Worried about my timing!

[Cmaltbie0]

So I purchased all of the PowerScore bibles this past November to help prepare before I began the January full-length course. I have since completed most of them and felt pretty confident taking my first prep test this past Saturday on my first day of class. However, while taking the exam I noticed that each section I was behind at least one page by the 5 minute caution mark and was so stressed about timing that I noticed the questions toward the end of each section I began to do worse. I'm afraid that I've spent all this time worrying about how to master the different sections while ignoring the time aspect of it all.

With this being said, are there any tips or techniques I can use to help me with my time?

Any advice is much appreciated!

Thank you,
Caitlin

[Lucas Moreau]

Hello, Caitlin,

There are a couple of useful tricks to increasing your speed on the LSAT. First, in Logical Reasoning, have you tried completing a section backwards? There's a difficulty curve on the questions - they start off easier and get harder as you go - and some people find it nice to get the toughest questions out of the way first, rather than have questions get harder as they grow more fatigued. Give it a shot with a practice section and see if you like it. Other sections don't have a difficulty curve, but try doing Games and Reading Comp sections not in the order presented - it may help.

Also, there's a little trick I used while studying myself which works. First, take a section that you're taking too long on, let's say Games. Fully complete a practice section, noting your time but not giving yourself a time limit. When I first did this, I took 70 minutes to finish a single Games section - not quite good enough!

Figure out how long it usually takes you to finish a section of that type, in that way, then take another practice section and set a timer for five minutes less than that. In my case, 65 minutes. See if you can finish the section in that long. Odds are you'll just barely not finish. That's okay! Try it a few more times at that amount of time until you can reliably finish the section in that long.

Then reduce the timer by five more minutes and repeat! Do this over and over again until you're consistently finishing in 35 minutes. It may take many repetitions, but I think you'll find it's quite effective.

Hope that helps,
Lucas Moreau

[Humstudents]

Hello, Caitlin,

There are a couple of useful tricks to increasing your speed on the LSAT. First, in Logical Reasoning, have you tried completing a section backwards? There's a difficulty curve on the questions - they start off easier and get harder as you go - and some people find it nice to get the toughest questions out of the way first, rather than have questions get harder as they grow more fatigued. Give it a shot with a practice section and see if you like it. Other sections don't have a difficulty curve, but try doing Games and Reading Comp sections not in the order presented - it may help.

Also, there's a little trick I used while studying myself which works. First, take a section that you're taking too long on, let's say Games. Fully complete a practice section, noting your time but not giving yourself a time limit. When I first did this, I took 70 minutes to finish a single Games section - not quite good enough!

Figure out how long it usually takes you to finish a section of that type, in that way, then take another practice section and set a timer for five minutes less than that. In my case, 65 minutes. See if you can finish the section in that long. Odds are you'll just barely not finish. That's okay! Try it a few more times at that amount of time until you can reliably finish the section in that long.

Then reduce the timer by five more minutes and repeat! Do this over and over again until you're consistently finishing in 35 minutes. It may take many repetitions, but I think you'll find it's quite effective.

Hope that helps,
Lucas Moreau

perfect..This is really amazing reply.

[moshei24]

Hello, Caitlin,

There are a couple of useful tricks to increasing your speed on the LSAT. First, in Logical Reasoning, have you tried completing a section backwards? There's a difficulty curve on the questions - they start off easier and get harder as you go - and some people find it nice to get the toughest questions out of the way first, rather than have questions get harder as they grow more fatigued. Give it a shot with a practice section and see if you like it. Other sections don't have a difficulty curve, but try doing Games and Reading Comp sections not in the order presented - it may help.

Also, there's a little trick I used while studying myself which works. First, take a section that you're taking too long on, let's say Games. Fully complete a practice section, noting your time but not giving yourself a time limit. When I first did this, I took 70 minutes to finish a single Games section - not quite good enough!

Figure out how long it usually takes you to finish a section of that type, in that way, then take another practice section and set a timer for five minutes less than that. In my case, 65 minutes. See if you can finish the section in that long. Odds are you'll just barely not finish. That's okay! Try it a few more times at that amount of time until you can reliably finish the section in that long.

Then reduce the timer by five more minutes and repeat! Do this over and over again until you're consistently finishing in 35 minutes. It may take many repetitions, but I think you'll find it's quite effective.

Hope that helps,
Lucas Moreau

Just want to jump in and make a slight correction. Unless things have changed in the last two years, LR's difficulty actually takes twists and turns. The first 10 tend to be easy with a tricky one here in there between 8 and 10. 11-14 tend to be more of medium difficult. 15-19 is where you will usually hit the most difficult questions, and then they come back to medium difficulty from 20 and on. The thing with the last 2-3 questions is that they tend to be questions that although only of medium difficulty, take longer to complete because they are usually parallel flaw or parallel reasoning, which take awhile if you're not a seasoned veteran yet, and sometimes formal logic questions, which unless you know how to map them can get under your skin if you are down to little time. That's why it's good to do the first 3-4 questions and then go backward, so you face the easiest questions when you're finishing up and hit time consuming ones when you aren't stressed for time. Though, don't attempt this strategy until you are getting less than 10 wrong per LR section.

Hope this helps. Good luck!