Blind Review Process - Advice

[throwaway123]

Hello aspiring lawyers and lawyers -

I am about to take my second attempt at the LSAT, and I recognize that I did not study sufficiently. I only managed to pull a 151, and realized that my studying habits were all wrong. To be truthful, I did not blind review, so I am unaware of the entire process of blind reviewing. 

Can someone give me their step-by-steps to how they blind reviewed their LSATs? I tried watching YouTube videos and I feel even more confused than I did before. Any help would be appreciated!

 

Any helpful tips and tricks would be welcomed, as well.

[GoatDuck]

Do a prep test under real test conditions (timing yourself etc). Whenever you’re not 100% certain you got an answer to some question correct, flag the question. When you’ve finished the test, don’t check your score. Instead, go through every flagged question and take as much time as you need until you’re 100% certain you got that question right. Then check the score based on your original take and the score based on your second go-through. Analyze why you flagged your questions on the first take and what went wrong the second time — did you misunderstand questions, drew wrong inferences, or something else? 

[throwaway123]

5 minutes ago, GoatDuck said:

Do a prep test under real test conditions (timing yourself etc). Whenever you’re not 100% certain you got an answer to some question correct, flag the question. When you’ve finished the test, don’t check your score. Instead, go through every flagged question and take as much time as you need until you’re 100% certain you got that question right. Then check the score based on your original take and the score based on your second go-through. Analyze why you flagged your questions on the first take and what went wrong the second time — did you misunderstand questions, drew wrong inferences, or something else? 

Thank you for your help. So let's say you flag the question and you still get it wrong on your second attempt, what do you do?

 

Truthfully, while I do my timed exam, I usually write a "2" beside an answer that was my second choice, and 90% of the time my second choice is correct (if I got the original question wrong).

[Legally_Chase]

24 minutes ago, throwaway123 said:

Thank you for your help. So let's say you flag the question and you still get it wrong on your second attempt, what do you do?

I set myself a score (LR: 23/26 etc.) that I had to reach in order to check my answers. You can adjust that threshold to whatever you like based on your goals. If you BR for the first time and your score is above that threshold then feel confident to check the answers and review the one's you got wrong. However, if you don't get a score above that threshold then re-do all the questions you have even the slightest doubt in. The goal is to never leave a question unless you can explain why the right answer is correct and why the incorrect choices are wrong and for what reason. 

Hope that helps and best of luck!

[Legally_Chase]

Forgot to add my process for BR including a random example. You can actually blind review in two different phases of the test 1) The prep and 2) The timed practice exams. Other's may have a different way to BR but this worked for me. 

A. Prep (For Logical Reasoning - You can do the same for LG and RC (Passage types)

Step 1: Set yourself a goal (ex: I want to get 8 out of the 10 questions I attempt). Be aware of where you are in the prep and your current understanding of the concepts. As you get better, you can set more aggressive goals. 

Step 2: Attempt questions by types (Assumption, Flaw etc.)

Step 3: Do the 10 questions by types and see your score -> If your score is less than 8, then re-do all the questions you have even the slightest doubt in. If your score is 8 or above -> Celebrate if you got a perfect score. If you got some questions wrong -> review the questions you got wrong. Note the one's you got wrong in a journal for incorrect questions. You can redo these once the journal builds up. Be extremely thorough with these questions from the journal, literally write down why the right answer is correct and for what reason and why the incorrect answer choice is wrong for whatever reason. Since the beginning of time, people have seen the answer choice and told themselves "Oh, that's why it's right. I won't make that mistake again". If you review like that you will definitely fall for that trap again.  

Step 4: Do step 3-4 with different question types and varying levels of difficulty. Eventually increase number of questions you attempt from 10 to 15 to 20 etc. 

Step 5: Once you are confident in questions types then move on to doing BR for individual sections. 

B. Timed Practice Exams

Step 1: Do a timed exam

Step 2: Review score (by section) --> Do these scores meet your threshold (ex: LR: 23/26...LG: 21/23....RC: 20/27)

Step 3: BR the same way as you would during your prep. If a final score during BR is below your threshold then you must re-do all questions that you have even the slightest doubt in until you get to your desired threshold. 

 

Friendly advice - Be patient and do not be hard on yourself. Blind Review the probably the single most frustrating thing I have ever done in my life, but it is worth it. Most people are not able to truly commit to it so props to you for trying to keep at it!

 

[throwaway123]

16 minutes ago, Legally_Chase said:

Forgot to add my process for BR including a random example. You can actually blind review in two different phases of the test 1) The prep and 2) The timed practice exams. Other's may have a different way to BR but this worked for me. 

A. Prep (For Logical Reasoning - You can do the same for LG and RC (Passage types)

Step 1: Set yourself a goal (ex: I want to get 8 out of the 10 questions I attempt). Be aware of where you are in the prep and your current understanding of the concepts. As you get better, you can set more aggressive goals. 

Step 2: Attempt questions by types (Assumption, Flaw etc.)

Step 3: Do the 10 questions by types and see your score -> If your score is less than 8, then re-do all the questions you have even the slightest doubt in. If your score is 8 or above -> Celebrate if you got a perfect score. If you got some questions wrong -> review the questions you got wrong. Note the one's you got wrong in a journal for incorrect questions. You can redo these once the journal builds up. Be extremely thorough with these questions from the journal, literally write down why the right answer is correct and for what reason and why the incorrect answer choice is wrong for whatever reason. Since the beginning of time, people have seen the answer choice and told themselves "Oh, that's why it's right. I won't make that mistake again". If you review like that you will definitely fall for that trap again.  

 

 

You're a Saint, thank you so much! So, so helpful.

Just a question, can you tell me how you kept a journal? Was it on a computer, or did you hand-write things? Can you give me an example of how you would organize your journals as well?

[Legally_Chase]

9 minutes ago, throwaway123 said:

Just a question, can you tell me how you kept a journal? Was it on a computer, or did you hand-write things? Can you give me an example of how you would organize your journals as well?

I used Excel as a journal and created different sheets for LR, RC and LG. I noted the following pieces of data:

• Date
• PT#
• Q#
• Question Type
• Actual Score
• Blind Review Score (Used conditional formatting which automatically highlighted the cell according to my established score threshold - If Red --> I was below the threshold and green indicated I was within my limits). 
• Notes (I explained why I chose the answer and for what reason and why the other choices were incorrect). 

I would have a column running on the main page showing my progress and where I currently stand. This may take some time for you to create but it allowed me to focus on question types and game types that I was really struggling on. I was able to identify them and to drill them to a point where my score began to improve with ease. Initial time spent building your own analytics can pay dividends as you prep more. It allowed me to make adjustments to my studying plan which I don't think many test takers do, they stick with something because it worked for another person and that ends up hurting them. 

 

Hope this helps 🙂

 

[Lawllapalooza]

On 5/15/2023 at 10:21 AM, throwaway123 said:

Thank you for your help. So let's say you flag the question and you still get it wrong on your second attempt, what do you do?

Not sure whether the same resources exist as when I studied, but whenever there was a question in LR that I either:

a) got wrong for a reason that wasn't readily apparent to me on review, or
b) got right but wasn't certain of (don't skip reviewing questions where you made a correct guess but could not iterate why all other options were wrong)

I would type the question stem into Google and there was always a forum discussing the question. More than Youtube videos, I found the forums were particularly helpful given others often voiced the same confusion that I had, following which some LSAT hero would directly explain the error in our reasoning. It's laborious/time-consuming but I personally found it made a considerable difference. 

Edited June 24, 2023 by Lawllapalooza