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I've typically gone through the passages in order, aiming for 8 min to 8.5 min per passage. The sept 17 LSAT left a lot of people with that method frustrated, however, because the third passage was extremely difficult and it took up their time and ruined their performance on the last passage which was relatively easy.

Does anyone have alternative approaches to RC passage order? Doing them in order of number of questions for example?

Thanks!

RSolano wrote:I've typically gone through the passages in order, aiming for 8 min to 8.5 min per passage. The sept 17 LSAT left a lot of people with that method frustrated, however, because the third passage was extremely difficult and it took up their time and ruined their performance on the last passage which was relatively easy.

Does anyone have alternative approaches to RC passage order? Doing them in order of number of questions for example?

Thanks!

I recall seeing someone who used the alternative strategy you named who felt he did even worse on September's RC than folks who did them in order -- because Judges also had a high number of questions. I doubt there's any order you could choose that would immunize you to a passage like Judges, and it's more a matter of self-awareness with time.

RSolano wrote:I've typically gone through the passages in order, aiming for 8 min to 8.5 min per passage. The sept 17 LSAT left a lot of people with that method frustrated, however, because the third passage was extremely difficult and it took up their time and ruined their performance on the last passage which was relatively easy.

Does anyone have alternative approaches to RC passage order? Doing them in order of number of questions for example?

Thanks!

I would do the first passage first since it was typically the easiest and was a bit of a warm up for the remaining passages. Then I jumped to the fourth and then third and finally the second. When I was PTing I found that it was the last few questions that gave me trouble mainly because of fatigued careless errors so I would do the harder sections while I was still fresh and get to coast through one of the typically easier sections.

Of course, as mentioned above you aren't guaranteed for the passages to always be in the same order of difficulty and you can't really tell until you've read them anyway. But psychologically it helped me feeling like i tackled the harder ones early.

Number of questions is one way, but there's really no efficient way to determine which ones are more difficult/less difficult. The amount of time you take trying to figure that out would prob be better served just doing the test. September's RC definitely had me shaken up but I don't see how I would've gotten around that.

RSolano wrote:I've typically gone through the passages in order, aiming for 8 min to 8.5 min per passage. The sept 17 LSAT left a lot of people with that method frustrated, however, because the third passage was extremely difficult and it took up their time and ruined their performance on the last passage which was relatively easy

I used that method and (fingers crossed) it worked just fine (knock on wood)--finished with a minute or so left in the section. I would never advise someone looking for 170+ to skip around because it (A) takes time and (B) breaks you out of "the zone" when you're trying to evaluate how hard something is rather than just actually doing it.

I think it (probably) worked for me because I did a lot of work on time management during my prep--it's all about knowing how to speed up while losing a minimum of accuracy.

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Generally the RC section goes from easiest to most difficult passages in order from the first to last (not necessarily perfectly, but this is the general trend, it goes from easier to harder).

So one thing to keep in mind would be what type of a student you are. I've had students who say they like to start at the end because at the beginning of the section is when they have the most energy and are pumped up to tackle the hard stuff. On the other hand, some students need the mental warmup. They go from first to last because they want to get their brain in the mood to read RC. I think both strategies are valid, although I personally just went from first to last on test day.

Thanks everyone!