đź“ŁFree Webinar on Thursday w/ LSAT Tutoring Giveaway!
On Thursday, January 6, at 9:00 PM ET, I'll host a webinar about using the 7Sage score report tool to diagnose your errors and study more effectively. After the webinar, we’ll award one attendee with a free hour of LSAT tutoring.
Discussion
The 7Sage score report is a great tool for diagnosing weak areas in your studies. It allows you to use your results to understand how you achieved those results. This helps you to revise and make changes to your strategy when it’s not getting you the results that you want.
What are some ways to diagnose issues? Of course, review the questions that you got wrong. But there is so much more you can look at to help you out. Here are some considerations to look out for to maximize your review process:
- How much time did I spend on the question?
- Did I flag the question?
- Did I go back to this question for a second round?
- During the timed take, did I think the question was difficult, easy, or in the middle?
- How does what I think compare to the analytics?
- What question type is it?
- Did anything happen to throw you off before that specific question?
- And finally, did I get the question wrong or right?
Answering these questions can shine a light on steps you can take to make progress in your studies. Let’s put this into practice with the following common scenario:
You’re reviewing question 13 in your logical reasoning section. 7Sage analytics say you spent 1 minute on it during your first pass, but decided to skip and flagged it after realizing something’s not clicking. You had time to go back after finishing all of the hard questions, so you go back and spend another minute on the question. You thought it was an easy question, and the analytics confirm that.
Failing to answer an easy question even after a second pass most likely indicates an error with your logical reasoning fundamentals, because 1) you had a reasonable amount of time to go back to the question, and 2) you still got the question wrong. So figure out what fundamental skill you're lacking (conditional reasoning? grammar? conclusion misidentification?) so you can get similar questions correct next time.
If you review the answer choice and determine the issue is not a fundamental skill, then another possibility is an error in test-taking strategy. Many students, when they go back to a question for a second pass, will barely skim the stimulus, relying on their past understanding to help answer the question. The thing is, your past understanding is most likely wrong. That’s why you flagged it in the first place! Using your previous understanding will only get you to the same exact place you were in during the first round. To fix this, make sure to scrap your understanding of the stimulus from round 1 and start totally fresh.
On Thursday’s webinar, we'll take a look at real student score reports and show you common issues just like the one discussed above to help you study smarter for the LSAT.