I have hit a road block on my score

[ebertasi]

I cant seem to improve my score any more. I just finished the Powerscore virtual online class, and the techniques, I think, have helped me tremendously. I was not able to put in the time for homework during the course like I should have and I think that has put a damper on my score, however, I have completed the majority of all the homework and practice problems in the lessons. I have watched several hours of the modules online as well. When I take my tests, I try to consciously employ the Powerscore techniques I have learned, but I feel as though I have hit a road block.
I took a practice LSAT just before I started the course, without having done any preparation except for having read about the test online. I made a 150. Throughout the course, until now, I have taken 8 practice tests. My scores have been 156, 158, 156, 159, 158, 160, 159, and 160. For some reason, I guess I am expecting to see a score jump of some sort. I am aiming for a 165.
After a take a practice test, I usually spend about 4 hours going over the test. I run through all the problems whether or not they were difficult/easy or I got them wrong/right.

As far as logical reasoning, I am starting to notice a few trends. I only answer strengthen and weaken questions correctly about 50% of the time. I also consistently have issues with S/N conditional reasoning and cause/effect. I also have issues with Justify questions. However, I am pretty consistent at answering assumption and resolve questions correctly. Also, I have noticed that any questions that students have answered correctly at a rate of less than 50% wrong, I have a high chance of getting wrong. Obviously saying that seems like well yeah of course you have a high change of getting harder questions wrong, but there seems to usually be about 7 of those questions on a typical LR section and I usually get 6 of them wrong. And typically I get 6 to 8 questions wrong on a LR section. I am skipping questions if I don't immediately understand what I am reading.

As far as the reading comp section, I would say it is my weakest section. I never can finish and I have a hard time with questions like Which one of the following would the author agree with, or which one of the following would you infer about the author, or which one of the following best describes the authors opinion. Basically, author perspective questions pose a lot of difficulty for me. And, I think because of this I often lose sight of the argument of the passage and that creates difficulty for other questions. I usually get 8 to 12 wrong per section.

As far as the Logic Games, I think this is probably my strongest section. I have had one test where I got them all wrong and some where I have gotten 6 wrong. I have never gotten more than 6 wrong. Typically I get 2 wrong. I think the biggest problem I have for this section are on games where I can't figure out what the base should be. Usually I pick the wrong one I guess.

So, what do you think would help me the most in the next week and two days before the LSAT as far as improving my score? Is there anything that I should definitely be doing or not doing that perhaps I am not aware of?
Any advice on improving my score or strategy would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you so much!

[ebertasi]

Also, one other thing about logical reasoning questions, I have difficulty coming up with prephrases on a lot of questions.

[DavidAg]

Man, I just I had your score in games. I have the opposite problem. I typically score pretty high on reasoning, usually between 22-24. But the best I have ever scored on games in 18. That was about two weeks ago. My last few tests I have missed at least 8 each time. For reasoning I just do lots of problems. I did the virtual course as well. They give us almost a thousand to do. With a little over a week until test day we still have time to really improve. I'm planning on going back through each lesson and doing about 100 LR problems on the days that I don't do practice tests.

[ebertasi]

Thanks for the reply. I am optimistic about improving, but I do really want to see some results.

Any advice from Powerscore would be great!

[Dave Killoran]

Hey Ebertasi,

Thanks for the informative post and questions. I'm going to reply to you in several posts, so it may take a day or two to post those. Here's the first one

First off, I'm really glad to hear that the Virtual Course was a help to you. It seems like you got some good class time in, and were able to do a fair amount of homework. That definitely gives you a very solid foundation and helps me understand what you've learned. In general, if I had to make a "flash analysis" of what's occurring, I'd say that your scoring plateau likely relates to this statement you made: "When I take my tests, I try to consciously employ the Powerscore techniques."

I love the LSAT, but it's also a brutal test, and one of the things they do is to attack you from all directions. Perhaps the most challenging thing about preparing for the exam is becoming comfortable with recognizing all of the concepts, and knowing when to apply certain strategies (using the right approach at the right time, in short). It sounds like you can recognize the ideas and you know the strategies. These are two critical pieces of LSAT success, and bode well for future improvement. However, what's likely holding you up now is the processing time required to put both pieces together.

