How to Blind Review an Exam (Intermediate) with Rob

All right, couple of you coming in, oh, just give us a few and we'll get going back questions, feel free to ask them.

You You All right, oh nice I said probably I didn't like give this enough Get working All right, hi everyone my name is Robin Matuta instructor It

the admissions consultants content creator, Elsa Max, and we're here today for a live class, we're talking about blind review.

So if you're, if you've always wondered how to blind review and exam, this could be the thing for you.

If you think people keep telling me to blind review, but I don't really know what it is. don't know why it works.

I may enjoy this. I suspect you will. A lot. And if you love blind reviewing and to have, you know, and think you might be pretty good at it and have some things to contribute to the crew that is present for this one, I'd invite you to please share that information.

So I'm going to first start by saying that when I was studying for the test, I never blind reviewed at all.

I didn't know what it was. I didn't know it was for a long time as an instructor. you know, frankly,

In this position, I'm still not quite sure how it's done, but I have worked with a number of test takers who do one form or another blind review, so it makes it, this makes me probably one of the instructors probably capable of talking about what blind review has to mean to you, you know, to tell you a couple things, like one, does life go on without blind review, and in fact does, two, if you want to get some of the benefits of the blind review system that other people are using, but you're not, there are ways to do that, and three, if you just want to brainstorm some ideas and run the past and say like, Rob, this is what I've been doing, it's not like what everybody else, you know, I don't know if this is right, but what do you think about then that is the exact thing that I'm here to talk about, you know.

consider this live class a little bit more of a live class on like, how do you study a practice test for maximum benefit?

Like that to me is what we're doing. line review is one method that many people in the industry swear by as the best method to study after you know like to study the results of your practice test.

I don't, that hasn't been true for me. I'll talk a little bit about why I feel like that's not true.

But the point is, is that, you know, you're not here with a rider-dive line review guy, you're here with somebody who's going to help you get the most out of something.

for a lot of you it is, it is a line review. So we'll talk about that. So any questions, comments, all that stuff, wrote in the chat, this is going to be really, really loose.

How are I mean, you know, I say that for a lot of them, but this one is just like, I mean, we're just we're shooting here.

So what I'd like to do before we start, you know, really putting this train on the tracks is for you to spend.

You know, a few seconds thinking about the process of studying that you have right after you complete a practice exam.

Think about what it is that you do, right? Are you somebody who blind reviews? Are you somebody that's like, you're doing something that's like kind of like what you think blind review is, but you're not actually even sure what that is.

Okay, are you someone maybe who just clicks finished test and then clicks reveal answers immediately. And then, you know, so like, oh, get number three wrong.

And then you read number three, right? Tell me what you are. doing, we're going to talk about all those methods, of the pros, some of the cons with them, I may write a few things down, and ultimately hope that you leave this with a little bit better understanding how to take something that you're already doing and make it a lot more worthwhile.

So that depends on some participation. Or it just depends on like me making step up and thinking like here's that you guys are probably doing, and you know I can do that too.

But you're here, this is like as close to you know like straight two to review as you could get.

So let's make the most of it. I'm going to share my screen, we'll open something up and we'll be talking about this.

And for those of you who are like, you have Rob like, I don't, if you have like any questions at all, you have about blind review or studying, you know, after you've

do a practice test. Or, or if you're like, you know, I feel like maybe I'm in the same boat as you.

I don't do it. don't get what it's all about. I've tried. It just doesn't make sense to me. We'll talk about that.

Because I don't think it makes sense for everybody. I mean, I still haven't hopped on this bandwagon after years of doing it.

After years of doing the at night, years of doing blind review. have a small amount of time trying to do that.

And zero when I was a test taker. So it doesn't really matter. Okay. Yeah. Okay. First comment. Very good.

Right. First one is, I wasn't blind reviewing, but a tutor sent me the Google form. So I did blind review on my last practice test.

Okay. That is really good to hear. So there are, of course, You know, a few helpful documents and I'm going to put that spreadsheet on here now so you guys see it.

Hold on, I'm going to like kill the chat to be able to share the link. Oh, here we go, here go.

Okay. This looks right to me and we dropped this link right in there. So this is the spreadsheet that we're talking about, just an awesome place to start this one.

Okay. Okay. So you guys can duplicate a new sheet for each section test. Yep. This is the form that you were emailed.

I was wondering if you're just supposed to do a separate page for each section or test or keep a long list on the same page to see the patterns better.

I would probably do a separate one for each test. You know, here's what's really tough about studying for the LSAT.

