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how to become more efficient under timed conditions?

ninaaaa15ninaaaa15 Alum Member
in General 124 karma

Hi everyone,

I just took my first ever PT, and throughout the entire process, I was falling short on time. I literally had to leave the last 5-7 questions of each section blank because I ran out of time, and even then, I constantly had to skim over the passages and AC to barely make it to question 20. I'm worried I may be too slow and don't know what to do to become more efficient under timed conditions. Is this an issue I should be very worried about, or do you guys think over time, I will naturally become more efficient as I take more PTS

Thank you in advance!

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  • ClaudioD21ClaudioD21 Member
    414 karma

    You'll definitely improve over time. I'm sure many of us ran out of time on our first-ever PT or had to guess on many questions in order to finish on time. I wouldn't worry. Continue doing drills and PTs and you'll be solid after enough practice.

  • bmaxp523bmaxp523 Member
    26 karma

    Logic Games you will certainly become much faster at as you learn how to do the games. In terms of the other two, I would say it's just repetition. I'm currently dealing with a similar time issue for the RC section so I've been forcing myself to do at least one or two RC sections everyday and I can feel my focus level and efficiency slowly increasing. It's all about how much you're really willing to practice. Just keep plugging away!

  • sh.francissh.francis Core Member
    246 karma

    It's totally normal. Don't worry about it. You will get faster as your study more but how you study affects how quickly you improve with speed.

    The key to getting faster is including both timed and untimed work. Timed work helps with building focus & endurance, skipping strategy, and being able to execute your process. Untimed work is where you build the fundamentals and hone your process. It's actually very hard to build fundamentals under timed conditions... so when you're starting out the mix should be tilted more towards untimed work and increasing the percentage of timed as you get better and the test date approaches.

  • valentina.soares-1valentina.soares-1 Alum Member Sage 7Sage Tutor
    edited January 2023 194 karma

    Hi @ninaaaa15 ,

    You’re still early on in your journey! There is plenty of time to get to a point where you not only have enough time to get to all of the questions, but enough time for a round 2 to come back and revisit difficult problems. Running out of time is an issue that comes up for almost everyone and should be addressed depending on where you’re at in your journey and what the cause of this issue is. For you, I believe that as you continue to practice full PTs you will become more comfortable with the timing and how you should be pacing each section. To echo what others have said, much of the solution to this problem is going to be getting more familiar with the test and more effective with the actual content.

    At this point, rather than thinking primarily about timing, you should do a couple of things.

    1. Make sure you have a process for each section and question type. For example, for LR, make sure you know exactly what to do when you see each question type. If there are certain question types you realize are always a time sink, maybe your process for now is to skip those until you can dedicate more time to studying them. For LG, build out a checklist for how you set up each game type and how you approach the different questions like MBT, CBT, etc. Do you do the questions with additional premises first? Having a set process to follow can really help you manage the chaos that is Logic Games.

    2. Never stop brushing up on your fundamentals. Memorize the common flaws, practice lawgic until you can do complex conditionals effortlessly, know how to logically negate English statements like some, most, and all, know the rules associated with conditionals and or rules for LG, etc.

    3. At least in the beginning, focus more on drilling content than on scoring high on PTs. Use PTs as a metric to further guide your studying. You really only need to take one or two a week and take advantage of the analytics to drill the question types that you are missing most.

    4. Once you have enough time in your study schedule to make timing a priority, start doing drills that focus on this. For example, practice getting the first 10 questions of an LR section done in 10 minutes.

    The more games you foolproof, question types you drill, and passages that you practice, the more comfortable you will be with the content of the exam and the quicker you will be able to get through a timed section. That combined with implementing strategies like skipping questions in LR and doing questions with additional premises first in LG will likely make a big difference in solving this problem for you.

    If you want to talk to one of our expert tutors about how we can help you create a game plan for the time between now and test day, feel free to use this link to schedule a free consultation! We work with you to diagnose your current weaknesses and put together a weekly plan to help you pick up those points and reach your goal score. https://calendly.com/7sage-tutoring/7sage-tutoring-free-consultation?utm_source=FCA_A

  • ninaaaa15ninaaaa15 Alum Member
    124 karma

    Hi everyone,

    You have all given me extremely useful advice and tips. Thank you so much. They have been helping me out a lot. After taking my first 2 PTs, I was genuinely ready to give up on my dreams of getting into law school, but I have found so much comfort in reading about all of your experiences. I appreciate it beyond words!

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