I've hit a brick wall... advice?

[cdc3d]

In the past week, I have taken multiple prep tests, but I can't get my score to budge! I have consistently earned a 165 with one exception, when I got a 173. I rarely ever miss any questions on the Logic Games section, and the questions that I miss on the Logical Reasoning sections are generally inane! The types that I most often miss are Flaw or Parallel Reasoning questions, with the occasional Assumption question. I have reviewed all of my materials on those questions, and I can almost always understand exactly why I missed the questions that I did. YET, I still make the same mistakes!!!!

Anyone else been there? Any ideas on how to get past this mental blockage would be greatly appreciated. I don't know if I need to practice less and take a break or practice more!

Thanks!
-Chelsea

[noah]

Chelsea, I'm so glad you posted this since so many people experience this. Here's what I think might help you:

Before I really started hitting my stride (and when I'm out of practice) I found that I missed easy questions when I would have the answer predicted and then I go hunting for it. I'd say for the first 10 questions this worked 95% of the time for me, but as the test progressed I would find that using that technique I'd get fooled more often.

I stopped looking for the right answer and started eliminating four answers. I think the proper attitude when you've found a good answe for the LSAT LR and RC is "this looks good, but I've probably been fooled" or "great, I found one good answer, let me find another one". Once you've eliminated 3 answers, start digging in to the nitty-gritty of the remaining two.

Go ahead and try that out on a set of 10 LR questions - un-timed - to get used to it. Then do it with a full section. Then do it with a full test.

Tell me how it goes. If anyone has other advice, please add on to this since this is such a typical situation.

Good luck!

- Noah

[cdc3d]

Noah, thank you so much for your advice! It was brilliant! I found it slightly more difficult to manage my time, and the ones I tended to miss were because I was feeling pressured to move on. HOWEVER, I got a 172! The time management is something that I think I can work on in the next couple days and is simply a matter of practice. I think I was more likely to bring in my own assumptions regarding a problem when I tried pre-phrasing, and I was also more likely to overlook key details and diction that separated the right from wrong answers. I feel much more confident that I can get closer to a 180 now that I know that I truly know the material and simply need to work on my pacing!

Thank you so so so much!

-Chelsea

[perng.yan]

Similar.. I've hit a block but of a different sort. In the first month of practicing LSAT and learning concepts, my score improved 8 points. However, in the last two weeks.. my score has been the same.. and sometimes a little bit worse.

It seems that reading comprehension and logic games scores improve when I do more practice and when i get my timing right.

However, the logical reasoning/argument sections seem to stay put. I do practice problems and know all the concepts and what the questions are looking for, but I usually on get 83% correct, whether it's I miss some assumptions, some inferences, some flaws, some parellels, some principles.. it's basically all over the board.

I tried the eliminating, but my accuracy is still similar.

What can I do??? I need to improve my logical reasoning or else I can't reach my goal score!

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

I'm not going to say that I know your situation entirely, but from the sounds of it, I might suggest the following. Try adjusting your level of critical analysis. Early in the section give the test writer tons of room with language and go for concrete, straightforward approaches to strengthening/weakening/assumption/etc. As you move later in the section (say the mid third), become more careful on language, but still trust your instincts where you think the gap/flaw in the argument rests. As you move to the final third, then start to bring out some of the conceptual patterns to finding solutions in LR and be wary of answer choices that fit your initial instincts too well.

Good luck and feel free to PM me with any further questions you might have.

[perng.yan]

oOh.. thanks.. i think you gave me that advice earlier before.. but i never tried to implement it during a practice test.

one more thing..
so.. i've tried to keep a mistake log on all the things i get wrong to see if there is a pattern in my wrong answer v. right answer... but i can't find it! hahah.. half the time it may be that i mis-read something or chose an answer too quickly without thinking critically about it and the other answers...

but.. another half are mostly questions that EVEN after i see the explanations, i'm still not convinced. i write it off as "a bad LSAT question" and hope that only one or two of those will appear on the LSAT (since i'm assuming that i will get those dead wrong anyway) and hope to just maximize the points on other questions.

not sure what else i can try.

but i will definitely try out the "level of criticism" though and see how that works out thanks again!

[bradyllewis]

Of course I can only speak for myself on this, but here's what helped me:

Like you, I found myself consistently missing the same questions or the same types of questions. Once I knew the answer after the fact, it was obvious to me. So my approach to rectifying it was twofold.

First, I made a cheat sheet with the questions that I kept missing. I kept this sheet with me at all times and whenever I had a free minute or two I would pull the sheet out and continuously look over it. I would do this when I was standing in line at the store, when I was sitting in a waiting room, etc.

Also, as you mentioned in your post, when I think I was running out of time and feeling pressured to hurry up and determine the answer. I decided it was best to bounce around the exam to answer the questions according to how well I knew them. I would first answer all of the questions I knew immediately. Then I would answer the ones that I could figure out pretty quickly. I would save the ones I had to think longest on for last. This way, I wasn't unnecessarily pressured on any of the questions that I really knew. It kept me from making any stupid mistakes on "gimme" questions.

Just using these two tips help me bump my scores up.