- Posts: 2
- Joined: Jul 16, 2017
- Sun Jul 16, 2017 11:30 pm
#37355
Hello!
I am currently a PowerScore student taking the Full Course and just completed my second diagnostic. I was able to see a 9 point increase from my first diagnostic (157 to 164) and noticed a couple of trends and was wondering what PowerScore and others recommend if they experienced/know of someone who experienced the same things. This list is long because I spent a big portion of my day thinking about the test and how to improve.
Before diving in, I just wanted to say thanks to PowerScore for wonderful strategies and courses. They came heavily recommended from my Pre-Law Advisor (who says that everyone (probably most?!) from my university who had taken PowerScore had received high LSAT grades) and he was right.
1) I struggle early on in the exam. For my first diagnostic, I got to the exam room sweating after running out from the train. I struggled concentrating early on and attributed many of the careless mistakes I made to being tired/unfocused/rushed. However, on the exam that I had just taken, I noticed that I make many more errors towards the beginning of the test than the latter, becoming better the deeper I go in. For the four sections that counted, I got 7 (LR), 4 (RC), 3 (LR), 2 (LG) questions wrong in that order.
Thinking this over, I thought that it would be good for me to do some review questions prior to taking the exam - the question is just how much and from which sections (8 minutes for all of them). Or whether there might be some other alternative strategies that I could implement.
2) Perhaps playing into the first problem, I noticed that I missed several questions by missing a few key words while reading the question. For example, I would miss a "not" in the correct answer choice, then proceed to eliminate all the answer choices and being unable to answer the question (and since I negated the correct answer choice, I thought it was most absurd and never came back to it). This isn't happening on a few questions, but on almost half the questions I get wrong in LR. This seems to be an issue while doing the homework too in an untimed setting. If you have any tips/strategies to avoid this, please let me know!
3) LR: I seem to be struggling with MBT/MP/Weaken/Strengthen despite doing most (if not all?) of the homework and getting questions consistently correct. (Most were in the first section I did) Considering the prevalence and importance of these topics in understanding Logical Reasoning Questions, I was wondering if PowerScore would recommend getting one of its workbooks/other resource (that doesn't repeat too many of the questions in the homework) in order to provide supplemental questions just to be sure that I have this down.
I have all the Justify/Assumption questions down - mostly because of how you can literally deconstruct and get the correct answers every single time; and although I got some method/flaw questions wrong, I have not reviewed that material in class yet - I think that my goal right now would be to master what I've already been taught.
4) RC: Perhaps playing back to a MBT weakness (or perhaps I'm getting questions wrong just due to the repeated appearance of these questions in RC), all 4 questions I got wrong on RC were MBT (3 CR, 1 GR, 2 AP). Seems like mastering MBT will provide a good payoff if I could get that down.
I noticed that I struggle more to go through a humanities passage than the other three. I have been heavily exposed to literature in the other three categories and do not seem to struggle with them. My trouble is that I have not really read too much about different passages relating to humanities topics - reading about art and music in an academic sense seems to be more difficult/boring than the other passage types. I know the coursebook said that there was no defined strategy because nothing appeared repetitively, but I was wondering if there was something you would recommend for me to read or if I could get extra practice.
5) Timing: I was not sure how to handle timing during the exam. Throughout the test, I always felt rushed but managed to keep to a pace of 1Q/M, usually finishing each section (except LG - which I did not finish) 5-7 minutes before time. However, I am not sure if this is ideal because I got so many questions wrong and that if I had spent more time going through questions more carefully, I might have gotten them right. When you take the LSAT, how do you usually manage your time and what do you do to pace yourself? Would you leave 5 minutes for review? or perhaps less time instead?
6) What do you think is a realistic improvement I can see for the September LSAT? Ideally, I would like to see north of a 175 (which is what my pre-law advisor says will make me competitive for three schools I'm looking at). I know that this is an extremely difficult score to get, but I know that there are many individuals at PowerScore who have done it on a consistent basis in the past.
I am currently behind in the Coursework due to travel but will be back on track by Tuesday. How many timed practice tests should be done in a week? If I have extra time after completing homework, should I work on a practice test or look ahead to future lessons?
