I'm trying to figure out the best way to prepare for the LSAT between now and December. Now, I feel as if I'm doing BR wrong. My BR scores and my PT scores are very close. On the last test I did, there was a difference of just one point (for reference I'm PTing in the low/mid-170s).
But one thing that the BR process has taught me is that I make a lot of confidence errors due to misreading and timing pressure. I'm considering BRing the entire test to address this, but my gut tells me that that would be a poor use of time because it seems like I would be better off actively practicing to improve timing instead of going over 20+ questions to find that I missed one due to forgetting that it included the word "except." The only thing I seem to be learning is that I need to read more carefully?
With that said, though, I do BR the LG section in its entirety, because I'm not -0 in LG. I'm getting there but...
Also, since December is rapidly approaching, I feel as if I should emphasize going through more PTs instead of BR, but going through PTs quickly seems to be looked down upon by the LSAT experts here, so before I went through with my atypical plan of quickly progressing through PTs while continuing to BR as I already am, I thought I would double check with all of the wise people here.
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95-100% of my confidence errors are due to rushing or carelessness.
I know this is a very basic question but what exactly is a clean copy BR? I write in the test books (I don't have any PDFs) and remember my answers so if a clean copy BR is doing questions with a clean answer sheet, I don't see how it would help much.
I appreciate you taking time to give me advice @Pacifico.
Clean copy BR is doing your BR with a completely fresh copy of the test. Much easier to do with PDFs, but people either copy whole tests or buy double the copies. That way you aren't fighting your ego to keep/change an answer.
I get what you're saying about real understanding, which is why I thought I was doing BR wrong. I just worry that a clean copy BR isn't going to make any difference. If I circle something for BR it's because it caused me trouble. Since it was particularly obnoxious, I am going to remember it and my answer and why I picked that answer. If I have any ego issues, I just have to get over them. A clean copy won't make me forget.
My main issue was (and still is) that I don't yet see how BRing is going to help me with pacing. I'm coming at this from a bit of an odd/not exactly ideal situation. I've taken about 20 PTs total and fewer than 10 in the last 7 months. (My real LSAT score from Oct. is 169.) I thought that doing 5 to 10 PTs more would be good because it's practice, it builds my confidence, it's kind of fun, and it's not going to burn me out. Otherwise, I would be doing a lot of nothing but LG games in terms of the LSAT.
You won't know it until you try.
You're asking for advice ... And we're giving it! So why not try it out? You're no different from me or any other test taker. We are all emotional test takers to some degree, even hardcore ENTJ's like myself.
So ... Did you have a question we could help you answer?
With LR and RC, the reviewing of the questions I marked hasn't been a problem. I think it's going as it should. I just worry about all of the careless mistakes I make. Both of you seem to agree with me that BRing the whole test, at this stage, would be a waste of time. So when I mentioned emphasizing doing PTs I meant doing new ones instead of basically taking the same test twice by BRing the whole thing. If I did the whole thing again, I didn't think I would learn anything else except to read more carefully.
I'm not saying that I wish to stop BR. My initial question was about BRing the whole test to catch the careless mistakes/confidence errors that I make versus continuing as I am and only BRing what I mark.
ETA: I posted this because I felt as if during the BR process I was supposed to catch my mistakes and I wasn't. Only in LG was I catching everything and that was because I was doing the entire section again.
And sometimes reading errors are a sign that you might just need a break/some rest. You'll be fine—just take care of yourself and don't push it too hard.
On a side note, the only questions I would say that this doesn't necessarily apply is when you can accurately prephrase/predict the right answer. So if you clearly know the author of the stim is committing a sufficient/necessary mix-up, then you just know that's the answer and maybe you don't need to circle it. Nothing wrong with being safe though!
In LG, though, because of time I haven't always been eliminating the answer choices and have made mistakes with except questions because of this.
But I also haven't done that many PTs recently so it could be me making a fuss about something little that I can fix without too much difficultly by paying more attention and simply slowing down or at least that's what I hope.
What @nicole.hopkins said about misreading due to being tired also makes a lot of sense. I did these PTs at night (starting after 11PM) because I work late or in a noisy cafe. So when I do my next PT tomorrow, I will do it in the morning around when I would actually have the LSAT and in a relatively quiet place. Perhaps that will help.
Also you just seem to not understand the learning process that BR offers you. Reviewing the whole test is worthless if you are in the 160+ range because it's not an effective use of your time. If all the ones you get wrong are confidence errors then you review those after you BR and score the test. It's not like you score the test, see what you got and then move on. You go back and you do further review of confidence errors as well as BR errors.
And you don't just circle answers on BR because you remember them. You choose answers because you take the time to have a firm understanding of the dynamics of the stimulus and question stem and then can articulate why four ACs are wrong and one is right. This should take less than two hours in the 170s.
And just to reiterate: BR helps with pacing by increasing your understanding. If you're really scoring where you say you are then you obviously have a good grasp of the test so that's not so much the issue, instead you just need to chill out a bit. You should move quickly through easy questions but never rush, there is a huge difference and if you can't see or feel that difference then you need to take some time to reflect on that.
Thanks again. I'll approach my next PT with all of this in mind.
I'll tell you what I did, though. As I went through each section during a PT, I naturally marked the questions I wasn't 100% sure about. When I finished, most of the time, I would immediately check my answers (a violation of the BR method) and then meticulously go through all of the questions that I marked. I wouldn't leave those questions until I understood them 100%. I would make sure that I could say this answer choice is right because of ... and these are wrong because of ... I was never okay with having a foggy understanding of things. Individually, each question absolutely had to click before I moved on.
There are obvious drawbacks to the method I used. One big one being that I didn't give myself the chance to work through the problem again without being timed - I just skipped right to the answer. But one minor good thing about it for me personally (that may not necessarily work for other people) is that I didn't waste a lot of time spinning my mental wheels. There were many questions I just didn't understand. Taking a second look at them wasn't going to help me understand them any better because I had some kind of fundamental problem. Seeing the solution allowed for me to work backwards and figure it out in a way that was relatively straightforward.
What I would say is this, though. BR properly, but if you don't understand something and the BR process isn't making it any clearer, admit to yourself that you don't understand, and then move on. Don't waste a lot of time making up odd reasons for why things are right/wrong.
Then, and I think this is a really important step, watch the video for every single question that you marked. It doesn't matter if you figured it out during BR or not. Compare your method for solving the problem to JY's method. If it gets tedious, speed up the videos, but still watch them. See if there was anything you missed in your technique of answering the question that would have given you the ability to solve the problem faster or easier.
For most people, I think this test is just a struggle and there's no easy way to get scores up. We just have to keep practicing while staying focused and trying to make the most out of every question we see.
I got quite panicky as seen in this discussion because when I was preparing for the October test I had been fairly strong in LR, but in November, after I completed the curriculum here, I was making all of these mistakes and went from hardly missing any to missing 2 to 5 in each LR section. Most of my mistakes were stupid and confidence errors as well so it really scared me since it didn't happen once or twice but went on for several PTs.
What I realized was that (for me) reading the question stem first is detrimental. For whatever reason, it screws up my focus and I can't move through the section with as much clarity, comfort, or as quickly as I can otherwise. As soon as I stopped reading the question stem first, I stopped missing LR questions.