Same Scores Past 3 Months-20 days left

[wshah11]

Hi Everyone,

I have been studying for the LSAT for the past 3 months while being a full-time undergraduate student. 1st month I went through the entire LG 2016 powerscore bible. And the past 2 months I have been in the Powerscore Comprehensive in person prep class. I have been showing up to all classes, doing homework, and studying hard, but my score has not gone up. I have been hitting a 147-149 all 5 prep tests that I have taken. I have looked at the this blog for advice, I have been using the advanced guessing strategy that the website has provided, I am still short on time for each section as well. I am only able to get through 3/4 LG and 3/4 RC passages. I do fairly well on each one of them, but then I have to guess for the last passage/game. Also for LR I have to guess on the last 5 questions. I have 20 days left before the June LSAT and I would like to see that avg 12 point jump with me that everyone is always talking about. I have emailed my instructor in the past and she has provided me with the blogs tips which I used during the past 2 prep test, without any gain) and told me to focus in on questions I have gotten wrong. I have tried doing that, while I improve on those questions, I still miss others. Is there any way I can still get that 12 point jump within 20 days?

Thank you

[Nikki Siclunov]

Hi wshah11,

Thanks for your question, and welcome to the forum! I understand this can be a terribly frustrating experience, but rest assured of two things: 1) you're getting the absolute best help money can buy; and 2) you aren't alone in your frustration. The LSAT is an exceptionally difficult test, as it is skills - not knowledge - that ultimately improve your score. You mentioned following our blog, so you're probably familiar with these articles, but just in case you aren't - do check them out:

• Wait! Did My LSAT Score Just Go Down?
  
  The Last Mile is Always the Hardest
  
  Why Did My LSAT Score Go Down When I First Started Studying?

In addition to the tips we give you in these blogs, I want you to try the following strategies for a change:

• 1. In RC and LG, don't focus on only three of the four passages or games. You're giving up valuable points, and if your scores are any indication, your accuracy on the rest is not 100%. Instead, try this: for each passage or game, choose to skip one question. This should be a question that you don't immediately see the correct answer to, or else a question where you're stuck between two answer choices and can't decide. Pretty much each passage (and, to a lesser extent, each game) will have one question that is substantially harder than the rest. If you refuse to waste your time with it, and do that for each passage and game, you may be able to complete your sections.
  
  2. In LR, try to do the first 10 questions in under 12 minutes. These are usually the easier questions in your LR section, and if you can answer them within 10-12 minutes, you may have a bit more time to spend answering the rest.
  
  3. Know your strengths! If a LR question appears inordinately difficult, don't waste another 3 minutes trying to figure it out. Move on! The goal is to finish your section, even if that means skipping a handful of questions in the process. Wasting time on really difficult questions carries two penalties - loss of time, and likely a missed point. By refusing to do that, you can at least save some time to spend on questions that you actually CAN answer. Remember this - about 1/2 of all LR questions are rated as "below-average" in difficulty.
  
  4. Prephrase whenever possible! An active approach to argumentation means being able to anticipate how to answer the stem before you look at the five answer choices. I understand this may not always be possible, but try your best to arrive at some idea of what the correct answer choice has to say or do. Even a general idea is better than having no clue at all. That's how you avoid being stuck in a bind between two answer choices.
  
  5. As always, your instructor is right - you need to learn from your mistakes so as to avoid repeating them. It is imperative to review your practice tests properly. For each question you missed, try to figure out the correct answer choice without knowing what the answer is. You know you missed the question - so, do it again! It's easy to "buy into" whatever answer the LSAC says is correct. Try to figure it out on your own! Then, write a paragraph explaining to your future self what you did wrong. The last two weeks before your exam, assemble all the questions you've ever missed on practice tests, and do them again! It's probably the best way to review past mistakes and learn from them!

If you notice any specific conceptual area in need of improvement, definitely focus on that and use the resources available to you (homework, supplemental sections, virtual recaps of lessons, etc.) to improve on it. I realize it's a long process and it's virtually impossible to know how fast you'll improve. While I would still plan to take the June test, re-evaluate your decision the first week of June and see if your practice test scores are at or above your target. If they are consistently below it, consider taking the test in September. You'll have access to all online resources until the September 2016 administration.

Hope this helps a bit! Hang in there!!

[wshah11]

Hey Nikki,

Thanks for the response! All of those are great tips I will be implementing. Do you think it would be worth it at this point to take a practice test untimed to see what my potential Is right now for a confidence booster? Or at this point it would be a waste of time? The good news is I am improving on the homeworks and other materials I'm struggling on. But my main issue just seems to be time, I know that is a common thing. If I had more time I know my score would be higher.