Like, we act as if you're just- okay, that was- okay. I should actually just share this. So those of you who don't have the link in front of you know what I'm talking about.

All right, let's um- Let's stop that one. And- whoops. And let's share this one. Okay, this is what I'm talking about.

All right, this is what I think is gonna be like a pretty helpful way. For you to take something, you know, you can see that there's a lot of different things on here.

It's awesome. Right? You know, oh, that's moderately helpful, maybe. The point of blind review is like the underlying theory of it is that when you are doing the test for a variety of reasons that have to do with fatigue or confusion or, you know, coming across a problem that like, you know, it probably is going to take you three minutes to solve it, but you only have two so you don't like, you can't really dig into it to the extent that you want to, or you pick something and you're like, I don't know, I'd love it if I had more time to look at that.

Blind review is the way that you go back to the problem before you're scoring it. So one of the issues when people are studying.

Yes, and you don't ever want to be in this position other than when you're taking a time exam when you're taking a time to examine Is the only time that this is acceptable?

Every other time when you see a problem in front of you and you're doing it on timed You can't You can't ever say like oh, this is taking too long.

I'm just gonna pick this and move on because You will get a lot faster But you need to put in that up front time so like if it probably takes you five minutes But you're impatient and you're not interested in sticking around with any problem that takes you more than two minutes You will never be able to do some of the hard problems in the exam Whereas if you stick around to it you stand five minutes doing it the first time next time you see something It's like three minutes and then the next time you see it's like almost two and then you know right after that It's like a little bit under two and now you're in a position where you could actually do that on a timed exam

Whereas if you come in with time expectations into it up front, you're not going to do well So when you are studying Do not give up on problems.

There are a couple exceptions Like I don't want you guys to burn out a hundred percent of your light bulb Solving one problem per day if that happens to be you know the first one that hit you and it's real nasty Sometimes we just gotta be like I don't I don't know But if you think it would take me two minutes longer to figure this out I usually think that that's a really good investment.

That's the exact kind of investment that you're making during a blind review you know where You select something originally You go back and you do that's that problem again without seeing what the correct answer is You dedicate to that problem all the like your time resources the right amount of energy for it and

Sometimes you end up picking exactly what you picked before. Sometimes you end up picking something different. When you end up picking something exactly as you did it before.

And you still get it wrong. Is that bad? No, there's a difference like what, well, what that shows you.

What that shows you is that the timing and the pace is not what's holding you back. What's holding you back is like a basic level of comprehension that doesn't really matter if you get three minutes to do a problem or you get 30 seconds like you don't have the comprehensive necessary to do it in three minutes.

So you're still going to get it wrong no matter how much time you go. That's really, really helpful. Because you can learn from that and be like, okay, so what I need is not like pacing practice.

What I need is comprehension practice and comprehension. tension practices 100% on time. Now if you do a blind review and you pick something different than you did the first time, usually the insight that can be gained from that is that you have the requisite level of comprehension, you just aren't doing the problem in a way that is implementable on the time to exam and in that case you need to work on how you do the problem, like what you may be doing and one of the reasons it takes people a long time to do problems is they have some process of elimination strategy that we keep telling you not to do over and over and over again and then you take a practice test and you don't really have a lot of time and you don't have a lot of energy so you just pick something and then you go back, you review it, you spend all this time, you spend 10 minutes on this problem and you get it right and you're like, yes, well it's not like that's not good, you know I mean, like it doesn't really matter if you get it wrong or you

right on your blind review like it in not at all like there's no like oh this blind review I got them all correct on the blind review whereas the first blind review I didn't get any correct therefore I'm improving no like your blind review tells you nothing like it doesn't register improvement at all what it does register is like it enables you to figure out whether you need comprehension work or whether you need what was the other one or whether you need more practice in taking your strategy and technique and having it implementable on a timed section so it's like it's a matter of like comprehension or pacing work and blind review is very good at telling you which one you need which problem should you blind review well you should blind review anything that was like moderately difficult to you so like there's some stretch in this I you know

I think other instructors may have different ideas on this. I generally don't really know what to do because I didn't really do blind review and if you're scoring over 170, there's no universe where you're going to redo an entire section.

If you're scoring 140, a lot of that section is probably going to be redone on blind review. Here's the thought.

So, when the goal is to get the maximum amount of learning out of a practice test, you don't want to be just doing the test and then thinking and then reading the answers and being like, okay, cool, cool, cool, and then just take another practice test.

