in need of major major improvement advice !!!

[Sherry001]

Hello there !
I have a very sad situation and was wondering if you could perhaps help me find a solution.
I have been stuck in the 140s for a very very long time ( nearly a year) how could I be doing just as bad? I was scoring like this before I had even read any of the bibles or taken a prep course .!

Here's how I am In each of the sections: and what I am doing about it.

LR:
Untimed: I get about 5-6 questions wrong
Timed : I only make it to question 13! And sometimes I get one or two wrong.
My weakness in this section is parallel reasoning and principle as they take me soooo long!! Way more than 3 mins .


LG:
Love it and can usually finish 3 games.

RC :
My worst section and I don't seem to improve . I could only read 2 passages. Yes I am a super slow reader as English is my fifth language. I have chosen to ignore this section and only do them during my timed Pts as I feel I would benefit a lot more if I could actually improve on the other sections.


So .. What i do on daily basis is study 6 days a week. I do two full tests a week and three timed sections ( LR and lG only). I recently sat with a power score tutor and he kinda tested my skills and said my performance doesn't match my skills. Since I knew all the basics of reasoning ( conditional reasoning and etc) and how to approach each question type.
Please please help me !! I write in February and really want to increase my scores to the mid 150s .. Even though my dream was 160:(((

I am so sad and cry everyday !!!! I really don't understand what's happening. I don't find studying for LSAT painful .. I mean I don't hate the test .. I actually enjoy it , what is wrong with me ????

Sherry

[Steve Stein]

Hey Sherry,

Thanks for your message. First of all, many students—particularly good ones—have a tendency to downplay their strengths and be their own worst critics, so I'd like to begin with a bit of perspective: You are taking the LSAT in what is your fifth language—and you mentioned that fact so nonchalantly, it seems you might not be aware of just how impressive that is!!

I know it can be frustrating when you don't see your practice test scores increasing, but it doesn't necessarily mean you haven't been developing a strong conceptual foundation, and you clearly remain motivated to practice and improve. The fact that you love logic games is a great sign, as is the fact that you get the majority of the questions right in logical reasoning when you are not under time constraints: It seems you must have had a good grasp of the logic behind those questions—otherwise taking extra time with them would not have been particularly helpful.

If you tend to get through only about half the questions on a timed LR section, my suspicion is that you generally attack the questions in order; is this accurate? Many students take this approach, but it presents a few potential issues. If you happen to get caught up on any particularly difficult question, you might end up spending several minutes in one place instead of moving on to potentially easier questions. Many students benefit from skipping right over difficult questions as they initially progress through a section. Which questions to skip? I usually find that I can tell within a line or two of reading whether a given question will be among the more difficult. It generally only takes a few seconds to tell that a stimulus or question is not among my favorites, and that is time well spent if it leads me to skip over the more difficult ones.

And on the other side of the spectrum, considering the amount of experience you have already had with the test, I bet there are some questions in any given section that you can see right through—why not make sure that you get to all of the easy ones? Not the ones earliest in the section, necessarily, but the ones that you find most straightforward. It can take a little bit of practice to get used to skipping over questions, but once you get used to it, this small adjustment to your approach could make a big difference in your pacing, and in the number of questions you answer correctly.

When it comes to reading comp, I have a similar recommendation: take a minute or two as you begin a given section to take a quick look at the various passages, and choose the one you like best (when I make such decisions, my main criterion is writing style—if an author writes in a manner that I find too stuffy or convoluted, I look for a passage that I can read more comfortably). Many students like to start with the comparative reading passages, since they tend to be shorter and are sometimes a bit more straightforward.

Reading comp should be a section where you can put some of your impressive linguistic skills to use. Speaking five languages, you already have a brain that is well trained in the art of translation, and you should potentially be able to apply the same skills to the translation of term-heavy or sophisticated writing into more basic and readily comprehensible terms. You mentioned that at this point you can get through two passages—not a bad place to start! (again, if I were taking the test in anything but my native language, I wouldn't get through two paragraphs in the allotted time). From what I've seen, an effective way to improve your reading comprehension skills is to start by getting better, and then focus on getting faster. Rushing through passage after passage will not likely make you a better reader. But don't ignore that section either! If you want to get better, that might take a bit of practice, and now is a great time to develop your reading comprehension skills, in preparation for the LSAT and for the coming three years of significant reading assignments. For now, do those sections without a timer, and work on developing your skills notating and breaking down the passages until you find that you are attacking the accompanying questions effectively. As you practice, you will likely find that your pacing improves as a natural progression as you continue to prepare.

Others may have some advice to add as well, but I hope this is helpful! Please let me know, and please continue to keep us posted on your progress—thanks!

~Steve

[Sherry001]

You are awesome ! Yes you are 100 percent correct . I never skip any questions. In fact I feel guilty . And get upset . I tell myself there is no reason that I shouldn't get this right . Haha! Well I am just that silly ! Thank you so much for your detailed response . I will test out skipping questions I don't particularly love or take too long . And let you know how it goes!

Have a great day!
Sherry

[Nikki Siclunov]

Hi Sherry,

To reiterate Steve's excellent advice above, let me tell you - what you're experiencing is a very, very common problem, especially among test-takers that tend to be more... stubborn than usual I count myself in that group. In fact, I only started scoring in the high-170's when I stopped trying to get a 180! I hate quitting, especially after sinking (what seems like) a lot of time into a particularly challenging Logical Reasoning question. It's a sunk cost, which used to make me terribly unhappy. So I would keep throwing good money after bad, not realizing that the probability of getting the question right after the first 1:45 min decreases substantially. In the end, even if I got the question right, the opportunity cost of solving that question was invariably higher than the potential benefit (a single point), as I would often end up guessing on a handful of questions at the end of the section.

After getting burned a few times, it was time to admit that as hard as I tried, I probably could not get every single question right. Thankfully, I did not need to: I could miss 1-2 questions and still get a 180; I could miss as many as 10 questions and still score in the 170's. The LSAT scoring scale is incredibly forgiving, for one simple reason: this is an incredibly challenging test!

Keep up the good work and don't be so hard on yourself!

[Steve Stein]

You are awesome ! Yes you are 100 percent correct . I never skip any questions. In fact I feel guilty . And get upset . I tell myself there is no reason that I shouldn't get this right . Haha! Well I am just that silly ! Thank you so much for your detailed response . I will test out skipping questions I don't particularly love or take too long . And let you know how it goes!

Have a great day!
Sherry

Hey Sherry,

Thanks for your response, and for your very kind words! I'm glad that you plan to give this a try; I sometimes suggest that students take a section or two, or even a whole practice test, in which they are mainly focused on simply becoming accustomed to this approach. If you're used to doing questions in order, it can feel a little uncomfortable at first, but once you get used to the new approach, I don't think you'll go back to your old one. You also made a great point with the reference to feeling guilty—if you're used to being able to quickly respond to most of the questions on most of the tests you take, for some it may feel like some sort of defeat to skip over any—but as you said, this is silly! It's not weak or lazy to skip to the easier questions first—it's strategic and efficient.

Thanks! And again, please keep us posted as you progress!

~Steve