One analogy that I've used to help understand this exact situation is learning to drive a car. At first, it's tough to smoothly integrate all the factors that go into driving well: knowing the rules of the road, recognizing the road situation, and operating the vehicle itself. That's why you usually see first-time drivers driving, umm, let me put this diplomatically, erratically. At the very least they aren't comfortable with what they are doing because they have to think through each step. However, check back a few weeks later and they are usually much smoother; come back another month later and they are even better. It's obviously not just the time factor that causes that, it's mainly the time they spend in the car, practicing. After a while, things start to become second nature, and they don't have to think about what they are looking for or what they will do; they just react naturally. The LSAT is very similar to this, and the step that usually unleashes big scoring jumps is when everything starts to become second-nature. When you simply apply the right technique automatically, that's when you start to see confidence increase and time-to-question-completion decrease.

So, in part, what you want to work towards is being more comfortable with the ideas to the extent that you don't have to think consciously about them. That takes moire practice, obviously, as well as analysis of what is present in each question so you know what to look for next time.

More to come. Thanks!

[Dave Killoran]

Continuing on, with your scoring history, 165 is definitely within reach. Getting through the 150s is hardest thing because it takes so many questions to move up each scaled point. See http://www.powerscore.com/lsat/help/cor ... rgeted.cfm for confirmation of how this works; for example, to go from 150 to 160 requires on average answering around 18 more questions correctly, whereas to go from 160 to 170 requires on average answering around 14 more questions correctly. Literally, it gets easier to move up in terms of the scaling the higher up you already are. So, you are a lot closer to your goal at this point than it may seem. And, generally speaking, you need about 7 more questions correct to get to 165, so less than 2 questions per section gets you in the vicinity (although I always aim higher, so I'm not saying 165 is the cap ).

The other thing I was really gratified to see in your comments was that you spend a fair amount of time going over each practice test, especially that you look at each problem regardless of whether you thought it was easy or hard. This is a process that many people skimp on, but I think it is extremely important. Just because a question was "easy" doesn't mean that you can't learn from it, or complete it more quickly next time. And studying incorrect answers is often extremely informative. I like to say that the past is prologue on the LSAT, and the more you study the nature of how questions and answer choices are constructed, the more powerful and comfortable you become going forward.

I know you felt that during the course that you were not able to put in the amount of time you would have liked to on the homework, but you can still overcome that by doing two things:

1. Taking more practice tests. I've said elsewhere that I'm a huge fan of trial runs, and the more you can do, the better.

2. Use the remaining homework sets to focus on identified weaknesses. You mentioned some of these in your post (and I'll hit on them in a later post), but I'd prefer you do practice tests at this point (assuming you are taking the June LSAT--if you aren't, tell me!), and keep homework problem sets for specialized situations where you want to isolate individual weaknesses.

Next (tomorrow, most likely), I'll tackle some comments about your individual section performances.

Thanks!

[ebertasi]

Hey Dave,

Thank you so much for the detailed comments. I am taking the June LSAT. I took a practice test today and got a 159. I got 6 wrong on each logical reasoning section, 4 wrong on logic games, and 14 wrong on reading comp. Probably ties with my worst reading comp section of all time but its not to much worse than usual. Is there anything in particular I should try doing to improve with RC?

I look forward to more posts!

Thank you,

Elliot

[ebertasi]

I thought of something else this morning while practicing LR questions. The stimuli that tend to be convoluted and have embedded in them lots of information, some that may not even be applicable to the question, do you think that underlining or circling key words would be appropriate and not a waste of time? I find myself reading those stimuli two a half times, and by the time I answer the question over 3 minutes have gone by.

Thank you!

[Dave Killoran]

Let's move on to LR. In these sections some of what I said previously is clearly applicable, e.g. the adverse effects of having to think through each question and technique. I do have several thoughts/questions for you, though.

