Shift in LR questions PT 65 and above?

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• 1 Like

  ddakjiking Inactive ⭐

  May 2015 2116 karma

  It's been observed that LR has shifted in that it's no longer the golden rule of "10 in 10 mins" or "15 in 15 mins". As you have experienced, questions as early as #5 can be the 2nd hardest question in the section.
• 1 Like

  brna0714 Alum Inactive ⭐

  May 2015 1489 karma

  Agree with @ddakjiking The arrangement of the questions seems to be different and it sort of throws you for a loop when you encounter a harder questions super early in the section. Other than that, I feel like the most recent LR questions are "tighter" than older tests, by that I mean they seem more cut-and-dried.
• logicfiend Alum Member

  May 2015 118 karma

  Frustrating! And nerve-wracking. It feels like every 10 or so tests you're coping with some change in the test.
• 1 Like

  brna0714 Alum Inactive ⭐

  May 2015 1489 karma

  I'm getting ready to BR PT66 so I can look and let you know my thoughts on the specific questions you mentioned but what has helped me lock down my LR scores is skipping questions if I don't understand them *immediately* and coming back to them with a fresh set of eyes after I've done everything else in the section. Once you know the fundamentals, correct answers in LR should be clear. There shouldn't be much to consider and you shouldn't have to debate between answer choices. If you're doing that, it's like that you've skipped over something, misread or misunderstand the task.
  
  Coming back to questions that I don't understand right away has helped improve my score. It will also prevent you from sinking time into questions that you will likely miss anyway (because you've misread/misunderstood).
• brna0714 Alum Inactive ⭐

  May 2015 edited May 2015 1489 karma

  Okay, question 5 is a little unusual because the conclusion is unstated. If you weren't able to figure out what the author was trying to convince us of in the stimulus, you could probably still reach the answer via process of elimination.
  
  A) Inferiority is totally irrelevant to the information presented unless you make (unwarranted) assumptions to connect the information.
  
  C) We know nothing about great painting or sculpture so how can this information be your main point?
  
  D) We are not given any information about what is required to "adequately represent" nature so this can't be what the author is trying to lead us to believe.
  
  E) If you chose this answer, it's likely that you conflated "great music" with "great art." If we accept the famous artist's claims, then we know that something that doesn't imitate nature is not great art but we know nothing about what is required to qualify as great music. So, again, this can't be the main point.
  
  and of course, we can choose B because...
  
  This is what we have to conclude based off the stimulus. In this case, with the conclusion being unstated, I thought of it almost like a MSS question (or even a Resolve/Reconcile/Explain). Given this information and the apparent conflict/discrepancy, what are we led to conclude?
  
  My apologies if this explanation insults your intelligence in any way, I'm working on my BR so I just figured I'd share.
  
  EDIT: I don't English too good today...
• logicfiend Alum Member

  May 2015 118 karma

  As an additional note, after taking PT 67 and 68, the LR sections were definitely more "normal," meaning harder questions later and easier questions upfront. There might be one or two questions in the first 15 that took me a second longer, but largely PT 65 and 66 were very different from what I saw in the LR sections for the other preptests.
  
  I wonder how the section changes through the 70s.
  
• lschoolgo Member

  May 2015 edited May 2015 274 karma

  @logicfiend, @brna0714
  
  
  I was wondering if the difference in difficulty of different LR sections in a PT shows up in the actual test score. There is *huge* difference in LR sections for some PTs. For example here is the data that I found for PT-71.
  
  
  Average difficulty of different LR sections PT-71:
  using 7sage difficulty rating.
  
  
  LR-1: 25 Q
  
  Lev : # of Qs
  Lev 5: 3
  Lev4: 3
  Lev 3: 7
  Lev 2: 5
  Lev: 1: 7
  
  Total: 7 + 10 + 21 + 12 + 15 = 65
  Av: 65/25 = 2.6
  
  
  LR-2: 26 Q
  Lev5: 6
  Lev4: 7
  Lev3: 3
  Lev2: 1
  Lev1: 9
  
  Total: 9 + 2 + 9 + 28 + 30 = 78
  Average: 78/26 = 3.0
  
  Clearly the difficulty of LR2 is much higher compared to LR1 (78 vs 65). Test score reflects that too -- I scored much worse on LR2 than LR1.
  
  Can people who have taken this PT under *strict timed* test conditions report their scores on these sections, LR-2 compared to LR-1?
  
  It'd be useful to have some Analytics for Oversall Section Difficulty, the progressive difficulty within a section, and its trends across PTs. It should be easy for 7sage to include it i think.
  
  
  
  
  
• brna0714 Alum Inactive ⭐

  May 2015 edited May 2015 1489 karma

  @lschoolgo
  
  I haven't taken 71 yet but have definitely noticed a difference in difficulty between LR sections within a particular PT. My most recent PT was 69, -1 in Section 1 and -3 in Section 4.
  
  This obviously varies from test to test. I'm not sure exactly how beneficial it would be to compare difficulty section to section but it is an interesting thought. I suppose having an idea of progressive difficulty within a section *could* prevent you from overthinking "easy" questions early on in a section and cause you to be more wary of "hard" questions later on in a section but I'm not sure how helpful/practice even that would be in real time.
• mpits001 Alum Member

  May 2015 938 karma

  This kind of scares me considering I was just approaching the mid 60 PTs. My exam is 2 weeks from now (and in the PTs up until 65 I average -5/-6). So now I'm a bit scared, lol. Well time to go print those and study hard. So glad this came up now and not later T.T...
• lschoolgo Member

  May 2015 274 karma

  It can be very useful analytics to diagnose key issues (Callout 7sage) IMO.
  
