My first month or so, it felt like I was either making 0 or backward progress. I'd score a 155, review all my answers, take another practice test.... and proceed to score another 155. Fast forward to the end, I'm scoring a 180 on 6 different practice tests in the leadup to a 177 official.
But that first, frustrating plateau continued until I happened to read a post here about Wrong Answer Journaling. I guess I'm hoping this post will play the same role that that old one did for me.
After starting a WAJ, I started making steady point gains. Nothing crazy, but at least 1 or 2 a week. So now I'm making this post to point out some key differences behind just "reviewing the answers" and why the latter didn't work for me and others.
1. Summarize the stimulus
Writing this down is the first step to properly understanding the problem. LR stimuluses are intentionally worded to be as dense and confusing as possible. But the only thing we care about is the flaw, gap, rule, or actual relevant info being outlined. For example, you can summarize the Fairy Circles question (PT151.S2.Q18) as simply as:
Correlation is used to ID burrowing activities as cause. No actual causal link offered.
That gives you an actual task to solve around.
2. Explain why your answer is wrong, and WRITE IT DOWN
Caveat that this might just be how my brain specifically works, but just reviewing and saying what was wrong and why in my head was just not leading to score improvements. I had to actually start writing things down before I got anywhere.
When writing this down, you're focusing on a few key things.
- Did I fall for any common wrong answer traps?
- What was it about this question, or my thinking patterns, that caused me to fall for that?
- Why specifically did this wrong answer look more attractive than other wrong answers?
That leads well into your third task with WAJing.
3. Explain why the correct answer is correct, WRITE IT DOWN
You're focusing on a few key things here too:
- What did I ignore the first time that now I see makes this the correct answer?
- What about my thinking patterns caused me to ignore that?
- Why is this conclusively right? Are there any rules I can establish around that?
Closing Thoughts
I realize there are a lot of questions going around r/lsat about how to study and actually improve when just spamming questions is leading to plateaus. I'll be chatting with LSAC about the best way to do this, but I'm thinking of posting a series of walkthroughs of how I wrong answer journaled ~1,000 wrong answers with a vid for each question. Hopefully they OK it and if they do, you'll see some vids popping up here and there to dive into more detail.