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Related Discussions
2 Likes
Closing the BR Gap
I know I am not the only one who is having this problem, but it's kind of bugging me given its persistence. So there is roughly a 10-15 point gap between my actual test score and my BR score. I was just wondering what some of you have done in order to try and close the gap as much as possible because...this kind of sucks. Thanks!
Comments
In the absence of BR'ing (And I've experienced this first hand) ... astonishingly little learning actually takes place, at least when compared to the potential for learning (almost a guarantee from diligent BR).
@JustDoIt Just keep reviewing! Review is the key to seeing the source creating the gap between your BR score and your performance score.
I am still waiting for the "click" with RC, which, although I have improved a lot, still gives me the most trouble time wise. My strategy is review, review, review. Reread passages, watch the video explanations, thoroughly understand all answer choices and why they are correct or incorrect. Pay careful attention to structure as you read and constantly ask yourself, "why is the author writing this?" "how does this sentence/paragraph/quote fit with the rest of the passage?" "whose opinion is this and does the author agree?"
LR has consistently been my best section, but I still sometimes miss those "curve-breaker" questions. I think the key is to understand the logic so well that you can consistently and immediately anticipate possible correct answers (in many cases it helps to quickly think of more than one, for instance, in the case of a weakening question). Also being able to confidently and quickly eliminate wrong answers is essential. The more questions we do, the more patterns become apparent. The subject matter changes (and repeats a lot!) but the underlying logic is always there. No magic bullet exists, but it definitely sounds like you are on the right track, @JustDoIt!
1. Get fluent with conditional and formal logic. If you have put in the work, questions that demand diagraming CL/FL should be cookie-cutter gimmes that you can dismiss with quickly. Yes, some of the more challenging questions are difficult precisely because they are designed to suck up time. Still, if you put in the work, you will finish these questions faster relative to most other test takers and earn yourself valuable time in the bank.
2. Pattern recognition, just like chess players. The LSAT LR has A LOT OF PATTERNS. Once you get through about 10-15 PTs you have already seen 99% of what the LSAT will throw at you. Some examples include: Necessary/Sufficiency confusion, ad hominid flaws, causal flaws, term shifts, refuting an argument on the grounds that an insufficient argument has been offered, all of the common valid argument forms, all of the common invalid argument forms, and there are many many many more. When you come across a familiar pattern, it is just time in the bank because you immediately know what you are looking for. The more studying you do, the more you will recognize some of the LSAT patterns that are a bit more rare/subtle. One example would be in principle questions/SA assumption questions where the answer choice represents a smaller subset that belongs to that of a larger set in the stimulus.
One exercise I found worthwhile was going through PTs 40-50 (i had already taken them) and went through every single LR question untimed. I catergorized as many of them as I could into certain categories of patterns that I had recognized in the past and organized them in a big binder with tabs indicating which pattern they belonged to. Some questions have more than one pattern in them and therefore went into more than one place in my binder. It's just so I can see "oh ok, this is what this pattern looks like, I'll recognize this next time I see it even though the topic and the words will be entirely different). You'd be surprised how some of the lengthiest stimuli boil down to the simplest patterns!
3. Learn to recognize difficult questions and skip them without hesitation only to return to them if given time.
Numbers 1 and 2 are critical the better you get at them the less you will have to employ number 3.
good luck!
@blah170blah will do! Thank you!
@Jengibre That RC advice sounds like it's right out of the trainer! I am still waiting on that click too but I feel like it is so so close given my high BR scores. Also, I totally agree that the more questions you do the better your pattern recognition gets, both with LG and LR. Thanks for the encouragement!
@alexroark5 I totally agree that it is the time constraint. I do have a few questions with point #2. You mentioned that you would group similar questions together in a binder. How did you isolate each given question in order to characterize it? Do you write them by hand, type them, or just leave them as they are formatted in the PT? I find that I can recognize the patterns during BR, but I think it would help a lot if I could characterize them in the way that you mentioned in order to increase speed and accuracy. Thanks!
I print out the page that the question is on, cut it out and glue it to a blank computer page ( i fit about 4 questions per page)
for example, look at the following questions:
30.2.20 (must be true question)
31.3.22 (most strongly supported question)
33.3.22 (parallel reasoning question)
36.3.25 (flaw question)
notice how all the "questions types" are different. If you were drilling based on question type, you might overlook a very common pattern between all of these question types. I've grouped these under what i've just sort of arbitrarily called "expected state of affairs"
each stimulus basically says "if this expected state of affairs, we would expect to observe so and so phenomenon" if the critics werer right about this, then there would not be...or one would expect to find only a single version of this gene if....if relativity theory is correct no object could travel at the speed of light....if popularity of music scales were socially constructed, we would expect diversity...
but then in all of these questions they go on to offer evidence that runs counter to what we would expect to observe based on the assumed state of affairs. Basically they all boil down to if A then B but then they offer evidence to show not B so you have make the deduction not A. Even in the somewhat challenging 31.3.22 question, it just boils down to this very simple form of the contrapositive of IF A then B. And all these questions are presented in a way where they present a state of affairs "X" and then say based on that we would expect to observe phenomenon "Y" but then offer evidence for "not Y" and then its just "not X".
Question 36.3.25 is also a great example of a question that fits in more than one category. I also have it in a section of my binder called "the false choice flaw" where the stimulus assumes only two possible choices to the exclusion of other possibilities.
Take away lesson, these are all different "question types" but they all have similar patterns. You will find these patterns EVERYWHERE not just in the stimuli either, you will find them in the right answer choices, in the attractive wrong answer choices, etc. Look for the patterns, connect the dots, and you'll start to crack this beast.