Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Categories
- 33.4K All Categories
- 28.1K LSAT
- 17.1K General
- 5.2K Logical Reasoning
- 1.4K Reading Comprehension
- 1.7K Logic Games
- 70 Podcasts
- 193 Webinars
- 12 Scholarships
- 194 Test Center Reviews
- 2.2K Study Groups
- 111 Study Guides/Cheat Sheets
- 2.5K Specific LSAT Dates
- 31 November 2024 LSAT
- 18 October 2024 LSAT
- 9 September 2024 LSAT
- 38 August 2024 LSAT
- 28 June 2024 LSAT
- 4 April 2024 LSAT
- 11 February 2024 LSAT
- 22 January 2024 LSAT
- 38 November 2023 LSAT
- 43 October 2023 LSAT
- 14 September 2023 LSAT
- 38 August 2023 LSAT
- 27 June 2023 LSAT
- 30 Sage Advice
- 5K Not LSAT
- 4K Law School Admissions
- 13 Law School Explained
- 10 Forum Rules
- 636 Technical Problems
- 286 Off-topic
Related Discussions
LSAT Prep Low Point
We all hit high points and low points in our LSAT journey. At the moment, I am devastated, drained, and confused on how to proceed. I want this more than anything and I am constantly questioning whether or not it is possible at this point.
To be more specific, I am capable of -0 on LG, -2 in LR, but RC...I consistently score -8 to -10 and I just now scored -14....like I legitimately got more incorrect than correct. I am at the point of questioning if it is even possible for me to improve in RC because I legitimately have tried everything. Absolutely everything. After weeks of not PTing and only drilling RC, my score was WORSE than before I started drilling. I am sharing this personal failure of mine to encourage anyone out there who might be self conscious of their current performance. I know that I definitely am. Transparency is liberating...at least in my opinion. So here I am being transparent about the fact that I absolutely have no idea what I am doing in RC 
Anyways...I'm not posting because I am seeking advice for RC. I am posting because I know I'm not the only one who has been here. We all want this and we all know how devastating a taste of failure is. For anyone out there struggling at the rock bottom of your LSAT goals...you are most certainly not alone. For anyone who literally has shed more than a couple tears over this test...you are most certainly not alone. For anyone who questions the practicality of your goals on the daily...you are most certainly not alone.
So let's get up, brush ourselves off and destroy this thing because I, for one, am too prideful to let the LSAT defeat me.
Comments
I absolutely love this and agree with you. I also at one time a few months ago hit one of my low points and it was devastating. I think I even sobbed and called my friends. But I had lost confidence in my ability and that was really hard on me. I didn't know at that point if I could do LSAT anymore.
But I had no choice. I had to keep going and when I took a new PT next week I just bounced right back and have not hit that low point again. I think it happens and we should just learn from it and move on.
A very wise person, @"Cant Get Right"
, once told me "it's all about the average score and not the most recent PT".
Good luck, I am sure you'll do great
RC is the most enigmatic section of the LSAT, imo. My issue has typically been that I take for granted that I know certain answers, so I don't go back to the passages as often as I should in order to pinpoint the source of the correct answer. I don't "confirm" or "justify" my answer choice, in other words. A very subtle misunderstanding/misreading is usually the reason for my incorrect answers on RC. In the past month, I've gone from -10 average to -6/-5, with usually only one 'bad' passage and 3 other good/great passages. There have been a few sections where I was just one tiny misunderstanding away from going -2/-1. Anxiety was a big issue for me with RC, also. My mind often became too "busy" (read: anxious) to read effectively. Practicing a consistent application of your approach can help calm the nerves and will eventually lead to more correct answers. I tend to see RC as a lot like Logic Games in that you must, must, must always justify your answer by referring to the passage (similar to the game board for LG) on certain, typically 'local,' questions.
Do you struggle more with 'local' or 'global' questions? Are you better at tracking the structure of passages or the ideas contained therein?
@ilikephilosophy (love the username. I was a philosophy major in college
)
I think my problem is I tend to overthink questions. I refer back to the passage too much because I second guess myself (to no avail...this hardly ever increases my accuracy. It usually only causes me to lose time and set myself to be more susceptible to anxiety). Detail questions are killers for me, so I guess local. But I mean...with -14, I clearly got some global questions wrong too so I can improve in both areas.
@I.S.S_OVO I also was planning on testing in June (I even registered and everything), but if I can't get comfortable with my RC before then, then I will defer until September or December. Best of luck to you though! I know you've probably already heard this, but you are in a great place because LG is definitely something that can be improved greatly on, especially if you're planning on practicing nonstop. Practicing will help you immensely. It seems as though you are solid in RC and LR, so just do what you're doing. Your prep strategy sounds spot on, so best of luck!
@Sami Your story is so encouraging. It's so good to know that failing at some points is essentially a prerequisite to being a top scorer. Every top scorer I've spoken to has affirmed this. So thank you
That was my major too!
