How to get those last points on LR

Comments

• 1 Like

  sophie74 Free Trial Member

  January 2017 373 karma

  One thing that REALLY helped me is doing the LR sections backwards, starting with the last question and working forwards. Still skipping around from there, but if you get the hardest q's out of the way first, it makes the easier ones at the beginning even easier, and you are not fatigued when you hit the harder, longer q's. It is definitely worth trying on a few PTs to see if this can help your problem. You may find that it eliminates it.
  
  A question for you is what are your strategies to missing only one or two in RC? The boat you are in for LR is the boat I am in on RC. My score is stagnant and I really want to get up to -1 or -2 by Feb. Any advice would be so, so appreciated!
• 5 Likes

  Cant Get Right Yearly + Live Member Sage ⭐ 🍌 7Sage Tutor

  January 2017 27901 karma

  @kacantolina said:
  1. I read an easy question incorrectly and missed a point or 2. It's the sort of question where I go back and STILL can't get the right answer.
  

  Yeah, these are really difficult, but they can be overcome.
  
  For the first one, that sounds like an issue of focus and mental clarity. You understand the problem, you just read and understand a slightly different one from what's actually there. I went to extreme lengths to make sure I showed up for PTs (and the real thing, of course) in top form. I bent everything from my sleep schedule to my diet with the aim of making sure I was razor sharp by test time. It helped, and I stopped making these errors. At a certain point there are increasingly diminishing returns for our efforts, and you sound like you've hit that wall where small improvements take enormous efforts.
  
  For the second, these are the most difficult questions on the test and they are intentionally designed to trip up as many people as possible. For people scoring in the 178 range, these are likely among the few they missed. I never did get to a point with these where I could consistently achieve understanding and full confidence in my answer: Sometimes I could, sometimes I couldn't. Really, the most important thing on these is to not let it bother you. Skip them, and be okay with missing them. These will cause you serious points if you let yourself get bogged down on them and waste 4 minutes to get it right with confidence. So what I was able to do was to use my collective experience with these questions and develop a really strong feel for both the LSAT writer's tricks as well as my own personal tendencies on these. One thing I did a lot was that I'd get it down to two answer choices, and I'd really like one of them, but just not be able to eliminate the other one. In that situation, the one I "like" is wrong 90% of the time, and normally I can even kind of see in the moment how I might be able to eliminate it. So having learned this about myself through experience, I learned to recognize when this was happening and to make the right decision in that situation. And then there are other times when I just can't even, lol. These were few and far between, but I did learn to maximize my return when I did see them. It's all a matter of knowing the test and the writers. Keep/compile a list of these questions and revisit them frequently. Get a feel for what the writers are doing.
• 1 Like

  BinghamtonDave Alum Member ⭐ 🍌🍌

  January 2017 edited January 2017 8716 karma

  Excellent advice @"Cant Get Right"
  Thank you
• Q.E.D Alum Member

  January 2017 556 karma

  It's all a matter of knowing the test and the writers.

  so much truth
• 2 Likes

  apublicdisplay Alum Member

  January 2017 edited January 2017 696 karma

  Grasp the structure of the argument and then make analogous arguments. If you know the structure then you can coat it in different colors, which is essentially how the test makers get away with making "new" tests. Relating the central concept to commonsensical everyday ideas you're familiar with helps you reinforce it and see it in different ways.
• kacantolina Free Trial Member

  January 2017 edited January 2017 85 karma

  @"Cant Get Right" This is so comprehensive! Thank you. It actually is kind of a relief to hear that this is normal to encounter even for top scorers. I've been very anxious about these last few questions. It makes sense that I should just focus on the easiest ones that I miss---Occam's razor, I guess.
  
  @sokarpf Thank you! I'll give that a shot. I wish I had equally good advice to give you about the RC section! I tend to just read through and answer the questions, but I read pretty fast because I've been reading non-fiction books and news publications, etc. for entertainment for years. The only thing I can suggest is maybe making sure you read thoroughly, and don't skim, because the places where my eyes glaze over tend to be the places I miss questions, when I do.
• Cant Get Right Yearly + Live Member Sage ⭐ 🍌 7Sage Tutor

  January 2017 27901 karma

  @kacantolina said:
  It actually is kind of a relief to hear that this is normal to encounter even for top scorers.
  

  Totally normal!