LR blind review

[Pizzaandpasta]

I’m struggling quite a bit with logical reasoning - I’ve been studying and practicing since mid October and although I’ve gotten a lot better at recognizing certain patterns in the stimulus and being able to instinctively cross off wrong answers, I keep closing in on two answers and always picking the wrong one out of the two 😞 lol. And when I review my tests, for 95% of questions I understand where I went wrong and try to be cognizant of these mistakes for the future but something is still not clicking. I’ve improved on every practice test but it’s really small improvements and I’m still not scoring close to where I want to score. 
 

Can anyone share how they were able to make the LR section stick? What study methods did you use? How did you review tests/practice quizzes? And is it normal for it to still be hard even after studying for a month n a half? Feeling hopeless for the Jan test. Any advice is appreciated 🙂 

[Kobe]

This test can take months to study for and making small improvements is the name of the game. The best advice I can offer is to not get frustrated, I went backwards a few times and this was a hard pill to swallow. If you are doing your blind review each time then you are already doing what you need to do. 

In terms of mechanics I would focus on really understanding the conditional logic questions, these are low hanging fruit because they are so mechanical. Other than that labeling the argument in blind review might help depending on where you are in your prep ie picking out context, premise, major premise/sub conclusion, conclusion. 

I started from a 156 and at a month and half had broken into low 160s. It took me a full 3.5 months to get into high 160s consistently. Not being where you want to be after a month and a half is no big deal. 

[AllanC]

I'll echo what @Kobesaid in that your situation is rather normal at 1.5 months of studying. I'd wager you're at the point of more or less understanding the fundamentals, but when you consciously try to apply them during timed conditions you either A) take a long time to think about things or B) overthink things to the point of twisting your mind into a pretzel. This is par for the course and shouldn't be cause for concern. Soon you'll start to be able to assimilate the material you've studied on the fly without having to consciously think about it. That's when you'll start to see the real gains.

One tip about reviewing is that you shouldn't only focus on incorrect answer choices (and breeze over the ones you know you got correct). On your review you want to put yourself in the headspace you had when you wrote the exam so you can think about the process you followed to exclude or leave open certain answer choices, and see if there was a better / faster / more optimal way to do so. You want to apply this to all questions (those you got incorrect and those you got correct) because even if you got a question correct, you might have been able to do it faster / more reliably. Review should take as long or longer than taking the PT itself. 

BTW improvement on the LSAT is generally at the margin and you have to learn to get pumped about that!

You usually get to 17 LR but are now hitting 19? AWESOME! You usually have 85% accuracy on those attempted but have had a few PTs around 88%? BETTER THAN CHRISTMAS! Concentrate on getting better each PT, and you'll be more likely to get where you want to be. If you focus only on how far you are way from your desired score, you'll be less likely to get there.

Edited November 27, 2021 by AllanC

[Pizzaandpasta]

Thank you guys for this encouragement! It makes sense that a test of this nature will take months to improve on. I think I was freaking out when I made the post because we’re getting closer and closer to the Jan test. 
 

Another question I had was if anyone on here is considering taking the February test? queens and western are the only schools to my knowledge that consider the Feb score. Can anyone give any insight as to whether it’s worth booking the Feb test? I know I’ll be competing for less spots but is there any benefit to having another test booked in the same cycle even if it is the later tests? I wanted to book the Feb test (I have until Dec 3 to decide cos it’s the deadline) in case I fuck up on the January one since it’ll be my first one that I’ll be writing (test anxiety and all that fun stuff).  If anyone has experience with booking back to back tests or any advice for this please share!!