Like, that guarantees that you learn nothing. That's how like 16 year old study for the SAT. Instead, know, I think what would I blind review?

Blind review anything that you thought was like really hard. I mean, that's like the minimum. So it could be stuff that, you know, or it could even be like, you know, I'm going to blind review this like real simple question because somehow it tripped me up a little bit more.

I would say like you blind review anything that you don't get instantly. But that's too much to ask that's going to put you guys, you're going to be spending more time doing that than even the practice test itself.

If you are like the 170 score, that's what I would tell you. 170 score is to be like blind review anything that you didn't get within like, you know, 10 seconds of reading the answer traces.

But the standards are different outside of that. When you blind review, Right, you pick your selection, you try to, you try to walk out of every question with like a way to get better.

You know, like, like some step toward solution. And the step, the step toward a solution, you know, there's, there's an office I really did probably a live class that I did.

In, you guys might want to, you guys should watch this one, March of 2023, that should be right. You know, I want to say early March of 2023 could be like February, you know, and it's about, you know, how to like learn from your mistakes in the LSAT.

You're getting a couple kinds of mistakes in the LSAT. You're either getting mistakes that are due to a lack of comprehension or they're due to a lack of discipline.

Those are the only two mistakes you can make, like, you know, That's that's it. A lack of comprehension is a very forgivable mistake.

A lack of discipline is like You know, I mean don't you know, you don't need to like completely flatulate yourself but a lack of discipline mistake is like very frustrating and Unfortunately, they they end up being the exact kinds of mistakes that like people have a very to hard-term learning from like there are some people in this world That make what they call dumb mistakes and they just make them over and over and over again And the reason that they do that is because like if they don't have they haven't like developed and Understanding about how to learn from those mistakes like they don't take them seriously.

I Know this happens when you take the outside you read the answer choices, you know, or like you read the correct answer You're like, oh, that's so simple.

Oh, that's just a dumb mistake moving on If that is all you do in your analysis, you will continue to make dumb mistakes if you haven't

You know, like you've done nothing the correct way to approach that is instead to say that was a mistake that came from a lack of discipline.

How do I fix that? You know, how do I make sure that I don't have this again? Because if you don't do something resolved, you almost certainly will make a mistake again for like, oh, it's because I just like didn't anticipate.

I just like didn't read the question. Well, that's it's kind of hard to correct. You know, I mean, you got to like put the bumpers up on your on your bowling alley.

You know, it's like a little bit humiliating. You know, even if you're bad at bowling, putting the bumpers up is always like, but you need to do that.

You need to figure out a way that you're not going to have these undisciplined errors moving forward. So, this is just like a little aside on the basic question of blind review, which is like getting the most on the questions that you get wrong and like getting the most from this learning experience.

If you didn't blind review at all, that's totally fine. You know, I think that the reason that I was able to do well in the test and study and learn in spite of never blind reviewing is, I think there are two reasons why that happened.

One is that most of my LSAT prep, the vast majority of it, is untined where I'm doing the same thing that I would be doing in blind review, like I'm going to sweat out a question.

I'm not going to give up on it. I'm going to, you know, every time I get something wrong, I'm going try to like learn something from that.

You know, even if it's not like, sometimes the thing that you learn, sometimes like you picked A and the answer to choice is C.

And you're like, you look at that and you're like, I don't, I never would have picked C. Like, I just don't understand it.

That's okay. You know, like, you don't have to understand how to get the right answer all the time. But what if you walked out of that thinking?

I don't know how to get to C, but I know next time why I shouldn't pick A and I will be able to do that.

Well, what that does, now that you take A off the table next time is it improves your chances of landing on C.

These are small steps. How do I avoid picking the wrong answer? How do I pick the right answer? All you got to do is understand a little bit of those components and you're going walk away from each question learning something.

So, this is an awesome journal, this thing that I have on the screen right now. I think that you guys should all try it.

You will notice that it takes a lot of work. It should. Like you should be haunted by questions. You should.

You know, mean, you should wake up the next day and be like, number 12. That's a good question. You know what?

Number 12 was so tricky. You should be able to explain why you got number 12 wrong, what you should have done right.

how you're going to, you know, move forward. And, you know, but like, it should haunt you. So sometimes I've done, you know, I've done a lot of work with test takers over the years.

And sometimes when I'm, you know, working out of an analytics section on the platform or the study section or some, you know, test or whatever, I'll open this and be like, oh, you know, we did this one, you know, like, you got this one wrong two weeks ago.

And the test taker has like no memory of that. You've no memory of any question wrong. Like, you're not, you're not going to get better at it.