What are some exercises I can do to increase my time efficiency. Since last week, every other day I have been taking a timed PT, and on my off days I have been reviewing the questions I missed and studying concepts I am struggling on. So far it has been working, but my time is the only thing that has not improved. If I can conquer this time issue, I know my score will make a significant jump.

Thank you

[Nikki Siclunov]

Hi wshah11,

It sounds like you're doing everything right. Timing is not something you can improve in isolation: proper pace is primarily a function of 1) strategic decisions you make as you go through the questions and answer choices; 2) quick and accurate prephrasing; 3) superior conceptual understanding of the material; and 4) keeping your cool at all times.

Taking timed Practice Tests is absolutely essential, as it helps on all counts listed above. You should also make sure to add an experimental section to each test, and, of course, thoroughly review each test upon completion. There is a ton you can learn from each mistake, and - over time - that's how you'll get faster. There is no "magic bullet" for faster thinking or reading That said, my previous response contained a number of strategic suggestions that will ensure that you get the most out of each minute spent on the test.

Good luck!!

[wshah11]

Hey Nikki,

What's your advice on a weakness I have found myself having. In the RC section, I find that if I am more personally interested in the topic my score for that passage is always all correct or 1 wrong. When I am not interested in the topic, my RC scores drops significantly.

Also in my PT's subjects that I go over and get right on one PT it seems I miss on the next PT for LR sections. I've drilled the subjects for hours and on 1 PT I do great on it then the next PT not so great.

Thanks
Sam

[Nikki Siclunov]

Hey Sam,

I'm not 100% sure what you mean by "subjects" in LR, but I assume you're referring to concepts such as conditional and causal reasoning. Reviewing the mistakes you make is absolutely essential, but of course it doesn't guarantee that you won't ever make the same mistake again. This is because the same concept can be tested in many different ways, and until you obtain full mastery of the material you are likely going to encounter a less-than-perfect accuracy rate.

To answer your other question - indeed, you're onto something here. A number of research studies show that test-takers who report a high level of interest in the topic of a passage also demonstrate higher levels of engagement with the text. The presence of interest improves reading comprehension by facilitating the processes that support comprehension, such as word decoding, lexical access, syntactic processing, inference generation, self-explanation and summarization. A recent study conducted by the LSAC arrived at three conclusions regarding how topic interest affects reading comprehension:

"First, higher-interest readers are more engaged and deliberate when reading than lower-interest readers. Second, higher-interest readers have increased sensitivity to the explicit and implicit discourse structure than lower-interest readers, which has an impact on how the text is processed. Finally, this increased engagement positively affects comprehension, as evidenced by recall performance."

Even though higher-interest readers may process texts more slowly and rely more on their "outside" knowledge of the passage topic, such readers ultimately perform better than low-interest readers. Moreover, there is some evidence that interest helps less-skilled readers become more engaged with the text, improving performance.

So, how do you become "more interested" in seratonin, Roy Lichtenstein, or Chinese talk-stories? While nothing can replace innate curiosity, you can stimulate such interest by reading journals and magazines, such as The Economist, Scientific American, The New York Times (especially their Science, Health, and Upshot sections), FiveThirtyEight. By familiarizing yourself with the topics frequently discussed in such publications, you improve your chance of coming across similar topics on the RC. Prior exposure to a given topic invariably heightens interest in that topic, which you can use to your advantage.

Ultimately, "interest" is just one of several "motivational variables." You know another motivational variable? A top-1% score

Good luck!

[wshah11]

Hey Nikki,

Good news, I just took a PT timed and managed to get 152. Finally broke into the 150s, some improvement better than what I've been going through. Also good news, I have been able to get through 3.5/4 of the LG I had to guess on the last 3 questions, but I managed to increase my speed on LG. Also I managed to do 23/25 LR questions and had to guess on the last two questions. For the RC I managed to complete 3 of the sections and on the 4th, read it all, and do 2 questions and had to guess on the rest.

What seemed to kill my score this time around was the RC section. I had 11/25 correct while the other 2 LG and LR I had above 60% correct on LR and 70% correct on LG. I think now I the time to focus on bringing my RC score up. It's what is bringin my score down so hard.

Tell me if you agree. If so I created a 4 day plan of nothing but RC and PT'S still every other day. Any additions, advice to this plan or against it would be great.