First, when you say you consistently have issues with SN and CE, are you seeing the reasoning structures during the question? Or is it only afterwards that you realize that one of those forms was there? What I'm looking to find out is where the problem occurs with these SN and CE questions: is it in the recognition, the usage, the manipulation, or the technique application?

Second, in reference to your troubles with Strengthen and Weaken, how are your argument part recognition skills? For example, how to you do on Method-AP questions, and Method/Flaw question in general? To be honest, this comment concerns me because Strengthen/Weaken are about argument manipulation, which is very often based on your overall understanding of the argument structure. Problems there tend to echo throughout the section with detrimental effects.

Third, you mention that you are skipping questions if you don't immediately understand them. How do you make that decision? Is it the topic? The language they are using? Do you get through the entire stimulus one time and then decide to skip it, or do you make that decision within the first few words?

Finally, as you suspect, if you are reading the stimulus two and half times, that is a problem. My normal pathway through a question is to read the entire stimulus one time, and if there is something that doesn't make sense, I'll stop while reading and examine just that part again. Then I move on to the answers, but I'll return to the stimulus as needed to clarify or confirm. So, accounting for returning to the stimulus during the questions, I may look at a stimulus one and a half times. I wonder if you might be trying to understand every little piece of what they say, when in fact that isn't necessary. If so, we may have to experiment with a little bit of living with uncertainty when leaving the stimulus (which is fine; it is in fact impossible to understand every single thing in each stimulus perfectly--they are just too complex).

Continuing on with the discussion of reading the stimulus, as far as diagramming key words, I have a couple of thoughts on that matter (big surprise, right? ). Although our courses and books talk a lot about diagramming, they do so in the context of "when you need to diagram, you have to have the ability to do so." However, that sometimes gets mistaken for the idea that students should diagram everything they see (when in fact they shouldn't). In LR, I don't tend to diagram a whole lot. Sure, for example, when I see a SN relationship that strikes me as useful I'll note it as I'm reading, but overall I certainly don't diagram everything that could be diagrammed. Within arguments, the one thing I consistently note is the conclusion (usually with a bracket-type line next to the conclusion in the argument--I do this so often I don't even notice doing it anymore). Occasionally I'll note key words in the argument, but even then it's just the direction-changers such as "but" or "although." So, if you are thinking of diagramming the entire argument and marking it up so each piece is clearly identified, I'd say that will take too much time. On the other hand, if making some quick marks (and "quick" is key word here) helps you understand the overall structure of what you are reading, then by all means go ahead, especially if it cuts down the number of times you read the stimulus.

Please let me know what you think of the above. The more information I can get about what is occurring during the section, the better advice I can give. Thanks!

[Dave Killoran]

Regarding RC, some of the answers to my LR questions will help me better understand what is happening here, but my initial take is that you are reading too much for detail and not enough for overall structure. In my experience, when someone struggles with author-related questions, when they are reading they focus more on the statements being made and less on how they fit into the overall picture.

When you are reading, your primary goal is to understand the structure of the passage--the general ideas and where they were stated. Once you have that "map" in your head, you can return at will to the passage and find whatever you need as you answer each question. That means you will miss some details in the passage as you read through it the first time (but again, that's ok, everyone does, and there is no way to understand everything said in an RC passage given the limited amount of time you have).

In some senses, the LR and RC issues you are having possibly stem from that drive to understand every detail as you read. This isn't all that surprising: in almost all the reading you do for school, there is no clock timing you and the only goal is to get the details. Doing well on the the LSAT often requires people to slightly modify how they read--to first get the big picture, and then fill in the other parts when needed (which is sometimes never).

I'd love to see the results if you approached a few RC passages with the intent of seeking just the overall broad strokes of what's going on: what's the big picture (MP), who the players are (viewpoints), and in general what position they've taken. I'm betting that might allow you to relax a bit more during the passage (because it's pretty stressful to feel like you have to get every single detail while reading, and that mental taxation alone slows you down and causes mental fatigue). Then, in the questions, worry about solidifying the details (and you might find that you recall more of the details using this approach).

Please let me know what you think. Thanks!