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Studying for a year and I've only gone up 6 points from initial diagnostic

louise.jesselouise.jesse Alum Member
in General 61 karma

There's gotta be something wrong with my learning skills. I started out at 156 and I can't top 162 practically a year later. It's super confusing and frustrating - I started out going -4 or -3 on logical reasoning and -8 or -9 on RC and -15 on games. I decided to focus on the latter two since I was worse on them but it's completely backfired. I've managed to significantly improve on RC (I just needed to go faster) and now get -3 or -4, but I haven't improved at all on the games- and my logical reasoning has, inexplicably, gotten significantly worse - now I'm averaging -6. What the heck?

Is anyone in a similar boat where they've just plateaued? My diagnostic was decent so I was sure I would be able to top 165 on the test and I'm really frustrated. Why am I getting worse in logical reasoning? So weird.

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  • Leah M BLeah M B Alum Member ⭐
    8392 karma

    The test has changed somewhat over time, and I know when I moved from tests in 40s to 60s+, my LR score dropped a bunch. After a bit of time, it came back up. Is it possible something like that is involved?

    It sounds like you're likely timing everything right now? Are you only doing full timed PTs? Are you missing that many in LG because you run out of time or are you answering them incorrectly? It sounds like you could really benefit from doing more untimed work to get fundamentals down. It's easier to work on timing with LG just one game at a time before trying to finish whole sections.

    I'd also recommend on LR figuring out where your weaknesses are by question type and then work on doing a bunch in a row of the same type. It's super important to take time with BRing LR questions so you work through why you chose the answer that you did, and why the correct answer was right. Then you start to see the patterns a little easier.

    Hope some of that helps!

  • louise.jesselouise.jesse Alum Member
    61 karma

    With logic games, I'm mostly just running out of time - I skipped a whole game in my last timed test. I agree that I need to review the fundamentals, I worked my way quite quickly through the 7 sage course and now I'm going back and realizing that I really didn't master some basic things that I should have. So I have help.

    With LR I guess I will just need to spend more time on it. Since it was my strongest section I entirely stopped studying it; I really haven't focused much on it all. I guess I am mostly just confused b/c I have gotten worse; that is not something I anticipated.

    I don't think it's the year/ number of the test though - the only PTs I've done are between 30 and 40.

    Thanks for your input - I am going to have to spend some time really studying what's going wrong in logical reasoning.

    One question for you - the hardest questions for me in LR are the conditional logic ones and parallel flaws. I have heard that after PT 60 or so, there is actually less conditional logic in the LR sections. Have you found that to be true?

  • Leah M BLeah M B Alum Member ⭐
    8392 karma

    Great, this is really helpful info. For LG, yes I definitely think what you should do is forget timed sections or whole PTs for the moment. Work on foolproofing the LG. Just take 1 game at a time, work through and time it, and repeat it until you're able to get it around the time target that JY says in the videos. This will also help figuring out which type of game is your weakest so you can focus on that type if you need to. Once you get the timing down a little better for individual games, you'll definitely see your score go up for LG sections.

    Which do you mean by conditional logic in LR, like must be true/must be false type questions? Where it's helpful to diagram? That might be true... I honestly didn't do as much work in the earlier tests as I should have. I rushed my prep some toward the beginning and then when the actual test day got closer, I moved up to newer ones so I'd be more prepared for what I'd see that day. I feel like the newer questions are a little bit more dense, just longer - like there's more information to digest. That slowed me down some when I moved to newer tests. I also think that I got a little fried, and I took a few days off studying and then came back and started going back up in LR score again. So burn out had a bit to do with it as well.

    I definitely think you have the potential and can move up to where you want. Taking the LG game by game instead of whole sections is going to make a world of difference for you!

  • m.c lshopefulm.c lshopeful Alum Member
    614 karma

    Agree with Leah's advice

  • lady macbethlady macbeth Alum Member
    894 karma

    I would definitely go back to the CC and review a little bit more on the fundamentals. I know how you feel and know how discouraging it could be. Sometimes when I feel like I'm not moving, I just get so aggravated and want to give up all together but I know I can't do that haha.

    For me, the learning comes not during the timed PT, but during BR analysis and targeting problem areas. I find that the analytics on 7sage is a great help to isolating which question types I need help with more, mostly for LR. I don't think you should neglect a section even if it is your strongest one! I made the mistake of doing that with LG and now I have to go even harder with fool proofing games.

    What's your BR score vs your timed-PT score? Try to answer the questions untimed, take as much time as you need. Parse out each rule during LG, analyze each stimulus in LR, and match every answer choice in RC. This will help with your confidence/accuracy in answering questions during timed PT.

    It's annoying how frustrating it can be to score lower than how you did or not make as high of a jump as you thought. But it's important to remind yourself that it can be done :blush:

  • Seeking PerfectionSeeking Perfection Alum Member
    4428 karma

    Have you been foolproofing logic games? If so, for how long? Foolproofing ought to have made some difference from a -15 if you had been doing it regularly for a year.

    I imagine you'll be able to get those points back on logical reasoning with a little bit of drilling weaknesses/a review of the core curriculum. Congratulations on the reading comp improvements.

    The concerning thing here again is the logic games. They are the most easilly perfectible section. They start off most people's weakest and end up the strongest. If you had -0 on logic games you would be in reasonable shape. You can get there. Foolproof one new section worth of games a day. Then repeat it to make sure you still understand it the next day and the next week. I'd be absolutely shocked if that doesn't get you to near -0 on games in a year.

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