If you can't remember what you got wrong and why you got that wrong and be able to articulate, you know, the next day, this is where I need to improve.

So this sheet is really, you know, it's like, how do you, like, yeah, right, I'm not sure if I've done this question before.

That tells me you didn't. pay attention the first time to it. This sheet is really good at forcing you to spend a lot of time thinking about difficult questions.

And it is difficult when you do this, you're not going to be able to like, it's slow going. Slow is slow is good.

There's a lot of people out there who are trying to do 100 problems a day. I've never recommended that to anyone.

I mean, I personally don't think you guys have any business doing more than 50 problems a day. sometimes 50 is really high.

Sometimes it should be like 25, like one section, that's it. But I would live in that zone because there's a certain amount of pattern that you want to pick up.

I will say that it's very difficult to try to pick up patterns on a conscious level. So to answer one of the questions in the if you for

All these together and then you like classify the skill and you're like, okay, this is a causation. Oh, it looks like I'm missing a lot of We can questions.

Well, I'm not, I'm not going to lie at this. If you guys mess a week in question, feel free to write down whatever skill you think is involved in a week in question.

Sufficient necessary. It's like you could type that for like anything almost, you know, like any argument that is incomplete is a sufficient necessary issue.

So it's like, that's not really going to help you that much. But This other stuff will help you play a bit more and I recommend doing that.

But as in, in, you know, with respect to seeing patterns, yes, you'll probably see that you're missing a lot of weekend questions.

But I don't think that there's much to read into that to be fair, you know, I mean, I'm also saying that as a position, know, like my position is like, I don't believe in 17 question types.

I think there's like five kinds of questions you have an LR, like that's it, you have, you have must, you have argument structure, you must be true, and you have assumption based questions.

If anybody can think, you know, like, actually, that's it. I may be used for paradox, paradox, I guess. And.

Oh, and then, you know, two people talking to each other saying stupid things. Those are the five, like assumption based questions governs strength and weekend and flaws must be true is, you know, main point must be true.

Most strongly supported argument structure is like. You know conventional argument structure or what's the other one methods of reasoning?

That's that's structure Paradoxes it's something and then you know two people talking to each other is You know should should make your brain go crazy when you hear what the two percent So I think there's really only like five kind so like when someone says like I miss a lot of strengthens But I'm good at weekend.

It's like all right, know I mean that's something you know that we can talk about and you know in a tutoring session for like why that's happening and you know how might you There are reasons why that happens.

I don't want to dig too much into that now It's not really the purpose of this hour, but you know the short end of it is that people can approach a problem in like There's like

Like, uh, some people approach problems where they're like constantly weakening arguments all the time. Some people approach arguments where they're like, where they treat, strengthen and weakens kind of like must be true is just like adding a missing premise.

So like, there's a missing premise approach to it. And there's a really combative aggressive approach that I've showed in a number of live classes.

And if you do the aggressive approach, you're, you're probably like slightly better at weekend. If you do the missing premise approach, you're probably slightly better at strengthening.

That's why that happens. But overall, that's kind of the same argument and you should know how to do both approaches because certain problems regardless if they're weak and they're strengthened by themselves more to, to each approach, you got to be a little bit flexible in that.

If that made no sense to worry about it, just watch a strengthen and we can think. But what I'm going to take away from the last couple of minutes is that looking for patterns

And what you miss is it's a little bit misleading, like what you want to get better at is just doing arguments across the board, just getting more comfortable reading an argument, understanding, you know, the problems with it and understanding how to anticipate.

That's going to bring up your skill level on every type. So, like, it's, I don't, you don't need to focus, so it's like flaws.

Okay, now I need to focus on, now I need to do parallel reasoning, that displays to me like a weak understanding of what the test is and what it is trying to assess.

So, you have this sheet, I just shared it in the chat, you guys can all see that. Kick this off for now.

All right, we'll talk about some other strategies, know, they're not one review, but tend to be pretty effective for people.

So what I would do when I was studying, you know, keep in mind, like I'm doing a lot of runtime studying where I'm working through problems, you know.

at maximum level of intensity, which is very difficult. And then I would take an exam. Now, on the exam, I'm missing, like in the beginning, was missing a lot of problems.

And I read the answers and go like, duh. So I couldn't really get better for a while. Usually, though, after a few weeks of studying, return to a practice test.

And, you know, was at the point where I was like, starting to hit scores in the mid 160s. And the mid 160s is an interesting place to be, because you still miss a lot of questions in the mid 160s.

