Direction Need.

[joshingschneider]

Hi,

I've taken the PowerScore Full Length Prep in the Spring. I've spent the past few months reviewing the course materials and taking practice tests. I find I absorb the concepts well yet have difficulty impletmenting the methodologies. I've taken a total of 6 pracitice test, and lot of the Problem Sets, although my confidence is up and feel like there is improvement in my understanding of the material, it is not reflecting in my scoring patterns. I aiming in the low 150s. I've taken a complete untimed test, and was only able to pull off 159. My timing is off, I feel I need help with my time. I feel often, I am rethinking the stimulous, re-reading, and often not really understanding the conditional structure of the stimulous. The irony is, I am positiving and confident. My peers, have been studying significantly less than I have and are all in the range of the upper 160s. However, when we converse and discuss certain difficult questions I feel I have a better conceptualization of what the questions are asking. Without mentioning it, double thinking, and re-reading and not understanding passages was a general challenge of mine. Yet, I feel I can succeed on the LSAT. I feel confident, I actually like the test, I feel it is fulfilling and stimulating.
An additional challenge, I have is regarding logical games, untimed I complete most games however, timed I have hard getting all the inferences, costing significant timing, resulting in the skipping games. The advance grouping,pattern,mapping, some of them I am still struggling conceptualizing how to diagram them. There is some games, I sit there, thinking after taking the course, re-reading the course books, I still have no idea how to diagram, and go about them succesfully. Yet, I feel confident, and love the material. Please guide me.

[Nikki Siclunov]

Hi,

It sounds like you've mastered some of the methods discussed in class, and are doing the right thing by reviewing the course material. I would also encourage you, however, to thoroughly review the practice tests you are taking. Pay particular attention not only to the questions you are missing, but also to the ones that is taking you a long time to solve. It is virtually impossible to work on your timing alone: it's like asking a runner to just run faster. I suspect there are certain question types or logical reasoning paradigms (conditional/causal reasoning, #/%, etc.) that you haven't fully mastered. For instance, repeatedly re-reading the stimulus without understanding its conditional structure shows you need to work on conditional reasoning (Lesson 2).

I'm not sure how you're reviewing your homework, but one thing you should absolutely be doing is reading the question explanations on the Student Center. They give you an idea of how to correctly approach hundreds and hundreds of questions... so any question you missed, or any question that you struggled with, should be reviewed in this way.

Timing is also a common problem with Games, and of course given unlimited amount of time, most people are able to correctly solve each question. The key to recognizing inferences is seeing connections between rules, patterns in how the games are constructed, etc. This requires continuous practice, and certainly doesn't happen overnight. I suggest you review every game in your homework and examine in depth our set-up and question explanations both for the games in the homework, and for the practice tests you took in class.

If you have any more specific questions from the practice tests you've done, feel free to post them on the relevant forum.

Good luck!