Thoughts on LR Perfection - LSAT Dragon

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  jilliankirkland Live Member

  May 2 79 karma

  LR Perfection by Dragon Test Prep is tedious but a total game changer because it focuses only on the most difficult questions with the idea that if you dissect those first you and learn the logical errors you make when you get them wrong. I’m a few days into it and it makes so much sense to me now that wish I hadn’t spent money on other sites and books that teach on question types, what words to look for, etc. If you have a basic understanding of argument structure and are around or above this high 150s, that stuff won’t take you much higher.

  Using LSAT Demon I was up 16pts in 2 weeks from my first diagnostic but it was still 10pts from where I need to be and quick. I was afraid hours a day of practice would mean running out of questions to drill on, and I wasn’t sure I was actually breaking my bad habits since my wrong answers were in so many different question types. I read the explanations and watched videos to understand why each correct answer was correct and why the wrong answers were wrong, but those other methods weren’t addressing the reasons WHY I chose a particular wrong answer. I could see how to track that by keeping a Wrong Answer Journal, but that wasn’t going to help me unless someone could point me to questions that those same traps (which has surprisingly little to do with question categories, because it’s more about the answer choices and critical thinking required to put it together). Just drilling and drilling and taking more practice tests hoping for a better score each time. I wanted to know exactly what I need to get better at, and also see that the hours a day I'm practicing are making progress on those specific things. But it seemed I was paying $200/mo for an algorithm that gave me a random number score (which in videos the founder admits he doesn't understand, can't explain, and tells users to ignore) but no evidence I was actually improving my thinking.

  So last week I got the Dragon book. It breaks down the the toughest LR questions and addresses the traps they present by organizing them by Difficult Traits, such as "The stimulus contains a trap statement which sounds like the author's main point but there's no premise to support it" or "wrong answer choices are ideas that the author would probably agree with, but aren't the main conclusion of the argument." If you've read this far then you're searching for the same thing I was and just realized that this book is it. Go get it now. And don't be intimidated by how beastly it looks (due to lower-budget publishing, lack of formatting or visual separation on pages, etc). I made it through 80 something pages the first sitting and can’t wait to keep going. When I finish this book I’ll get after their RC Perfection too.

  FWIW, I’m not in any way affiliated with this book and don’t stand to gain anything by recommending it other than karma points. I’m just now doing this LSAT stuff at age 38 and don’t have a lot of time to waste so I’m super intentional about my investment of time and financial resources to get to my goal. Hope it helps!