Suggestions for the next month prep

[marcnash]

Hi,

I have been studying off the PS bibles and have just finished reading the 3 books this week.
I planning on writing the test for the first time in February,
I haven't really practised much other than the end of chapter questions in the books.

I am wondering what's the best way to prepare and practise during the upcoming weeks.
I have a decent amount of time to study during the Christmas break, and about 3 hours a day during January when school starts.
I have gotten all practice tests, and the workbooks that have practise per question type.

My question is, giving all the resources that I have, what's a good plan to start practising right and efficiently.

Thanks

[Dave Killoran]

Hey Marc,

Thanks for the question! Ok, now that you have studied the concepts and techniques, you are right to think about practice. And from the sound of it, you have a lot of practice material, which makes this easier. These are the materials you mention having:

• 1. The LSAT Training Type books
  
  These are great for isolating the question types that are giving you problems. Having difficulty with Assumption questions? Then you can do dozens of them without being distracted by other question types. Grouping games giving you fits? then you can practice with just Grouping games for a while until you feel more confident. Before jumping into these books, first determine which problem types give you the most trouble in each section, and then work on them by category. In the next point I talk about how you can identify what's giving you the most difficulty.
  
  2. LSAT PrepTests
  
  You also mention having practice tests. I'm a big advocate of doing practice tests on a regular basis because this gets you prepared for what taking the real thing will be like. So, after working on some of the types that give you issues (as in #1 above) I would start take a full, time LSAT Preptest every several days.
  
  One thing is to make sure that you score those exams using our free test scoring analyzer, which can be found at http://students.powerscore.com/self-study/index.cfm. That program will help you identify the question types giving you the most difficulty, as well as the areas of strength that you have. The score analysis readouts also show you individual question difficulty, which is a really helpful thing when you are studying since it tells you whether you missed a legitimately tough question or whether you made a careless error. Last, make sure to review those practice tests thoroughly. I talk about the best way to do that in this article: The Best Way to Review LSAT Practice Tests.
  
  In that Self-Study Area, you may notice that we have study plans available that feature the three LSAT Bibles. You've already gone through the Bibles in their entirety so you don't need the majority of what's covered in these plans, but you can glance through those to get a sense of how they work because they show how we have students isolate question types first and then slowly combine everything. We have found that this is by far the most efficient approach for improving LSAT scores.

Please let me know if that helps get you started. Thanks!

[marcnash]

I was hoping for a kind of a weekly schedule or milestones.

What I was planning on doing before asking the questions was to solve all questions for all types, each of them, for about 3 weeks, a week per section, then start practice exams as many as I can.

But putting your previous answer in perspective, here is what I think what I could do:
Start by a Practice test, probably a 2009 to be more recent while leaving the most recent closer to exam time. Get an understanding of my weakest question types, and whichever is the weakest, starting solving its related questions. And probably every week, on Mondays, start by a practice test and solve for the weakest type again.

This is what I could come up with for practising, but I still don't have a clear vision what's my target (what should be done and solved) each certain number of days.

(btw, I was following the 2-month study plan of PS but never practised cause I was working full time and never had enough time.
I also have past exams since 91, I don;t whether I should consider them or not)

What's your input on that? what do you think is the best way to organize my time and probably be able to notice a score increase each week when I solve a timed practice test if you think it's a good idea to go for?
I am not really married to my plan, just what I could come with based on what you're saying

[Dave Killoran]

Hi Marc,

I'm terribly sorry, I did not realize that's what you were asking for. If so, I would have asked you to be much more specific about the materials that you have in your possession as well as your scoring history, and strengths and weaknesses. It's really hard to make a study plan for any student you haven't worked directly with before, but almost impossible without a complete list of materials and an understanding of where you are scoring currently

Ok, that aside, the basics of your plan make sense. If you have the time, I'd take at least 2 full, timed tests per week, and use the results of those to drive your studying. This gives you flexibility in terms of what you study, and allows you to react to the changes in your weaknesses. Starting with the 2009 LSATs is fine, and I would definitely do the more recent ones closer to the actual test. As for the older LSATs, they are actually quite useful. I know a lot of people who took the December 2015 LSAT wish they done more older LSAT after that LG section they had!