I did that a lot at first. What helped me to overcome that hurdle was, on my first reading of a passage I began to try to read as if I wasn't taking an exam at all. I read the passage as though it is an excerpt about a topic I'm extremely interested in. After every paragraph, I would ask myself, "What did I just read? What was it trying to do? Did it present an argument ('A should do B', 'some people say this,' 'if this happens, then this must be the case,' etc.), describe a subject/phenomena, present me with an example, etc.?" This helped to slow my mind down, and more importantly, helped me to fully understand what the passage was saying, how it was saying it, and why it was saying it. I call this, "reading for structure."
Also, when the above method was a bit too much for me to handle at first, I would break it down further by counting (1) the number of paragraphs in the entire passage, and then (2) the number of sentences in each paragraph immediately before I would read each paragraph.
I know you said you're not looking for advice, but I figure if my experience can help you out at all, it would be best to share.
It is not you, it is that RC is very tricky. I have noticed that lots of the sections are either medically- related or very techy-related. I have training in both and sometimes I do a question and think, whoa, that would be really hard to answer if you did not have formal training in the subject. So, I can understand your frustration. Just keep plugging away.
Appreciate you sharing:) RC crushed me and my soul (at the time) when I received my Sep'16 score...
I love to tease Josh @"Cant Get Right" about how having a natural aptitude in RC provides 27-28 points but LG only has 23 points... Teasing aside, he is honest about how he had to work hard to really fine-tune his RC.
Daniel @danielznelson is a great example of someone that did not have a natural affinity for RC and he cracked the "code" where it became his favorite section.
There is hope and it is learnable - or so I hear, lol
I appreciate everyone's input. It's so valuable to have such a supportive community on here because, as much as I can complain and vent to my friends and family about this, they clearly can't empathize the way people on here can. No one understands the LSAT struggle like fellow LSATers.
Josh @"Cant Get Right" has definitely given me some invaluable advice before regarding LR, so I would love to get his method on RC. I'm also very interested on how Daniel @danielznelson "cracked" RC, because that's exactly what I'm waiting for...some revelation that makes me an RC beast.
Hey! I too struggled with improving in RC and for the longest time.
Engage in fluid anticipation and hold fast to that anticipation as you're reading. Anticipating isn't just for the end of each paragraph; do it as you're reading throughout the passage. And when you see what you anticipated, consciously acknowledge it. Otherwise, you won't even pick up on what you anticipated! I see this all the time with those I help in RC; even with a flawless prediction, many people ignore their prediction when they actually read it. Keep anticipating as you go. This will help you better identify the structure and the main point(s). It also helps with outlining the tone of the author as well of the purpose of the passage. If you're in the last paragraph and you predict that the author is going to say one of two hypotheses is better and the author doesn't, you now know the author doesn't really make an argument. Rather, the passage is more informative, clarifying, or explanatory.
Similarly, identify main points as you go. After reading a passage, predict what is next, and if you have to read the next few words in the next paragraph to do so, fine. There's no cheating here; you're trying to understand the passage as well as you can. For example, if paragraph one outlines two points and if the first point is in the second paragraph, the final point better be in the third (last). If you need to check ahead, again, that's fine. Think though, if it is the second point that is being addressed, you already know the main point of the third paragraph! You used the outline in the first paragraph to do this. Now, all of the minutia, the details, et cetera, can be looked at as reinforcing, supporting, et cetera, that main point. I try to use what I think is an at least moderately relevant analogy:
When doing a puzzle (i.e. taking a mess of tiny pieces and trying to put them together), the first thing you do is look at the bigger picture. Why? Because you want to know the context in which the individual pieces exist. And you want to have direction for connecting these pieces together.
Imagine doing, say, a 1000 piece puzzle without looking at the box. Good luck. You have no idea what the bigger picture is, yet you're trying to connect these pieces together. Which colors go to what? If the puzzles is picturing a valley, where's the grass? The left side? The right side? Both?
Similarly, understanding the details in RC is best done when you're gathering the bigger picture. Unfortunately, we don't have what is equivalent to a box showing us the bigger picture. But we do have outlines, key words and phrases, and identification of structure and the author's tone that help us to identify this bigger picture. Find this as you read (and you can do it much more quickly than you might realize), and the small pieces naturally fall into play.
Finally, the small pieces really do make up a greater whole. I've found that it's much easier to work towards understanding that bigger picture and reinforcing the bigger picture with the tiny pieces, rather than the other way around. Identifying the main point at the end of each paragraph - when you've done no anticipating beforehand - can be done, but it isn't easy. You have to jumble a bunch of terms, phrases, and words together and hope you're on track. Again, identify as you go and everything changes.
And that's just the tip on passages! But I don't want to write so much that nothing stick. And I'll probably write about ACs later.
You just so happen to be in luck!
https://7sage.com/discussion/#/discussion/10522/webinars-reading-comprehension-one-week-three-webinars
And hang in there. This is a part of the process. The LSAT is designed to make us hit these emotional walls and our scores reflect as much how we're able to handle them as they do our raw intellect or anything else. Law schools want people who can overcome these obstacles as much as, if not more than, the occasional genius who can bypass them altogether.
I have literally copied and pasted this post into a Word document so I can reread and highlight your points. Thank you so much! Please do write about the ACs! It is certainly not in vain and it is extremely appreciated.
@"Cant Get Right" I will be there
Feel you on the low points, thanks for sharing, it's heartening and motivating to see people who are struggling show that kind of positive mental attitude!