I am currently a PowerScore student taking the Full Course and just completed my second diagnostic. I was able to see a 9 point increase from my first diagnostic (157 to 164) and noticed a couple of trends and was wondering what PowerScore and others recommend if they experienced/know of someone who experienced the same things. This list is long because I spent a big portion of my day thinking about the test and how to improve.
Before diving in, I just wanted to say thanks to PowerScore for wonderful strategies and courses. They came heavily recommended from my Pre-Law Advisor (who says that everyone (probably most?!) from my university who had taken PowerScore had received high LSAT grades) and he was right.
1) I struggle early on in the exam. For my first diagnostic, I got to the exam room sweating after running out from the train. I struggled concentrating early on and attributed many of the careless mistakes I made to being tired/unfocused/rushed. However, on the exam that I had just taken, I noticed that I make many more errors towards the beginning of the test than the latter, becoming better the deeper I go in. For the four sections that counted, I got 7 (LR), 4 (RC), 3 (LR), 2 (LG) questions wrong in that order.
Thinking this over, I thought that it would be good for me to do some review questions prior to taking the exam - the question is just how much and from which sections (8 minutes for all of them). Or whether there might be some other alternative strategies that I could implement.
2) Perhaps playing into the first problem, I noticed that I missed several questions by missing a few key words while reading the question. For example, I would miss a "not" in the correct answer choice, then proceed to eliminate all the answer choices and being unable to answer the question (and since I negated the correct answer choice, I thought it was most absurd and never came back to it). This isn't happening on a few questions, but on almost half the questions I get wrong in LR. This seems to be an issue while doing the homework too in an untimed setting. If you have any tips/strategies to avoid this, please let me know!
3) LR: I seem to be struggling with MBT/MP/Weaken/Strengthen despite doing most (if not all?) of the homework and getting questions consistently correct. (Most were in the first section I did) Considering the prevalence and importance of these topics in understanding Logical Reasoning Questions, I was wondering if PowerScore would recommend getting one of its workbooks/other resource (that doesn't repeat too many of the questions in the homework) in order to provide supplemental questions just to be sure that I have this down.
I have all the Justify/Assumption questions down - mostly because of how you can literally deconstruct and get the correct answers every single time; and although I got some method/flaw questions wrong, I have not reviewed that material in class yet - I think that my goal right now would be to master what I've already been taught.
4) RC: Perhaps playing back to a MBT weakness (or perhaps I'm getting questions wrong just due to the repeated appearance of these questions in RC), all 4 questions I got wrong on RC were MBT (3 CR, 1 GR, 2 AP). Seems like mastering MBT will provide a good payoff if I could get that down.
I noticed that I struggle more to go through a humanities passage than the other three. I have been heavily exposed to literature in the other three categories and do not seem to struggle with them. My trouble is that I have not really read too much about different passages relating to humanities topics - reading about art and music in an academic sense seems to be more difficult/boring than the other passage types. I know the coursebook said that there was no defined strategy because nothing appeared repetitively, but I was wondering if there was something you would recommend for me to read or if I could get extra practice.
5) Timing: I was not sure how to handle timing during the exam. Throughout the test, I always felt rushed but managed to keep to a pace of 1Q/M, usually finishing each section (except LG - which I did not finish) 5-7 minutes before time. However, I am not sure if this is ideal because I got so many questions wrong and that if I had spent more time going through questions more carefully, I might have gotten them right. When you take the LSAT, how do you usually manage your time and what do you do to pace yourself? Would you leave 5 minutes for review? or perhaps less time instead?
6) What do you think is a realistic improvement I can see for the September LSAT? Ideally, I would like to see north of a 175 (which is what my pre-law advisor says will make me competitive for three schools I'm looking at). I know that this is an extremely difficult score to get, but I know that there are many individuals at PowerScore who have done it on a consistent basis in the past.
I am currently behind in the Coursework due to travel but will be back on track by Tuesday. How many timed practice tests should be done in a week? If I have extra time after completing homework, should I work on a practice test or look ahead to future lessons?
In our rush to get the "right" answer we may ignore things that are quite obvious. Try to start giving yourself more time on the difficult LR questions (i.e. 11-26). It's not unusual to take 2 minutes (or more) for difficult LG questions on test day. By slowing down we increase accuracy. Then, speed then comes with practice. So get those fundamentals down first.