Help! 137 PT BR 164

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  ClaudioD21 Member

  January 2023 414 karma

  If you scored a 164 during BR then it’s definitely a time issue. You need to work on time management in order to close the gap between those two numbers. A 164 means you clearly know what you’re doing in terms of fundamentals and and how to solve the questions. But scoring a 137 timed means you must be leaving like half sections unfinished. You need to be confident in your answers! If you think you have the answer but aren’t 100% sure, pick a choice, flag it, and move on. If you have spare time at the end go back and review as many flagged questions as you can. You can’t afford to leave blank answers on this test especially if you’re looking to close such a big gap. That being said, you just started to PT so lack of time management and struggling to finish is a common issue. The more you PT and the more you drill the faster you’ll get. The knowledge is there! Now it’s just time to practice and work on timing.
• 1 Like

  chriscampbell7687 Core Member

  January 2023 edited January 2023 68 karma

  This got longer than I intended...

  TLDR:
  Don't be discouraged by a low score, you're just starting! Blind Review (BR) = actual cognitive ability to understand the ideas being tested. BR suggests that you have much room to improve via practice. Create better automatic reasoning by 1. Breaking down questions/stimulus into their fundamentals to stop flawed automatic reasoning 2. Through repetition, rebuild automatic reasoning suited for logic/LSAT question types.

  Disclaimer, I'm not a tutor, but would like to offer a perspective and general study approach that you might find helpful, as well as some additional ideas! First off, your 130's are not the end all be all of your LSAT journey. Consider them a snapshot of your current ability under timed circumstances, they're not meant to scare you away. They don't represent your future potential and can be used as a starting point to inform future studying.

  I think a great indicator of this is that your Blind Review is in the 160's! This untimed review represents your actual ability to cognitively understand the material being tested, so I would hazard a guess that with some practice, the reasoning skills that got you your BR scores will show themselves in your actual score.

  You might be wondering how to get from point A to point B, and although its generally a lot more of a bumpy ride with a few ups, downs and plateaus (regarding your score) following seems to be a generally effective way of studying/approaching questions on the LSAT.

  STEP 1
  Your current automatic reasoning got you the 130's, but your slowed down non-automatic reasoning brought you into the 160's. So, the goal is to rebuild your automatic reasoning. First step is to break down your reasoning.

  a) Focus on fundamentals like the question TYPE (ie. is it asking what Must Be True, or Could Be False?) and question CONTENT (LG: Game Sketch/Rules, LR: Stimulus, RC: Passage)

  b) Put the pieces of the question CONTENT together to create a prediction of a potential answer choice that would satisfy the the question TYPE.

  c) Attempt to match your prediction to an answer choice.

  d) Regardless of whether you got it right or wrong, during BR be sure to take time to understand why four of the questions are wrong, and what makes the right answer choice correct.

  STEP 2
  The second step is just repetition. At some point you're pattern recognition that you won't have to consciously break down the parts of the question TYPE/CONTENT to get to the right (less re-reading as well). Your pattern recognition will slowly return to being automatic, but this time being better tuned with greater logical sensitivity. Answering these questions more quickly then, and having a better mind for recognizing the patterns of questions on the LSAT, will help a lot with the harder questions!

  To start step 1, definitely consult the 7Sage Syllabus! It isn't required that you do every single lesson, but you can if you feel the need. Otherwise it is a great tool to supplement your studies when you find yourself struggling with a certain question type. Definitely try untimed drills of the same question type (ie. 5-10 Necessary Assumption for LR) for as many question types and as many times as you think you might need. Once you are feel somewhat comfortable with each of the different question types start on untimed sections of LR, LG, and RC to better see where you've improved and what to focus on next, and then timed sections. When doing timed sections, people generally focus on mastering the Logic Game section first, as it is much more attainable to get 0 to 3 missed questions as compared to Logical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension.

  At this point, depending on your score, goals, etc. I would definitely recommend scheduling a free meeting/session with a 7Sage tutor. I have had one and it made a very significant difference for me (a lot of what I mentioned here was what I did/learned from my tutor!) They are able to better direct your studying to effectively address problems that might be harder for you to identify. If you've read this far, then congrats! Seeking out information is crucial for developing your study plan, and I hope that this has offered some helpful insight (without being too overwhelming lol!).

  Good luck friend!