Day 1: Drill 20 RC-lunch-drill 10-dinner-drill 10
Day 2:Drill 5 RC-lunch-PT-Review Mistakes-dinner-drill 10
Day 3: Drill 20 RC-lunch-drill 10-dinner-drill 10
Day 4: Drill 5 RC-lunch-PT-Review Mistakes-dinner-drill 10

Thanks

[wshah11]

Hey Nikki,

Just completed day 1 of the drilling and I would say it was semi successful.

Good news: I managed to get my timing right now where I can complete all 4 reading passages completed in 35 min.

Bad news: I did all the science and law passages today and was getting an average of 3 wrong questions per passage = 12 wrong questions on 1 reading comprehension section. So I would get an avg of 13/25 on an LSAT so to say. Though I don't know how accurate that could be given that these were two topics of science and law tested by itself.

I also underestimated how much reading comprehension I could do on a given day. I ended up doing 18 of them with 1 break in between science and law switch. And I started to burnout towards the end of the last law passages. So I am going to shoot for 20 a day instead 40.

I found out that I tend to miss the "What is the main point of the passage?" question very frequently. Any advice on how to tackle that question?

Day 2: And now I would like to talk to you about that something that just happened today. So I continued with day 2 of the study plan for RC I just posted earlier. And during my practice test after the first section LR, I felt off, my timing for my RC section was not like yesterday were I was finishing 4 passages under 35 min. I guess it does not take only one day for it to get fixed? My LG section was timed good, but when I got to my last LR reasoning section, from the second question I thought something was off, my timing got threw off, and I was thinking in the middle of it that I was tired, then thought "If I was starting to get burned out to where my performance was decreasing". And I was right, my last section was the worst of the 4 and my overall score dropped significantly.

Do you think I should take the rest of the day off today and take a no LSAT study day tomorrow? Then return back to it on Wednesday?

Thanks

Thanks
Sam Shahed

[Nikki Siclunov]

Hi Sam,

Thanks for posting your questions. First, let's get something straight: nothing on the LSAT - especially when it comes to RC - can be fixed in a day. Or even a week (OK, I've seen people improve on Logic Games within a week, but this is quite the exception, not the norm). The LSAT is a skill-based, not a knowledge-based test: cramming for hours every day is unlikely to be terribly productive, and in fact is a sure recipe for a quick burn-out. Don't do that! Focus on quality, not quantity: instead of doing 30 RC passages a day (which is an overkill, mildly put), I'd rather you did only 2 RC sections/day (so, 8 passages), but thoroughly review each of your answer choices and analyze where you went wrong.

If you notice that you keep getting Main Point questions wrong, that's a great start! Many of the attractive, but incorrect, answers to MP questions focus on only one paragraph or a specific section of the passage: such answers are provably true, but don't capture the main point of the passage. One technique you can employ here is to leave those questions for the end - do all other questions in that passage first, get a better understanding of what's going on, then attempt the Main Point question last. The point is to understand what the Main Point is from the test-makers point of view, which is easier to do if you work on the other questions in that passage first. (At least, it is for me.).

Also, don't forget that the LR section tests (and cultivates) skills that are closely related to those being tested in RC. Don't overlook LR, particularly since it is weighed twice as heavily as any other section. Make sure to identify the types of questions and arguments you struggle with the most, and drill those in addition to RC.

Finally, some of your score improvement in the last week before the test will come not from superior mastery of the material, but from a superior pacing strategy at the section-level. Know which questions to skip, and which questions to focus on! Don't waste time answering questions incorrectly: you're better off skipping one question per passage but covering all four passages than leaving an entire passage unanswered. Similarly, it is important to recognize - early on - which LR questions you are unlikely to answer correctly, and focus on the rest. The following few blog posts should help in this regard:

Timing Strategy: Quit While the Quitting's Good
The Last Mile is Always the Hardest
5 Days to the LSAT: The Ultimate Test Mentality Resource List

Whatever you do, do not exceed 4-5 hrs of LSAT work/day. Aim to take no more than 3-5 practice tests until June 6. Review them correctly, learn from your mistakes, and focus the remainder of your time addressing underlying conceptual weaknesses in RC, LR, or LG. It's the most you can do in 2-weeks time.

Good luck!

[wshah11]

Hey Nikki,

Thanks as usual for the adivce, yeah I think I over killed it, I'll tone it down to 2 sections a day. Do you think I should take the whole day tomorrow off to recover? Or do you think I am fine to continue, just as a littler pace?

Also I will be reviewing my Exam via your blog about literally acting like you are teaching the problems to a student. I will also be implementing those pacing tips you provided, great blogs as always.


Thanks