But it's enough questions that you can kind of like dig into and go over without completely exhausting yourself. So I think, I think,

that blind review was not very, like, I didn't get much out of it. The reason that I didn't get much out of blind review is that I never had problems with pacing.

Like, if I got something wrong, it was almost always because I just lacked the comprehension. Like, it didn't matter if you gave me five minutes, it didn't matter if you gave me 10 minutes.

Like, I just didn't understand the answer for choices. I didn't make, you know, have a good anticipation, et cetera, et cetera.

But I did not have problems where I felt like, oh, my God, I got this right, but I got it right in like 10 minutes.

So I need to figure out how to do it in a way that where I will eventually get it right in two minutes.

So when I talk earlier in the session about how the value of a blind review, a lot of it is in helping you understand what you need to work on and why it is that you're missing problems.

whether that stems from the lack of comprehension or whether that stems from an inappropriate pacing strategy. I didn't have an inappropriate pacing strategy.

Students and test takers who are a lot more conscientious, who are willing to check for mistakes all the time, tend to have pacing strategies that become problematic on the LSAT, and then you see the necessity of the blender do a little bit more.

So it's another reason why I test the hard problems. Nothing would happen. Like my blind review score in theory would have been very close to the actual score that I got on my test.

So instead of doing that and then just getting it wrong but spending more time on it, what I would do is illuminate the ones that I got wrong.

But then I would take a separate sheet of paper and I'd be like okay number 15 and then I write the right answer, A, 16, B.

And then I go back, do the test clean, or like, you know, honestly, I didn't do the test clean because I couldn't do that, but I would like take a piece of paper and I'd like block, you know, the, the explanations of the answers.

And I didn't do this in the L7X platform. do this on like, it's like, pretty. Yikes. So I have blocked the answers, and then I would try to redo the problem, try to understand why it is A, but not yet go so far as to like, read the explanation for why it is A, and then be like, oh, of course.

No, I would know that the answer is A, reading it, and then I'd try to figure out why it was A.

Now, once you figure out why it is, you know, then why you think you know why the answer is A, which is a lot better process like you're doing a lot more learning than if you just see A and you're like, okay, I understand that.

That's like probably like the lowest level of review. I have a review that guarantees that you're going to get, like, almost nothing from doing the problem, like, almost nothing.

I'm sorry, I'd love to repeat that. If you just do a test and then click see answers and then go one by one and then just read the answer explanations on all of them, that's a complete waste of time.

The benefit from that is almost nothing. So what you can do instead is what I did, where you write down what the correct answers are and then you look at the problem for us, so you don't see why it's a, but you know what it is a, and if you can try to reason and understand why it's a, great, after you're done, reveal the answer and see if your explanation for why it is a vibes with the correct explanation for why it is a.

This part is really important because sometimes test takers in trying to understand something and, like, you just kind of like.

grasp, you know, for like for anything. And you see that it's saying you're like, it must be a because of this.

Well, if you're wrong, then you're even you're in a worse position from before, you know, now like, you don't even understand why a problem is right, like you have no hope of getting in a question like that correct again, you have like this little like weird ad hoc explanation for a that isn't really accurate.

So that's why you need to compare it against the real thing. And usually when you compare against the real thing, you're like, ah, yes, that is why it is correct.

But sometimes when you compare your theory of the correct answer to the what I describe as the official theory of the correct answer, and you're like way off, that is a sign that you just got really lucky and just pick something random.

And don't actually know how to do it. So take heed on that and make sure that you're in, you know, both of those steps.

So if you don't want to blind review. You know, blind review is like, you know, doing it, like, I think what I was doing is more like a half blind review, like, yourself the correct answer, so you know what you missed, and then see if you can get there.

I think that that was a lot more helpful to me. You can still do that sheet. Like, that sheet still works for that take.

You you also have the option of, like, I mean, I do, yeah, to look at the thing in the chat.

Like, I do think that that's like a really productive way to review a test. It's not technically blind, but it's like half blind.

And I think it's, I think it's more effective. One of the cons that comes with that is when you just match up, when you just look to see the ones that you got wrong, you often don't remember the ones that were like really hard.

and you just kind of like guessed on, and you got it correct, so like you still have to review that, you know, because you can't say like oh I guessed on 14, I got it, great, because you can't really duplicate that process moving forward or triplicate it or you know do it again and again and again.

So you want to be, when you're taking the test, like have some method of like flagging a question where you like really think that you want to read the explanation on.

