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Comments
Remember it's all about quality over quantity. 2-3 PTs seems a bit excessive so don't feel that you have to stick to doing that much in a week. You'd be in better shape if you do 1 PT with thorough BR. 2 may be ok without hindering your BR performance, but I feel taking 3 will prevent you from doing solid BR. I say that because proper BR requires a lot of time and effort - high scorers are looking at doing a minimum of 6 hours of BR per PT. Also you should reserve the later PTs for when you are scoring near or at your target on the earlier PTs and when you are getting closer to your test date, but you should focus more on getting closer to your target score. The later PTs are precious and should only be used when you see you're hitting your target score with earlier PTs.
Thank you!
@akistotle (I literally just posted this somewhere else, but it was relevant to your question!)
While it is certainly doable to take 2 PTs in a week, I found that it was much more important to have quality BR time than hitting more PTs. While PTing is great for building test-day confidence, it is more valuable for recognizing weaknesses under timed conditions. The BR phase is essential to sussing out those areas where your weaknesses may not be as apparent.
For me, I initially tried to do 2 PTs per week, every week, and I found that I would sometimes rush the BR process. When I did this, I was seeing areas of improvement as my score went up, but my BRing suffered somewhat. More importantly, I was not catching those questions that tripped me up because I missed some key concept. When I didn't take my time, I would either not catch a wrong AC, or I would recognize that my answer was wrong but not take the time to figure out where my mental process went awry because I saw the correct answer.
The secondary phase (for me) of BR is going back to reinforce the fundamentals that were weak on that PT. For any questions that I missed or fixed on BR, I sit down and drill those concepts until they feel ingrained. This way, under timed conditions my cognitive process is more automated, and I also recognize the concepts quickly. When I didn't take the time to figure out exactly what concept I was not using correctly, I was not able to adjust my studying appropriately.
When I wanted to get to a second PT, I would finish BR and study too soon, and I would not always dedicate the time that was necessary to absolutely smash these concepts into my peabrain. As a result, I found myself repeating mistakes under timed conditions.
2 PTs is very doable. Just make sure that you are giving yourself adequate time and attention to each PT in order to glean all of that valuable information post-PT. For me, it became more of a weekly balancing game. I always scheduled enough time to take 2 PTs, but if the first one took a lot of time in the BR and study phase, I didn't push myself to take a 2nd one. Once I stopped trying to pack in as many PTs as I thought I needed in order to score well, I started seeing more improvement in my test skills.
My advice, schedule the time for 2 PTs. If you don't get to the 2nd one, don't sweat it, and try to get to 2 next week. Time dedicated to studying the LSAT is valuable, even if it isn't the content that you expected to work on.
As @"montaha.rizeq" said, it is quality over quantity.
Hey, so I don't think between now and June that's enough time to do all PT's between 40-80. Especially since I am guessing you are in earlier stage of your prep and blind review is mostly where all the gains in understanding will be made.
Have you thought about using PT 40-55 for drills and 55-80 for Prep?
Thank you for your advice! You really helped me rethink about my schedule. I think I was obsessed with the idea of doing many PTs. But you are right; it's quality over quantity!
I really appreciate your comment! Now I think I should reschedule and plan to do only 55-80 for PTs. I'm actually taking LSAT in Asia (June 25), but still, it was a tight schedule. I started with PT38 only because the Starter course starts with PT36 and I already used up PT36 & 37 for drilling, but I'm planning to upgrade it to Ultimate+.
Again, thank you so much for your help!
You're welcome
@akistotle glad to hear. I am on a similar PT schedule. Let me know if you ever have any questions or want to work together on a stimulus. I would be happy to help.
@Sami Can you provide some more info on your suggestion to use certain PTs for drilling and others for actual PTs? Would the drill PTs be used only for concepts you have to reinforce based on your PT results or do you envision spread those sections out between PTs to keep up your skills overall?
I'm aiming for June 2017 as well and can mostly take PTs on weekends due to full-time work. Was wondering if your plan would be a good idea to insert some sections throughout the week to squeeze in more practice beyond time PTs.
Thanks!
Hey, a lot of great advice on this already, but I want to specifically reinforce this:
This is why so many PTs is too much. It's easy to take a PT and feel like the PT is done once time is called on the last section. But you're really only just getting started with that PT at that point. From there, you of course have to to an extensive Blind Review, and from there you need to respond to your performance. Go back through the PT and BR and ask yourself why you missed the questions you missed. It's an obvious question to ask, and yet it's one that is totally neglected by most students. It's actually not always an easy question to answer, and the thought process of figuring it out is really beneficial. The answers will also give you a ton of work to do. If you haven't addressed the problems from one PT, don't expect to improve on the next one. If you can't expect to improve, then why are you taking that PT? So just make sure you're learning from your PTs, not just taking them!
@dcdcdcdcdc Hey so the answer really depends,
If you are trying to learn a brand new concept and you want to work on building a habit then I would use old sections of PT's you have already done for that.
But lets say, you are just trying to add a 5th section to your new PT, I would say go ahead and use one of the sections from a PT you have not done.
I think its more important to go in sequence and learn all the things we need to learn from a PT rather than trying to do all 80 of the prep test.
So lets say you start from PT 55 and you never do PT 40-55, I would say that's fine. The logic is basically the same. So our emphasis should always be on learning those concepts.