One other comment I wanted to make involves score increases. Your score won't increase in a linear fashion; that is, it won't go up a point or two each week. Instead, it will tend to plateau for a while, and then suddenly jump up. It may even go down a few points from week to week, and that is not cause for concern, and it's a phenomenon I talk about here: Welcome to the LSAT Casino.

That's a start, and I'm happy to attempt to offer more assistance if you have further questions. Just let me know. Thanks!

[marcnash]

Hi Dave,

2 months ago, I wrote the June 2007 practice test and I scored a 150, before studying or knowing anything about LSAT, first Diagnostic test ever.
I have been studying from the LSAT bibles using the 2-month study plan, but with skipping the training type questions cause I couldn't afford this much time.
Last week was my last week going through the material from the PS bibles, I wrote prep test 58 (Sep 2009) and I scored 151

The materials I have include the PS bibles for all 3 sections, the books for the practice per question types for LR and LG, and prep tests from 1 through 71.

I kinda hoping to see a score improvement after studying from the PS bibles but it was on;y an increase by 1. I am not sure how to start.
One thing I noticed while solving the test is that I haven't really used much of the techniques that I have been using while practicing the end of chapter questions. I wasn't using any of the Mechanistic approach or all those tricks, other than changing the Assumption to Weaken question and negate the responses, but only for few questions i have used that technique.

What do you think I should do?
Thanks

[Dave Killoran]

Hi Marc,

I'll make a quick reply here since I'm heading to a meeting. As you can see in the study plans, we recommend moving through the Bibles but at the same time practicing on each question type in order to build in the skills. The way you did it delays the benefits of the books. Especially because, as you noted, "I haven't really used much of the techniques." In a sense, you read everything, but these are tools that have to be used in order to be effective. In class, I've often said that it's like being given a 50-pound sword. Sure, it's a big strong weapon, but at first it's heavy and ungainly, and if attacked, you won't do a very good job of fighting. But, if you give yourself time, you will get better and better, and soon it becomes second nature. That's when it becomes truly effective! In a sense, when you read the books and didn't do any problems with them, it was like you read about how to wield a sword, but you didn't go out and pick it up. So now we have to get you up to speed on actually holding it and using it

So, the first task is to go through each chapter of each Bible and speed review the concepts. Then do a set of questions just on that topic from the Training Type. Not 4 questions, but more like 30 questions. See if you really get the ideas, and if not, study them again.

Within that framework, after about 10-14 days, toss in a timed practice test. Then, slowly, add more and more tests in.

Here's how I see the overall process for you: at the beginning you'll be doing study on chapters and then doing specific question type sets. This is the re-learning phase. I think this is critical because the ideas from the Bibles probably aren't sitting very well yet, and this period will help those concepts and techniques become more foundational. As time goes on you'll begin doing more tests, and then towards the end you'll be doing tests exclusively, and working on endurance and speedwork.

That turned out to be longer than I anticipated, but that covers how I would go about your study process. Please let me know if that helps. Thanks!

[marcnash]

Your post makes perfect sense, thank you for your time.

I don't know if that will make any difference to your suggestions, I wanted to add that I have been practising the end of chapter questions and I was actually doing quite well in most of them, so the result of today's prep test came as a shock to me.

Based on what you're saying, here is my recap and correct me if I'm wrong.
I am gonna get the 4 weeks study plan from PS to have a good practice balance between the sections, then I'll skim over each chapter and my notes on the chapter, then practice about 30 questions of each type.

Also, what your recommendation for this re-learning while practicing phase regarding practicing with a timer. Should I practice with the time constraint in head or not?

Thanks a lot for your time and suggestions, really helpful and will put me right on track
Also when you said I am not using the sword, got a sigh of relief that there is a chance for a good improvement, and it seems I am still sticking to my own way of solving prior to studying which is obviously lacking a lot.

EDIT: Also, by checking the PS self-grader, it tells me what exactly are the areas that require improvement and what am I doing well at, like Need Improvement in Parallel Reasoning 33% accuracy, but 100% strong in Strengthen and Parallel flow. Do you think I should probably start with the week chapters and test myself afterwards, or because my score hasn't really changed from prior to studying i should practice them all?