So as long as you do that, this like half-blind review idea, I think would work pretty well for a lot of people.

All right, see what you guys are up to. Okay, so somebody threw that the link in the chat, it's awesome.

Okay, glad to see that. All right, questions, answers, anything you guys look, what are you guys doing? Like, you know, some of you said, hey, I've been using the sheet.

What do you think is the most helpful part of your review of a test? Like, and it can be part of the sheet, it can be all the sheet, it can be something that doesn't have to do with that.

mean, I just told you, like, how I studied for it. I think there's evidence to suggest that that worked.

Like, I'm not being, like, glib, like, a lot of times, I'm incredibly skeptical of high scores and their techniques, because sometimes I feel like I'm looking at people who are so smart that, like, they could get the question right, you know, with their hand behind their back and both eyes closed, so when they give you a technique, it's like, it's like not implementable for a mere mortal, you know, and it only works if you're, like, a super genius, and that stuff is, like, really unhealthy.

Also, I know that there's a lot of high scores in the space who are like, oh, just do it this way.

And that way Is not comprehensible to like a regular person. Um, you know, my diagnostic was in the low one 50s I know other people's diagnostics have been like in the stratosphere Uh, so I I'm this like A little skeptical.

So that's why I like I think that what I was doing Worked but You know, I mean, you know, make sure you like to some degree or are trying to evaluate that Like if nothing that i'm saying makes sense to you and you're like, yeah Like I don't want you to walk away from the live class and say like Oh, well, like That guy's like super smart.

I just don't really understand What he's saying, you know, like that's horrible So, uh, I would rather you say like wow like what a would have read

You know, who did it, uh, did it at the hard way, made a bunch of mistakes and was able to articulate and communicate that to people.

So let's, uh, I mean, I guess I'll share my screen and we can write a few things down, but I'd love if you guys had some questions on review.

If not, you know, kind of encapsulate, you know, some, some basic elements of it. I think for the word doc, like this, it's really, that word doc is very self-explanatory.

You know, like, I don't feel the need to open up a test question to fill out, like, A, B, it's a strength in question, here's why I got it wrong.

Like, you guys should be able to do that. Um, I think you will. it's helpful to have. One thing that you will get particular value from this question log is, um, can go back and do

those questions again. Which you probably are like, why don't I do that? Like, I already know the answer already.

I think it is really, really helpful to go back into, you know, the deep muddy waters, you know, in which we, you know, got lost and confused the first time, and then be able to understand our progress, understand like what we're doing correct.

You know, you see things that you didn't see before, just because your comprehension is improved over a few weeks.

Highly recommend that with reading comprehension passages too. Like go back, look at a really hard one that really stumped you two months ago.

Okay, I think that it's, you know, not only going to demystify some of difficulty with the LSAT, but like, you know, what's it also going to do?

Now you're not reading for content. Now you're reading for structure. You see how everything goes You Do you need thousands of questions, do you need 96 preface tests, no, you know, when I studied for the outside, had probably 20 official practice tests.

And I didn't do 20 tests, but like I had 20 tests worth of problems, like that's it. So I'm working with like, you know, 20% of the material that you guys have on LSAT Max, and you don't need all this material.

What you need is to really, really understand one practice test, two practice, you know, like, you know, you're naturally going to do some more because it takes so long to understand and there's, there's quite a bit of run up in it so that you need to see different problems to test skills at a certain point.

But no one needs to do 100 practice tests. No one needs to see every problem that the offset's ever released.

If you sit with one practice test for like three, four days, you're going to know it. You're going to see lots of improvements.

Has anybody ever listened to the, um, the, legal-level podcast that LSAT Max had. I think, so it was, it was discontinued.

Maybe a year ago, maybe more than a year ago. You guys ever listened to this? LSAT Max podcast is on Spotify.

There's, they used to interview a couple of the instructors every once in a while. Now, one of the, the first one that they interviewed, Abby Goldman, I believe, and Abby talks a lot about blind reviewing.

She went from, think, studying in the 150s and then took like a handful of exams where she got scores in the 160s, then finally took it for like a fourth time, the score to 178 on it and talks a lot about the importance of blind review on that.

So I would just recommend like digging into the podcast little bit, listening to what other tutors have to say, like you're getting people like who are.

really off the cuff who actually everyone who's been on there doesn't even work here anymore with the exception of Who who was for an episode you're gonna see some new blood and you might really enjoy that okay question the chat So i'm leaving skills in ball and blank I mean I That's fine, you know I I think that it's that's a tough one.

