Does anyone else get through a reading comp section and feel like "man, I might have missed half those questions..." or something like that?

Sometimes I feel like I rock a section and end up with ~-4. Then sometimes, like just now, I felt like I was swimming in an ocean of confusion and ended up with -4. What are you guys doing to build up confidence in these sections?

Also, I've got a scenario that perhaps one of you RC gurus can comment on:

I was at 16 minutes heading into P3. I read through the passage in a couple minutes, went to the first question, had no idea. Went to the second question, realized I had no idea what was going on in the passage. At minute 20, I reread the entire passage. In all, I spent 13 minutes on this passage. Luckily, the last passage was on fractal geometry (something I'm somewhat familiar with) and I blew threw it and salvaged my score. I missed one on each passage in this section, even though I felt differently about each:

1) cakewalk
2) slightly uneasy, but confident
3) kill me now
4) cakesprint

This may sound terrible, but the "harder" the passage is, I've found the easier the questions are. Maybe it's just my luck, but when I get a passage on common law or something, the questions are always ridiculously hard, and when I get a passage on some scientific mumbo jumbo, the questions are way easier.

So as far as confidence goes, I look at a hard passage and think "Well, there goes most of the fight right there."

Also, I think it's key to know when you're just totally not understanding a passage. At some point if you're halfway through the second paragraph and start thinking "wtf am I reading here", then maybe it's time at that point to cut your losses and start over where you're more comfortable. 'Getting' it the second time and watching all the answers fall into places is preferable to not.

PT 33

LR (-2): Missing one of the first few questions in a LR section always makes me feel like a dumbass.
RC (-5): One of the passages ate up my time, missed half of the questions on the last passage. I usually struggle with the humanities passage because the subject often bores the hell out of me. The science passages are usually the easiest. Maybe I should save the humanities passage for last.
LG (-1): I actually enjoyed the birds in the forest game. In/out games are my favorite type. That third game, rubies/sapphires/topazes, was a massive time suck. Spent 15 fucking minutes on it. Misbubbled the last question.

175 (-8)

My returns are diminishing but I'm happy with any score 170+. So all is well.

Yeah, RC is pretty unpredictable for me. My scores don't vary all that much (-1 to -3 pretty consistently), but I'll go -1 when I felt like I did worse and vice versa. Even more frustrating, the questions I miss are ones often ones I felt confident on, which is rarely the case with LR.

I need to change my approach, but I'm not sure how.

I'm going to try to take my next practice test in a library, and see if that makes a difference. For once, I'd love to take a PT without someone asking me questions or being obnoxious.

PT 42.2.25 (Weaken)-Study of patients with disease T


Can someone take a crack at explaining the difference between answer choice A and C for me. I just did this as a timed section and this problem ate up way too much time. Thankfully it was at the end of the section.

Edit: I'm an idiot and see it now, but if someone still wants to explain it for others, I think it would be beneficial.

man_utd_4l,

Essentially (A) is irrelevant. What do we care about a small group of patients who lived longer than ten years relative to each other? Moreover, it is focusing on the wrong area of the study. Of 86 patients, telling someone that only four survived for the ten year study, but because two of them happened to live longer than two others, that proves that there was indeed some benefit? No way!

(C) by contrast talks about the members as a whole relative to each other. While (A) talks about only 4 of 86 members, (C) talks about all 86 relative to each other.

In general, "Some X are different blahblahblah counterexample" is a terrible strengthen or weaken answer choice because it could just refer to extreme outliers.

Hope this helps!

I am with you 100%. I find that I am 50/50 with RC questions much more often than with any LG or LR questions. My strategy right now is to finish the SuperPrep book and do a few more PTs and if I'm not more confident in two weeks I'll buy the Manhattan book and hope it helps. That said, I consistently somewhere between -1 and -3 so I feel like I need to get over one or two more hurdles to get to -0/-1 land where I want to be on test day.

Can anyone try taking a stab at PT 50, Section 4, LR Question 12?

I don't quite get how the correct answer weakens the argument. I guess I understand the basic idea of how it weakens the argument, but I would like a more detailed/thorough answer if anyone has the time.

How are you drilling? I'm thinking of doing individual games from the Cambridge packet mixed with timed sections.

Hey all, I'm a 33-year-old guy from Maine, living in New Mexico until the end of September or so, planning on applying this fall. Figured I would join in the fun here.

PT 51:

LR: -2
RC: -1
LG: -1

96/100 = 178

Frustrating: I really should have gotten at least the RC and one of the LR questions right.
Encouraging: I easily could gave gotten at least the RC and one of the LR questions right! Also, LG is not nearly the monster that it used to be for me, which has greatly decreased my anxiety in general.

Next up is PT 55 on Wednesday night.

Welcome! Solid performance on this test, keep it up. Just over a month to go now...

There is nothing frustrating about that performance!!! Way to go! What do you think helped you most with LG?

After finding a pile of LG games that I made copies of without notating WHICH PT they are from, I bought the 2 of the LG games books from Cambridge. Hope I don't regret spending $80 on it.

Only 42 days left! I'm thinking about listening to Eye Of The Tiger every morning to keep me "pumped." Does anyone have other suggestions?

