Logic Games Regression

[hmerr14]

Hello,

I'm new to this forum, but I've been working through the PowerScore Bibles since the end of May in preparation for the September test. At the beginning of my prep, I pretested a 159 on LSAC's SuperPrep 1 - PrepTest A. LR was my worst category (-8 in LR1 and -7 in LR2) and I went a slim -3 in AR/Games. After almost 2 months of studying, my Games score has dropped drastically, and I can barely finish the section .

How can I solve this problem and start moving into better proficiency on the test as a whole? I've seen such a drop in score in this section after studying, I'm contemplating trying to forget everything I've learned about diagramming and go back to my old knowledge on games.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, and thanks in advance!

-Hannah

[Dave Killoran]

Hi Hannah,

Thanks for the question, although I'm very sorry to hear you are struggling. The experience you are describing is extremely unusual, and especially so for such a significant drop (from only 3 wrong to barely finishing the section). So, I'm not certain what's happening, and ultimately have a few questions for you.

There are really only a few possible explanations for what you are seeing, and most of those are variations on a few themes, such as you aren't comfortable with or haven't practiced the methods enough, that something in what you are doing isn't aligned properly, that there's something in the methods that just isn't compatible with how you think, or even that the first practice test was an anomaly.

The thing about the methods is that many of them are fairly straightforward, things like making basic diagrams for linear spaces or drawing a block around adjacent variables. So I wouldn't think that the problem is there (especially since they have been used by so many people successfully). There is sometimes an initial drop in score while people adjust to going slower, but that always goes away after a few weeks, once they can diagram without thinking. If I were to give you a set of rules and ask you to diagram them, could you do it without stopping to think through each one slowly? As in, would it be second nature or would it be something that was work and required thought?

In that same vein, is it any particular type of game you find to be slow going? Or is it just all game types now? And how many practice tests has this happened on so far, and how soon after you started studying?

I'm kind of casting about for answers here, so any information you can supply would be helpful.

Thanks!

[hmerr14]

Dave,

Thank you for your quick reply! I am using the LawSchooli schedule, so I've only taken a very small amount of full preptests up to this point. My cold diagnostic was at the end of May, then I worked through the entire Logic Games Bible and took another full test where I saw the initial drop. Now, after the Logical Reasoning Bible, I took another test and saw no change in the games section score. To answer your questions in short: it does take me a while to diagram the games, no matter the type. While the concepts make sense in my head, putting them down on paper without messing anything up (and double checking each thing I add to make sure it doesn't mess anything up) and then being able to move quickly through the game questions without eliminating each answer is what really messes me up.

And maybe you're right, maybe that first games section in that first test (SuperPrep 1, Test A) was just a fluke for me. I'll definitely try to do more drilling and start adding more of those sections into the work I do moving forward. Do you have any other tips or things I should be doing to get my games score back up to speed?

Thank you again for your help!

-Hannah

[hmerr14]

***UPDATE***

I took a fully simulated test yesterday after doing untimed sections this weekend, then followed with Blind Review, and was back to scoring better. I still didn't finish the section, but by less questions than before, and when I went back to blind review I definitely did better.


Maybe it was a confidence thing, or a practice thing, but hopefully its a good sign! Thanks again for your help and any further tips are still greatly appreciated!

[Dave Killoran]

That's a good development! Anything that improves confidence at this point is great

Some thoughts and tips:

• 1. A large portion of what you do in LG is based on ideas, rules, and patterns that have been presented many times before. Thus, your ability to spot those elements and quickly handle them is not only crucial, it's expected. Anything standard on the LSAT—whether that's a basic diagram or rule representation , or first level inference—must be immediately processed without delay. So, when you mention that you are at times slow here, it's the first point of attack. Drill these aspects until they are second nature!
  
  2. About drilling, most students don't do it properly. They'll look at a game once or maybe twice and then move on to the next one. That's not enough! You wouldn't do that if it was a list of dates that you had to memorize, and it's bad policy here as well. why? Because each game is like a window into the test maker's mind. Each game should be studied in detail and done multiple times until it's second nature. Our student Marvin talks about this here: http://blog.powerscore.com/lsat/my-lsat ... men-part-2. And he's gone from struggling with the LSAT to being utterly dominant. The key is to review, review, review, and squeeze every last drop out of each question you do.
  
  3. One of the dangers of learning from books like the Bibles is that they lay out a lot of disparate, complicated ideas. But just learning about those ideas is not nearly enough. I think of it like driver training: if you sit through the class you know a lot more about the rules of the road, but can you actually drive the car yet? No! And the same thing applies here—it's not so much just going through the books that helps, it's putting the ideas into practice and really watching how they apply and are used. This clearly relates well to the two points above, but it's different because it helps show why just going through the books isn't sufficient. I should be able to pull up any page in those books and you should be able to discuss the ideas in detail, at length, and with authority

Most of the above is about going back and practicing in a more thorough way, but that's always the first step. Let's see what happens with that first, but I'm sure it will help. Good luck!