Modern Quill |
| Posted: 17 May 2009 09:20 PM PDT  Well, I cozied up on the couch, made sure I was clear on the errors I made on the Games yesterday, and delved deep into Arguments again. I just can’t seem to pull myself away, for better or for worse . . . perhaps a day on Games and a day on Arguments will be a good strategy. In any event, I took two back to back. I was obviously what my psychology-major girlfriedn would call “primed” for the second section, which explains why I did 20% better over the first one. I just need to make sure that I can self-prime on June 8. Many of my errors are “Duh” errors. I can quickly see what the question was asking as soon as I know what the answer is. Sometimes I look at the question stem and read “conclusion” instead of “argument,” and vice versa. What bothers me, and gives me immense hope, is that there are two or three questions, clearly among the more difficult questions, that I am able to eliminate 3 answers, stare hard at the remaining two (which are, of course, equally appealing and within 3 words of each other) and then, somehow, intuit the correct choice. This means that I’m seeing through the Matrix, bit by bit. But often I cannot explain the logic behind it . . . it just feels like that is the answer the Testwriters would demand. Of course, the test is (in the words of how they censored Samuel L. Jackson in Snakes on a Plane) a monkeyfighting marvel. This is a test written by human beings, where each question has one, and only one, clear and correct answer. They take great pains to ensure that there is no equivocation when it comes to which answer is the “credited response” and why. No grey. Black and white. Wrong and credited. It just kills me that I still can’t see the why. But give me a few more days, at the very least. |
| Posted: 17 May 2009 08:25 PM PDT Day 07 was the day I finally hauled myself into Shapiro and drilled the heckoutta Games. My company: Get Prepped! Ace the LSAT and the infamous LSAT Logic Games Bible. I’ll withhold my commentary on both. Did I see improvement? Yeah. Am I where I want to be? Nah. Can I get better? I better! I definitely see the value of the Butt-in-Chair method of studying. The mental fatigue after four hours of practice is huge. I think that might be the single largest benefit to the prep companies that just drill the heckoutta you. They might not help too much understanding individual errors, but they give you buns of steel. As an aside, I never knew that the original Thomas Crown Affair was such a fun movie. |
| Posted: 17 May 2009 08:16 PM PDT Day 06 was sabotaged somewhat. I had every intention of spending a solid chunk of time at the Shapiro Library, but I elected for a brief, and absolutely vital, date with my girlfriend. Then the cell phone rang. Next thing I know, I’m dashing off to Agway to pick which types of tomatoes we’re going to plant in the garden this year. After all, the LSAT does many things, but it doesn’t interfere with actual life. I did manage to switch focus into Games again, and I am seeing improvement from this time last, say, year. Which is good, but the improvement is slight and still an area of concern. It highlights the need for a two-pronged approach to the LSAT: focusing on the Games because each modicum of improvement is a blessing, and Arguments, because half the test comes from Arguments and each error there is seriously compounded by every error on Games. This is one reason why I hate the LSAT. Here is some numerical proof on how the LSAT is Evil. I have, in front of me, the June 2008 Conversion Chart. If you had one, two, or three errors, you got a perfect score: 180. Four errors: 179 {So here it looks like the absolute top performers, people who are probably genetically predisposed to this nonsense, have a relatively large cushion. If you know you can go through an LSAT and only make five errors, you have a huge margin. It’s like sighting-in a rifle. A click is a ¼” at 25 yards, but 2″ at 200 yards} Five errors: You drop from 179 to 177. Six errors: 176 Seven errors: 175 Eight errors: 173! Ok, so let’s look at this visually. The red line is the scaled score, out of 180. The blue line is the actual number of credited responses. The yellow line is the trend line. Let’s focus on that little divot where the yellow line just doesn’t keep up with the blue line. That’s the scale. That’s where the average LSAT test-taker falls. See the little divot where the yellow line soars ahead? That’s the “cushion” that the top-test takers get. {We also see another divot at the far end of the scale, where testers who are having a terrible go really get wholloped). Of course, LSAT takers are now asking themselves, “Which of the following, if true, most weakens Jamie’s argument?”. Every test taker gets the same cushion. For the June 08 LSAT, everyone got three free errors. But on the other hand, even the best tester answered 16 questions that didn’t improve their score. However, suppose you find yourself in my shoes. You take your first diagnostic test and you find out that you are the average. The middle. Run-of-the-mill. You don’t have any reason to believe your score will slip, so you’re really just looking at the right half of the graph. You’re pretty confident that you’re not going to score a 130. That means, for the average test taker trying to improve, each error you make impacts you more than the preceding error. The first error does not hurt your score. But the third error hurts you more than the second one. Suppose I consider Games to be my real Achilles heel. I consider my weakness to be a known issue that isn’t going away. I decide I’m going to spend my cushion on Games, and then write off every other loss like Bank of America. Any error in Arguments or Readings takes that loss and compounds it (literally). And then the penalty drops away! For students below the median, the detriment is no longer compound, but simple. Now, I’m a cautious about but warm towards Gardener’s theory of multiple intelligence. You’re an aural or spatial learner. The LSAT was designed by people who don’t think like you in order to identify people who think like them. You muddle through the first 16 questions on June’s LSAT, and you start to climb. Then you hit the middle . . . and an already arcane and difficult test becomes more wicked than before. I’m lucky that I was in the middle on my first diagnostic. I’m thankful that I didn’t have to fall into the middle and then try to climb back out. I know full well why this is. I know that this is designed to ensure that each final score actually means something in relation to last year, or last month’s, test. I also know that the test exists to create a bell-curve. I know that there would probably still be a bell curve without the scale, which is why there’s also a percentile score. But I know that, despite how the graph is shaped, it’s hard to slide from the very top of the curve to the very bottom of the right-hand side. Bring it on. |
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