61
Raw: 85/101
Scaled: 167

RC:-7
LR1: -3
LG: -2 (Finished with 10 minutes left and didn't recheck work... dumb dumb dumb)
LR Exp: -3
LR2: -4
Got to the last RC with 7 minutes left, rushed myself through the final passage, went into the questions uncomfortable looking at my remaining time way too often and getting worried and rushed answers. I need to get to this last one with more time left.

LR1: This is soooo annoying. Three easy mistakes. I changed two answers to the wrong one after having it right.
LG: Very easy games. Need to double check how to do rule substitution questions.
LR2: Missed #3/7/8 than one in the final 15. No excuse missing these easy ones.

Okay guys, I am consistent with this 167 score now, that is 3 in a row. There is some major consistencies between the three. If I have time left for the final passage I nail it. My terrible RC performance stems from rushing the final passage. I find that the first passage has been relatively easy, I might need to work it like the first LG game and crush it within 6 minutes. My problems with LR are driving me NUTS. Every single time I have one LR section where I miss 3, sometimes 4 within the first 10. When I review questions I spot my mistakes, totally understand where I'm messing up.

Blah, getting through 4 passages in 35 is very difficult. I am doing 2/week for now on, so I am VERY excited to get this 167 up above 170. I'm right on the verge guys, just need that final push and stop with the careless errors.

Anything I should do in particular you guys/gals think? Right now I am doing this:
Mon: PT, Tues: PT Review, Wed: PT Review + LG game, Thursday: Timed LR section + 3 RC Cambridge Passages, Friday: PT, Sat: PT Review, Sun: PT Review
I don’t have a lot of materials left outside of my final PTs and I have divvied up my remaining unused sections for some timed practice to stay fresh. I review my PTs pretty extensively. I really want this to come together. Lots of simple things that I need to get worked out.

Do you have a specific strategy for your RC?

As for your schedule, I feel like doing 2 days of PT review is too much, unless you're only spending like an hr a day reviewing. Have you tried retaking some sections that you haven't reviewed in a while?

Well, I don't have a lot of material left. I guess I should think about redoing some sections after I've reviewd to see if the concepts make more sense?

My RC is actually pretty good, but I rush that last passage, I'll lose a minute here, a minute there, and find I only have 7 minutes left for the final passage. When this happens I always do poorly.

I try to "read actively" asking myself where the passage is going, but sometimes I will unconsciously enter cruise control. Ive been slacking with my RC, need to get back on it...

Yeah I think it helps to retake a few PTs. I'm currently retaking some PTs I took last month and it's helping.

How long does it take for you to read a passage in RC?

Hmmm, that's a good point! I will start retaking some. I would say I average somewhere from 3-3:30. I tend to take a little longer on reading than most I would say. I do a pretty good job marking, I really do hone in on the important things, but sometimes that one tough question or two will cost me 3 minutes total or something. I really need to work on just moving on... I did that in my LR today and it REALLY helped. However, this concept is a little more difficult to implement than in LR.

People who are consisntely scoring 170+, how often would you say you to consciously tell yourself to move to the next RC question and just put down some answer?

I'd say with RC I'll take that extra couple minutes to work on 2 difficult questions and when I hit that final RC passage with only 7 minutes I have no chance to finish the section especially if I get a hard analogy question/time consuming passage structure. Like today's RC section, I went -0/-1/-1/-5.

LG drilling

Decided to do a bunch of timed sections today

PT10 -0
PT11 -0
PT12 -3 (lunchtime lol)

Hi all! You guys are all doing so well! TBH I'm a little embarrassed... I've been studying for a couple months and still PTing in the low 160s (started in the mid to high 150s) and with only about a month left I'm getting nervous. I think my main issue is time. I almost never finish a section (LG: 3 games; LR: skip abt 3 questions each section; and RC: 3 passages). My accuracy on the questions is not too bad but running out of time is really killing me. Can any of you offer any advise, strategy, tricks, etc??? Thanks!

I try to go as fast as I can on RC so that I don't spend too much time debating any individual question. If I'm not sure of an answer after I select it, I circle it and go back after I've finished the whole section. I usually end up with 3-7 minutes to review. Unless I find that I misread a question or see something in an answer choice that I didn't before, I try not to change my answers. However, being able to circle a question lets me move on because I don't feel the pressure to make it my FINAL ANSWER right then and there.

Thank you shifty, that is some good advice. Honestly, timing is still a killer for me. I can finish sections and I know I can answer every question, but those 2-3 per LR/RC that I sit on just kill me. Honestly, I'm gonna do some RC practice tomorrow and just go with my gut, not overthinking and see how I do. That is so much time to have left, how do you do it!

What sucks is that I always had extra time when practicing before I took the LSAT the first and second times, and then I barely was able to finish the RC sections both times I actually took it. Hoping that using the LSAT watch beforehand will help me prevent this happening AGAIN.

Hi everybody,

I came across a question in my studies tonight and was helping someone could help me out.

The logic game rule says "If N is reduced, neither R nor S is reduced."

I diagrammed this as N-->not R and not S

Apparently it should be diagrammed as two separate ("super") rules:

N<--/-->R and N<--/-->S

Can anyone explain the subtlety which I am obviously missing?