Um, it's a tough column to work with Because one there's only four options and two a lot of the time when we miss questions It's because we didn't know how to approach them So we don't really like know what the skill was Now when you read the answer explanation, it'll maybe tell you

but the skill is, and then you can use that knowledge to fill in that box if you want. But usually, don't work with web test takers who like, well, clearly, doing this question involves that I master this, this, this skill.

And I know how to identify them. Nobody knows how to identify what they have. Nobody's looking at a problem being like, this is very simple.

I'm going to have to do x, y, and z. I know how to do x, how to do y, and how to do z, I understand like when you're using x versus when you're using y and z, which is what the test is really testing in the first place.

But I don't know how to do the problem. No. Like if you know the skills involved, you've got the answer correct.

So I wouldn't worry too much about leaving that blank. Couldn't either leave it blank, or you can work with the answer selections and the correct answer choices like in the official log.

I also want to make this point. You don't want studying to completely suck, but I'm serious. LSAT studying should not be a miserable experience for you.

One of the things that I think about a lot is like I think a lot about that, you know, a 52-page document called how to win a 10k by Olympic gold medal winning speed skater, Nils van der Poel, and what Nils says, and what I think is echoed, you know, across, you know, disciplines where everybody's trying to get better at something, is that sometimes studying and practice is underlined or like rests on these very simple principles.

you want to get the most set of practice? do everything you can to make it fun like if there's something that you like about LSAT studying use it if there's something that makes you enjoy LSAT studying more do that like whether that's like you know studying in your favorite spot in the house like you know like you know like you can't really listen to music life study anymore I mean you know maybe you guys can maybe you guys like listen to classical music and do that I can't read and listen to music used to be able to do the games that way but unfortunately the games are gone for that but you know if you need to like reward yourself with food if you need to you know just like buy a book massage thing and then like have your feet just rocking in that the whole time really like do what you can to make it fun you will study more you will enjoy the process more you'll be better at it this and then the the counter of that

Which is something that really works for me. like the stuff that you don't like about studying for the LSAT Is there a way to remove it Because there you know for me reading comp is an area where I struggled a lot Reading comp You know the method requires you to have a pencil right to be writing things down as you go.

I Absolutely hated that Hate it and I read a lot You know, so I'm not saying this works for everybody, but I thought it'll be more fun for me To do a lot of intense thinking while I'm reading as opposed to writing things down And then feeling like every time that I to read something I to pick up the pencil Which makes it feel like an academic exercise instead of like a leisurely exercise It makes it feel like You know it's

sucks. It sucks the thumb out of it. It puts me in a mode where I don't feel like I'm learning, you know, like, when you are trying to learn something, or when you're just like genuinely curious, it's the best mode to be in, because when you're genuinely curious, and you start reading something, whether it's in an LR stimulus, or whether it's in reading comprehension, what are you doing?

Like, you're gonna stop after every sentence to be like, oh, that's so interesting, right? But if you don't have that mode, you're just gonna blast through it, you're gonna lose all the benefits of doing that.

And it's just generally gonna be a big, big struggle, you know? Another way. So, so I decided like, I'm not, I'm gonna put the pen down.

And by putting the pen down, I'm gonna have to incorporate other things into my reading comprehension method, which those of you who interested to watch any live class I've ever done in reading comprehension, maybe.

But once I did that and put the pen and down. It made studying so much more fun. Like, I was excited to read these passages.

I was like, I'm just going to read it. I'm going read it. going read think really hard about what I'm reading and then I'm going answer questions on it.

Like, it's going to be awesome. So, it changed again. I did a lot better. With LR, one of the things that I'm going to do.

I'm going to die on the cell right now. Some of you guys know this. Many of you don't because I haven't talked about it in a long time.

But I don't read the question stand before the stimulus. I don't do it. Like, is anybody who is watching this right now and is anybody also not doing that?

Or do you guys all read the question before reading the stimulus? Oh, my God. There's somebody who doesn't do it.

I'm going to give this like a little thumbs up. I was told to do it. No. Yeah, I mean, I do read the question for it.

Well, you know, here, OK. Let's go. You used to, but now I am reading it before this. I used to do what I do.

I can't tell which one you did first and that. I don't know if that's the chicken or the egg first.

OK. OK. All right. So the last one is I only read the questions down first if the stimulus is ridiculously long.

So that's cool. Keep in mind, like, here's why I don't read the questions down first. I think worst case scenario gets in the way of what you're reading.

Best case scenario, it does nothing. So how can you be like Rob? Why are you telling me that like what I do actually does nothing?