  These 3 could be very useful:
  1. Analytics for Oversall Section Difficulty
  2. progressive difficulty within a section
  3. difficulty trends across PTs.
  
  For (2) and (3), If one can see the difficulty trend in a graph form within a section and compare it with other sections, then one can for instance diagnose timing issues. If an LR section had relatively easier questions in 1-10 of average difficulty level 1.5 compared to the other section where 1-10 had difficulty of 2.5 and one still took the same time to do them and ran out of time at the end, then he/she would be better served by doing easier ones much faster.
  
  For (1), I know people score much worse on PT-63 LR2 compared to 63-LR1 (such as -4 vs -0). Do we know if this is due to the average/overall difficulty of 63 LR2 being much more than 63-LR? By how much?
  
  
  Also people score much worse on 67-RC or 65-RC compared to 70-RC. How much of it is due to the average difficulty of the section?
  
  If there was a way to map out one's mistakes over the difficulty trend within a section and see it graphically, then that could alone help raise a few points.
  
  

  @brna0714 said:
  brna0714
  
  Member
  
  
  
  4 hours ago
  edited 2:11PM 484 karma Flag
  
  
  
  
  @lschoolgo
  
  I haven't taken 71 yet but have definitely noticed a difference in difficulty between LR sections within a particular PT. My most recent PT was 69, -1 in Section 1 and -3 in Section 4.
  
  This obviously varies from test to test. I'm not sure exactly how beneficial it would be to compare difficulty section to section but it is an interesting thought. I suppose having an idea of progressive difficulty within a section *could* prevent you from overthinking "easy" questions early on in a section and cause you to be more wary of "hard" questions later on in a section but I'm not sure how helpful/practice even that would be in real time.
  
• brna0714 Alum Inactive ⭐

  May 2015 1489 karma

  @lschoolgo
  
  I guess my question would be this- if you knew all of that information, what types of real life strategies would that lead you put in place? You mentioned doing the "easier" questions faster but isn't the goal always to do questions are efficiently as possible without sacrificing accuracy? How would that goal change?
  
  I'm not trying to be critical here. I am genuinely trying to follow your train of thought, in case there's something I'm missing.
• lschoolgo Member

  May 2015 edited May 2015 274 karma

  @brna0714
  
  First, average difficulty level for a section can help one see if the number of mistakes one makes correlate with the average difficulty of the section. So if one got more wrongs on 65RC when compared to 68 RC one can reason and the average difficulty of 65 rc was much higher, one has a reason for why they performed worse on the section as opposed to attributing it to some random factor such as not feeling 100% etc.
  
  Second, doing easier questions faster is probably always the goal, but i for one don't know if i accomplish that goal until i can see the time i took for the first 10 Q correlates with their difficulty in any given section. The times i have taken for first 15Q in LRs have varied a lot, and many of this variation is attributable to variation in the number of difficult or easy questions in the beginning. If one can see for an LR section in which one took 19 min for the first 15Q indeed did have average difficulty of 4>x>3, same as the last 10 questions then, instead of thinking i made a mistake not going even faster on the first 15Qs, I'd focus on not panicking even when I end up taking 19 mins for the first 15Qs.
  
  
• Quick Silver Alum Inactive Sage

  May 2015 1049 karma

  @ddakjiking is right. I think it's best to be open to time sinks being mixed in sooner and be ready to skip and come back if time allows. Re-read/watch @"J.Y. Ping" 's lesson on skipping from the syllabus.
• nicole.hopkins Inactive Sage Inactive ⭐

  May 2015 edited May 2015 7965 karma

  No question the time sinks/toughies are occuring in Q's 1-10 in this test range. Took PT67 today—and very glad I'm PT'ing/retaking/eventually drilling up to PT70 (will save 71-75 for September) now because there is a noticeable shift. Srsly I promise I am not just psyching myself out. I took PT63 this weekend and even between that and PT67, I can notice a difference. It's not a matter of difficulty—I almost wonder if they hired a new editor or something because there are fewer of the nasty tricks that have been really frustrating for me in PT40 and beyond, but more demanding on the fundamentals.
  
  Or maybe I am just zeroing in on the reasoning structure and filtering out the fluff ... I doubt that, honestly—I do think there's a shift.
  
  Also, I am noticing that super nasty games like to show up in the PT65+ range. What do y'all think? Tricksy LSAC!
  
  
• hrjones44 Alum Member

  May 2015 323 karma

  they have the Evaluate questions now theres at least two on each test, ive taken 66, 68 and 69 they dont seem bad really
  
• hrjones44 Alum Member

  May 2015 323 karma

  also 67 i have done using it for practice sections and the games seemed harder and the first LR section did too, but the others mentioned above seemed fine.
• mpits001 Alum Member

  May 2015 edited May 2015 938 karma

  In my opinion the shift is just getting use to a different pattern. I'm not sure if it's me or the test but the PTs 65+ take advantage of abstract answer choices more often than previous tests. I know this psyches me out because it's one of the first 10 and I have an OCD for 100% the first 12, and doing so very quickly. I notice I need to pace myself more. The last thing I want is to get an easy answer wrong just because I didn't take the time to carefully think out the abstract answer choices. I'm BRing the HELL out of PT 65 today and maybe taking PT 66 tonight/tomorrow then PT 64 Friday!