RC score fluctuation

[capncook]

Hello,

My problem with RC is primarily that I can't seem to discern any trends from my mistakes. My scores in this section are extremely inconsistent. About 50% of the time, I do really well (25+/27). When I get these high scores, each passage makes good sense to me, and the vast majority of correct answers just intuitively come to me. I don't really discern much of a strategy behind my success; I just read the passage and answer the questions using my best reasoning skills. Occasionally I'll be confused on 1 or 2 questions or run out of time and have to guess on a question, but overall, the section feels like a breeze (or as close to a breeze as possible on this brutal test). About the other 50% of the time, I'll get a much lower score, averaging about 18/27. I can often tell that a section is going badly in the middle of it, but I can never discern why. It will just feel "harder." After reading a passage, I'll sometimes hit the questions and just feel like the passage didn't make sense to me. Other times, I'll breeze through a passage thinking it's easy and then find that I got only 2/7 questions right.

Overall, my main issue is that I can't tell why some sections go so well for me and some go badly. On good days, everything just seems to click magically, but on others, it seems like my RC skills momentarily leave my brain.

Is score fluctuation on RC a common issue? RC has the potential to be by far my strongest section, so I really want to maximize my score and make sure these "off days" come to an end very soon.

Thanks for the help!

[Sky Brooks]

Hi capncook,

The good news is, score fluctuation on reading comprehension is very common. I went through the exact same issue as I prepared for my test date. I would be relatively consistent on every type of section other than reading comprehension, in which I would often fluctuate by 4 or 5 missed questions.

My only advice is to do more reading comprehension sections, fully-timed, start to finish, using a proctor app. Eventually, after doing more and more practice tests, I started seeing the fluctuation in my reading comprehension scores decrease. The process of doing the RC sections became second nature. You become more conditioned at reading that specific length of passage, memorizing details for about 8 minutes, and being able to maintain focus for the full 35 minutes. You also become more adept at prephrasing and noting key details when reading the passage. You mentioned that when things are going well, you feel as though you can follow your intuition. That is definitely how it felt for me as well. When I really started improving my score, I had logged enough practice tests that I had really good sense of what to expect from the passages and questions that followed.

I also recommend reading for fun as much as possible. I know this can be daunting if you're not an avid reader (and you're already reading a ton of dense material for the LSAT). But really, spending as much time as possible just processing information through text will hone your reading comprehension skills as you ramp up towards test day. The Economist is a great source of reading material due to the topics and nature of its content.

Hope this helps!

-Sky Brooks