[Dave Killoran]

Hey Marc,

Thanks for the reply! I'm glad this is helping so far. I have a few different thoughts on some of the points you made:

First, the end of chapter questions are just a very brief selection of questions that are there to highlight some of the concepts and techniques discussed in each chapter. As I often tell students, the LSAT Bibles are strategy guides, not practice guides or workbooks (which is why we publish a workbook for each Bible, and sell a variety of books with practice questions). So, doing just those questions wasn't really representative of what you had learned or how you would score. That's why all those self-study plans we publish pair each chapter with a bunch of homework practice—that's the key portion in increasing your score. It would actually have been a bigger surprise if you score had jumped significantly at that point The good news is that means you have a lot of potential still out there, and getting into a strong practice regime will help your score.

Next, let's move to the use of a timer while practicing. I'm a strong advocate of timing yourself, and the way I'd do it with each practice set is the following (I'll use LR as the example): Do the first 10 questions untimed, then check your answers. If you've done well, move into timing yourself loosely, say 2 minutes per questions. If you haven't done well, do 10 more questions untimed. Keep doing untimed rounds of 10 until you are doing well (at least 8 or 9 out of 10 correct). when you move up to the loosely timed set, use the same procedure. Once you've done well at that level, move up to regular test speed (about 1 minute 25 seconds per question) and keep going until you've mastered it. this may mean you do more than 30 questions, but if so, that's good because it means that was a problem area for you. By the way, with the practice tests, do them as full timed tests. Don't do them untimed or timed loosely; that defeats part of the reason for taking a full test.

Third, let's talk about your score results, and the feedback there. Remember that individual practice tests have variation, and don't test all concepts or question types equally. So you will see some variation in performance there (see my LSAT Casino link in my prior post in this thread). Second, they don't test an overwhelming number of questions of each type, so a single test doesn't really tell us definitively if you are good at a concept or bad. But several test together tell us that, and so as you get more test result, the picture begins to come clearer. For example, on the test you reference, you performed well on Parallel, but not as well on Parallel Flaw. Basically, that's the same question type, so what you really saw was a performance about in the middle. But, if you see 50% on a question type but there are only 2 questions on the test, you can't draw a definite conclusion there (maybe the one question you missed was brutally difficult, for example). So, right now, what I would do is a full review of all topics first, then I would start looking at the accumulation of test results to define what needs the most work. That's the safest route, and you cannot hurt yourself by reviewing everything (and just the review may indicate to you that you aren't comfortable with certain topics).

Please let me know if that helps. Thanks!

[marcnash]

Thanks a lot, I have been waiting for your reply and this is really perfect, giving me a perfect plan of what I should do and sounds very reasonable as a method of improvement.

EDIT: I have noticed that when I am solving a specific type of questions, I am aware that this kind of questions is attacked using this technique, so I am very prepared to all 30 of them using the same technique. if the test was all of one type, I would have aced it. However, when I practice a test, I can't clearly tell sometimes what this question is, or even if I know, I wouldn't quickly remember what the technique is. So how do you balance between acing a type of questions simply cause you're anticipating it and are well prepared, versus waiting for a surprise in each question during the test?
-Regarding timing myself, do I time myself on a single question basis, so 1:20/25 per question, or 1:20x10 per 10 questions?

[Nikki Siclunov]

Hey Marc,

Let me jump in real quick as Dave is currently traveling and probably doesn't have easy access to the internet.

You're correct in that it's easier to do question-type training than to mix them up. Think of question-type training as a way to solidify the techniques of approach to each question type, and gain mastery of the logical reasoning paradigms (causal or conditional reasoning, numerical evidence, etc.) that they are testing you on. Doing a LR section is a whole different ball game, as they don't tell you in advance which question is which. If you're having trouble recognizing the stems, maybe write down flash cards that help you memorize the various ways they can phrase each question type. The thing is, if you do, say, 50 Assumption questions in a row, and then another 100 Justify questions in a row, you should start developing an understanding of how these types differ. Then you wouldn't need to memorize anything, because you possess the conceptual tools necessary to recognize and attack each question.

Check out these blog posts that discuss certain commonly confused question types:

LSAT Justify and Assumption Questions: Conceptual Similarities and Differences

"Most strongly supports" vs. "Most strongly supported" in LSAT Logical Reasoning questions

Your question about timing - you need to clarify, and maybe Dave or I can jump in on that one

Thanks!