.
To answer your question, I had 5 minutes left when i was done to go back and answer about the 5 questions I had circled. I did feel rushed, unreasonably so. I went back and did them in sequential order and after that I had about 1:20 left of time. I did not feel confident. I chose to skip based on the fact that I either a) had spent at least a minute figuring out the question and or b) I didn’t immediately prephrase well or wasn’t seeing at least the clear two ACs that are usually left after you eliminate the three fluff choices. I also felt that that drill section covered any of my weak areas and few strengths...thanks for the help.
I felt similarly when I first started experimenting with skipping (I realized I was skipping questions I shouldn't have and just freaking out that I skipped so many) so I adjusted my strategy a bit. I decided that if I skipped any question(s) on a page I would come back to it after I finished all of the questions on the two pages in front of me so that I wouldn't be leaving it for the end (and freaking out about the total amount of questions I skipped) but I would still give myself a short time away from the question so I could come back and hopefully understand it. In other words, I wouldn't turn the page until my skipped questions were answered. I'm not sure if this makes sense, but if questions 1-8 are in front of me and I skipped #2, I'd finish the rest of 1-8 first, then go back to #2 and answer it before turning the page and moving on to 9-15 on the next two pages. I hope this helps even though my explanation was a little wonky
I stopped he skipping strategy and had a massive point increase! I went from averaging low 160s to high 160s and not skipping was one of the only things that I changed. That and not reading the stem first.
Of those 5 questions how many did you miss? Were they really tough or easy questions? How many questions do you normally miss and how many did you miss this time?
Also, of the questions you got wrong were any of them overconfidence errors?
The point of skipping is to skip the questions that are time sinks. So those are the 4-5 star questions that you can easily sink at least two minutes on and still not be confident. The type that take you at least 5 minutes to figure out during BR. If you have video footage, I'd highly recommend going back and recording just how much time you spent one each question. You might've felt you spent too much when you only spent a small amount and that resulted in an error.
Whoa WHOA WHOA! I remember answering a thread of yours earlier and you mentioned that you were missing a lot of questions. Forget about timing right now and focus on mastery. If you can only do 15 questions in 35 minutes, but get all of the questions answered correct, then great! The first 15 questions or so are typically cookie cutter questions. So you know how to answer a cookie cutter MBT, MSS, Strengthen, Flaw, etc. Until you have a solid process, I would focus on untimed drills until you become more comfortable to incorporate timing.
Know the question type and the methods for solving the question --> Understand what the author/argument is trying to say--> Pre-phrase or anticipate an answer --> Look at the answers and select the best one.
If at any point your chain for solving an LR question is flawed or incomplete, stop, and go over the process for that particular question type.
I also do this, especially with RC. I find I save more time when I go back to the questions that I skipped while still on the passage, rather than waiting till the end of the section and having to completely refresh myself on each passage. Plus, since the questions for each passage in RC are dealing with the same subject matter (unlike LR), doing some of the other questions for the passage can help me to better see the answers for the previous questions I skipped.
I think we need more information from you. How many do you usually miss per LR section? Do you go -0 to -2 when you BR? I say this because I think skipping strategies are for people who BR in 170+ but still stuck in low-mid 160s.
Ok, so based on everything you mentioned, I shouldn’t be skipping yet because I’m still getting stumped on average on about 5-6 questions per LR section. I’m going to quit skipping then, and work on getting those 5-6 questions down before anything else.
If its only 5-6 questions you are being stumped on, then that's actually fine and you should skip. There are going to be 5-6 questions per section that you shouldn't be confident on or stumped on. If anything, you want to figure out how to skip those questions even faster. It's actually rare to be -0 or -1 after first round and most people do not have a really good first round. That's why it helps to skip the hard questions, so you don't end up spending time on them.
The question you want to ask yourself is - do I have a good section strategy in place? This involves skipping, identifying question to have a second round on, and figuring out which questions you want to miss and not even attempt. A good section strategy is not simply skipping any time you hit a road block but to know what to do for different situations one of which is skipping wisely. I wrote some guidelines below that you should be helpful..
By the end of the first round you should have 2 questions you skipped under 30 seconds. These can be identified by how hard it is to understand the stimulus or you get to the end of the stimulus and you have no idea what it says. Based on what's going to be needed to resolve the issue: for example if the stimulus looked easy but it just seems that you need to read again, you want to mark it with a single circle, but if resolving the problem requires to slow down your reading by a lot and you think its going to take longer time to understand the stimulus, you want to double circle the question. Move on to the next question as soon as you identify them. The sooner you recognize this is the situation you are facing, the more time you are going to have at the end to do this question.
See if there were questions you skipped, that shouldn't have been skipped or vice versa. For example, It's okay to be 50-50 between two questions and if you are making timely progress on them, to resolve the 50-50 in the first round without skipping. But in another case, if you had less than 70 percent confidence in the answer. It's not okay to move on from a stimulus without marking the stimulus for a second round.
