LR errors always in the final 10 questions

[maggie@albardiaz.com]

Hi everyone! I've finally gotten a handle on LR, going from around -8 to around -2. In my latest PT, however I got -4, from the final 5 questions. Decided to go back in my analytics and I see that most of the LR questions I get wrong tend to be in the final 10 questions. Does anyone have any tips on not slipping up towards the end?

[Jeff Wren]

Hi Maggie,

Congratulations on your significant LR improvement!

As to your question, the first thing to understand is that it is not surprising that most of the LR questions that you have been missing are in the final 10 questions. The LR section has a general pattern in terms of difficulty in that the questions on average get harder as the section progresses. In other words, the last 10 questions will usually be significantly harder on average than the first ten questions. However, it is not a simple straight line increase in difficulty where question 1 is the easiest and question 25 or 26 is the hardest. Often, there will be one or two "harder" questions in the first 10 and sometimes there will be a somewhat "easier" question near the end on the section. (By the way, this difficulty pattern is ONLY true of LR, there is no similar pattern in logic games or reading comp, where the most difficult game or passage can any of them, although not usually the first.)

If you have the PowerScore Testing and Analytics Package, then you can see the percentages of students who have historically chosen each answer. This is a very good indicator of the difficulty of each question. For example, for "easier" LR questions at the beginning of the section, it is not unusual for 80% or more of students to get the question correct. For harder questions at the end of the section, percentages usually drop into the 40%s and 30%s, etc..

One reason that this information is helpful is that you can get a better sense of why you missed a particular question. For example, if a question was very difficult and there was one very popular/tempting answer that most people chose (including you), then you can focus on why that answer was so tempting and learn from it going forward.

Another thing to look for is whether there is any pattern to the questions that you miss such as type of question or type of reasoning.

Finally, sometimes students miss more questions later in a section due to fatigue. If you find that you are making careless errors such as misreading something, then it could be fatigue. The best way to combat this is to build up your mental/physical stamina by getting plenty of rest and doing more PTs and LSAT homework. Preparing to take the LSAT is a lot like training for a (mental) marathon. To do your best, you need to be able to focus 100% from the beginning to the end.