Does anyone do LR out of order? Forum

[jason8821]

I heard a person suggest that it may be better to do LR in the following order.

1-15, 25-21, 20-15

Although this may work on the older tests where it is somewhat obvious that 15-20 are the most difficult, I've heard conflicting viewpoints regarding the newer tests.

[5ky]

No, I would never have done that. I feel like it would lead to too many bubbling problems and a decreased sense of relative time. It's much easier to pace yourself when you work in a linear fashion.

[taw856]

I think "strategies" like this are how people psych themselves out of doing well. I realize most people aren't going to hit 180 (myself included), but I still think it's good to remind yourself there's someone out there who can just go through the questions in order and answer them in the allotted time no sweat.

Try to be THAT guy instead of trying to game the test.

[vanwinkle]

One of the things I learned in my Princeton Review prep class was how to very quickly identify LR questions as certain types, and to "skip" the hard ones and keep going, and then once I'd finished the "easy" ones to go back and do a second pass to do the "hard" ones. However, this was an acquired skill that developed over multiple PTs and practice LR sections. It's not something you can just magically start doing, you need to practice doing it and get well at it for it to give you any timing benefit at all.

[DanInALionsDen]

I did my LR in roughly the order to OP mentioned above on the Dec LSAT, but not for any reason having to do with difficulty. I just find that it keeps me alert and attentive, when I might otherwise be drifting off and getting bored.

[cubswin]

I don't think that strategy is a very good idea. Skipping around on RC, I am in favor of. But I doubt it is necessary on LR.

[Woozy]

I think "strategies" like this are how people psych themselves out of doing well. I realize most people aren't going to hit 180 (myself included), but I still think it's good to remind yourself there's someone out there who can just go through the questions in order and answer them in the allotted time no sweat.

Try to be THAT guy instead of trying to game the test.

+1. They are the same questions no matter what order you do them in.

[hoopsguy6]

Bad idea. Do them in order.

[vanwinkle]

+1. They are the same questions no matter what order you do them in.

I strongly disagree with this. There are harder questions (which can take longer to answer correctly even with some experience) and easier questions (which can take almost no time to answer correctly with enough practice). Each question is worth the exact same number of points, so you want to be answering all the easiest questions to collect all the easiest points before going on to the hard ones.

If the last two questions in the section are the two easiest, and you didn't get to them because you spent too much time trying to correctly answer a harder question, even if you got the hard question right you still lost an easy point. You get 1 point for the hard question when if you skipped it you would have gotten 2 points for the 2 easy ones.

Unless you're gunning for 180 and need everything right, you ought to be prioritizing to answer the easiest questions first, so you're maximizing your time answering the most questions correctly. Even if you are going for a 180 you should still be doing this so you save the hardest ones for last and know exactly how much time you can give yourself trying to get them without costing yourself any points on easier ones, giving you better time management.

[MF248]

I did them in order. I also had extra time to go back & review questions though so I can't really speak for someone that might be in need of extra time and wants to focus on the easier questions that are supposed to be at the end.

[ConsideringLawSchool]

Personally, I would find it more stressful to try to keep track of jumping here and there and judging how much time I should be allocating for the remaining questions.

If a question seems that it will be excessively time consuming, I think that you can come back to that one; in general though, I'd rather just stick with the traditional:

Q 1 -15 15 minutes
Q 15 - end 17 minutes
Reviewing tough ones 3 minutes

[Lurkster]

I started doing something similar to this during my prep and got comfortable with it. I used to bubble in batches by page, so if question 14 would be the end of a page, I would then go to the end of the section and work backwards. I ended up with -1 total on LR for the September test.

I wouldn't say that this approach will benefit everyone, as it is (of course) easier to make bubbling errors, but it worked for me.

[rw2264]

i did them backwards. the ones at the end always seemed harder to me.

[vanwinkle]

This is true, but the assumption that you can isolate the harder questions by their number is ridiculous. Personally, I work through in order, and skip anything utterly ambiguous. I return to those more difficult questions at the end.

Agreed. Questions are randomly assigned; it's typically loaded so that there are more harder questions toward the end in general, but you can't treat that as a rule on an actual test. They could decide randomly to make the first 5 questions the hardest if they really wanted to, without affecting the overall difficulty of the test.

Your method is close to the method I used; the more I learned the different question types and became familiar with the types that were "hardest" or took the longest for me to answer, the more I was able to quickly recognize those and skip them. I'd go back after doing all the unskipped ones and do the ones I skipped until time ran out.

By the time I was taking the real test I was able to get through the whole section, and doing it that way my focus on the early questions first meant my accuracy on them was almost 100% (no time pressure forcing me to choose and miss on questions I should've gotten right anyway) and I had a very accurate picture of how much time I had left to spend on the remaining difficult questions.

This is part of how I gained 13 points and achieved a 170, but it's part of a process and something you have to practice doing to do effectively. You can't just walk in on test day, say you're gonna start doing this, and do well.

[antonin]

Skipping on LR sounds like a horrible idea. Think of the increased likelihood that under stress and time pressure, you will misbubble (or whatever its called).

[Woozy]

+1. They are the same questions no matter what order you do them in.

I strongly disagree with this. There are harder questions (which can take longer to answer correctly even with some experience) and easier questions (which can take almost no time to answer correctly with enough practice). Each question is worth the exact same number of points, so you want to be answering all the easiest questions to collect all the easiest points before going on to the hard ones.

If the last two questions in the section are the two easiest, and you didn't get to them because you spent too much time trying to correctly answer a harder question, even if you got the hard question right you still lost an easy point. You get 1 point for the hard question when if you skipped it you would have gotten 2 points for the 2 easy ones.

Unless you're gunning for 180 and need everything right, you ought to be prioritizing to answer the easiest questions first, so you're maximizing your time answering the most questions correctly. Even if you are going for a 180 you should still be doing this so you save the hardest ones for last and know exactly how much time you can give yourself trying to get them without costing yourself any points on easier ones, giving you better time management.

I don't think we are in disagreement. If you read what I responded to, he was referring to aiming to complete all questions within the time allotted. Obviously I would agree that if one is unable to complete all questions, there are some situations in which skipping hard questions would be preferable. Conversely, one could continue to practice until this trade-off need not be made.

[vanwinkle]

I don't think we are in disagreement. If you read what I responded to, he was referring to aiming to complete all questions within the time allotted. Obviously I would agree that if one is unable to complete all questions, there are some situations in which skipping hard questions would be preferable. Conversely, one could continue to practice until this trade-off need not be made.

Well, I would still do it in this order anyway, even if you're gunning for a 180, since doing them in this order guarantees you the most efficient awareness of how much time you have to spend on the difficult questions after finishing all the easy ones.

[SJU2010]

one of my Kaplan classmates did them in that order and it ended up working great for her she finished LR with 4 min to spare and -3 however, it doesn't work for me i tried it numerous times i end up with extra time left over but with a lot more wrong. I think its the easy ones in the beginning that boost my confidence and prepare me to handle the harder ones towards the middle. I suggest that you take a PT and do one LR this way and another your usual way and see how it goes. It never hurts to try. I do RC out of order (the hard one first) and that helps me a lot.

What does help is skipping the ones that you generally dont do well on or find hard lets say parallel flaw questions. Sometimes if I see them I circle and come back when I am done. Also, some people in my class spent the first minute of the section looking at the question stems of all Q's to point out which ones were the hardest type to them and immediacy circled them to go back to at the end. I find the extra minute loss pointless but it seems to help them.