It's important to realize that each question requires different amount of time in order to get to the correct answer and you don't want to spend any more or any less time than that. For example, if you have 90% or higher confidence that answer choice B works for lets say question number 20, you need to select B and move on to question 21 at this time without reading the rest of the answer choice. This means that you did question 20 in 30-40 seconds and that was the ideal time for that question. But lets say in question 21 you are down to 50-50, and in order to resolve the 50-50 you need to look back to a wording of the stimulus and answer the question not only if the wording is there but also would that support what that particular answer choice is saying -all of this may take a 1 minute and 30 seconds, but that's the time this question needs in order for you to correct. Question that are going to take you longer than that have cues that we talked about in point number 1 above and should be skipped immediately. One way to figure out if you are doing this is by seeing if you consistently have over confidence errors. For example, if you didn't circle a question and you get it wrong, that means you either have a knowledge issue, where you need to re-learn something, or you needed to take a bit more time on that question but you moved on to quickly. Also, generally, you want to do the 1-3 star question in under a minute (30-40 seconds preferably), 4-5 star questions in either a minutes and a half or skip, and some 5 star question should be skipped in under 30 seconds and you should have identified them as questions you were going to miss and you did not attempt them under time.
By the end of first round you should have questions that you have identified that you need a second round on and you think you can get to the correct answer in a timely manner (single circle) and the ones you don't think you can get to the correct answer in a timely manner (double circle). Do all the single circles first and be ready to miss the double circle and not even attempt them. For example, if you identified 3 questions as double circle and 4 single circles and you have 6 minutes left. If you can spend your time getting the single circles correct, you are more likely to go -3. If you spend all your time getting the 3 questions you double circled and were going to have a hard time getting correct anyways, you are probably now looking at -6 or higher. This is because those 3 questions are exceptionally hard and you have a very high probability of missing them.
Which brings me to the most important point. You should't have a section strategy that's trying to get you to a -0. If you are trying to attempt all questions, then it's pretty much what you are doing. Instead, if you are currently going -6, then you want a section strategy that lets you get to -4 first.
It's hard to completely gauge what you may need from just a post. But I hope I wrote something that you resonated with and found helpful.
How many questions do you get wrong in blind review? If you're getting 5 or more wrong in blind review, I think that means you have some problems with your foundational understanding of the logical reasoning question types. No skipping strategy will overcome that.
If you are blind reviewing and only getting one or two wrong, then I think you need to look more closely at your skipping strategy. The rule of thumb that I use is the pre-phrase rule. If, after identifying the question type and the premises/conclusion, you can't formulate what a correct answer would look or feel like, then skip the question. You should be deciding whether or not to skip within, at most, 45 seconds of starting a question.
As an aside, I wouldn't worry if you feel like you are skipping a lot. Even if you end up skipping 6 or 7, the worst case scenario is that you run out of time and end up guessing on two or three of the hardest questions (the ones you were most likely to get wrong).
In a nutshell, my advice would be to seriously and honestly evaluate your BR performance. If you are getting a lot more right without time constraints, then it is a timing issue and you should re-evaluate your timing strategy. If there isn't much of a difference, then focus on learning and practicing the basics.
What exactly 'is' your skipping strategy? Almost every sage has a different strategy. The one I use is most similar to the one that Josh, CantGetRight, advocates for. Once I am about 95% sure, for easy questions, or 80% sure, for hard questions, of an answer, either through prephrasing, or just familiarity, I will skip the rest of the answer choices. I usually end up with about 8-10 minutes left afterwards, half of which I use to BR, and the other half of which I use to read all the answer choices that I initially skipped.
With only about 5 questions you aren't sure about, assuming that's under timed conditions, you can definitely skip! I'm the same. I usually circle about 4 questions per LR section. I don't have a fixed time limit like you did though, or the requirement to pre-phrase answers. I've actually never heard about anyone using a skipping strategy based off of what you've mentioned. Those rules seem very arbitrary, and both too strict and too loose. I think being able to pre-phrase answers mostly depends on question types, right? Strengthen, weaken, SA, and MoR questions are most easily pre-phrased, but other questions are almost impossible to guarantee that you can pre-phrase. Personally, I don't skip based off of time, but rather certain conditions, such as: reading everything twice and still not getting it; and as you've mentioned, if I can't eliminate at least 3 answer choices with confidence.
Be sure you're actually correctly implementing the skipping strategy you've heard, and make sure it's one that's approved of by other sages and JY. Also be aware that when you just start using a strategy, expect the score to drop a bit. Afterall, you're making changes to your process, and any change will negatively impact our brain, which depends on habit. So expect a change in strategy to drop your score for a week or two, but if done properly, the change should result in a significant net gain.