Well for those of you Who read the the question stem first? I'm gonna ask you if this process describes you you read the question stem first and then you read the stimulus and Then you read the question stem again That's what you do right a hundred times out of a hundred Like nobody's like I read the question stem first and then I read the stimulus and then I go right into the answer choices So Yeah, okay, so you reread something So like why did you read it the first time if you forgot about it and then read it again?

You know I mean like that's the best case scenario best case scenario. You just like wasted a couple seconds You know, which is not a big deal like we can all waste a couple of seconds like that's that's not what I think But I think it's interesting like you guys think you're like so ready You're like I need this in order to read

And then, you know, you just, you just reread it anyway, because you didn't remember it. Um, here's what the worst case scenario is.

Like it, it, like, it doesn't help you focus on what you're looking for, because if you understand the LSAT well enough, you understand that they're either going to throw you something like, you can see when two people are talking to each other, that's like just a visual, that's super obvious, you know, you even read anything.

Uh, see, you kind of know what that question's going to be. Um, the other stuff that you're going to see, it's either an argument or it's not an argument.

If it's not an argument, you're being asked to, like, draw a conclusion. And if it is an argument, you're being asked what an assumption is, or a strength in, we can or find flaw in it.

And all those questions types, you do exactly the same. Like, assumption, strength in, weaken, and flaw questions, you do the same way.

So, like, there's no benefit to being like, oh, to weaken instead of a strength. There's no benefits about it.

you are reading the stimulus, you're identifying the argument, you're breaking down, you know, like you're wrestling with the argument, you're formulating understanding of the weaknesses in the argument, and then you take that piece of information and then you say, what's the question stem?

What are you guys asking me to do with this piece of information? That is a targeted approach. But if you go in there and you're like, I'm looking for something to strengthen, looking for something to strengthen, do I have anything to strengthen yet?

It will never pan out. It will never pan out for you. Like, you're going to get like, there's too much to keep in your head while you're reading, reading something and trying to strengthen it when you don't even understand what the argument is yet is impossible.

Because you need to understand the argument, then you need to understand the issue with it. And once you understand the issue with it, you automatically know how to strengthen.

very easy. So like, you don't gain anything, by going into. a stimulus trying to strengthen something, know, like being like primed to strengthen it.

You don't. The possible exception for test takers who like possibly with must be true. And I'll grant you must be true for the reason that I keep telling you guys with must be true as you want to make inferences as you go, which is something you should be doing with any other question type anyway.

So it's like I don't really think that that's necessary. But like, if you saw that it must be true and you're like, okay, I'm going to spend more time read, I'm going to spend a slower read on the stimulus because it's not going to give me some grand argument to wrap up.

Okay, understand a little bit. This is like why I try not to die on the sale anymore because like, you know, different people are telling you different things and like ultimately, it's not the biggest deal in the world.

But I really do think that reading the question first contributes to a miserable experience of the exam, like it will not allow you to just like read

something and wrestle with it and enjoy learning something new and being engaged in that process. I used to have a test, I worked with this guy for like five, six months for like three times a week and we would do exams together and he would look at number 12 and he would read the question, it would be like, you know, flaw or whatever and he'd be like, this is going to be hard and they need to read the stimulus.

It's like, is that what your experience is? Like, you're just, you're taking a time, you're taking an L.R. section, time to run time and you just like question, you're like, you're like, task to do, like, you just like, keep taking body shots, you know, for 25 straight questions.

It's like, now I've got to strengthen something, oh, now I've got to weaken something, oh, like, now I've got to find a flaw.

Instead of that, you could just be reading a stimulus and thinking like, huh. There's probably something wrong with this, because that's how the Elsa works, like there's something wrong with it, and I'm going to kind of engage with it little bit, and then I'm going to take that knowledge, and then I'm going to read the question stem, and the question stems is going to ask me what I want to do with that piece of knowledge, you know, like that's, that's like one of the secrets of the Elsa that it matters what you think of the argument, and how good you think it is, you know, I mean, everybody in the beginning is like it doesn't matter what I think I just have to strengthen it.

Right, but you're not going to be able to strengthen something and you don't have an opinion of the weak points in it, you know, so you wrestle with it upfront.

That's why I don't read the the question stem first, because best case scenario. I'm just going to reread it again.

So I just wasted couple of seconds. Worst case scenario is it kind of like, it's either going to distract you because you're going to be trying to strengthen something without understanding the argument first.

And you're going to. Like, you're going to be dealing with too much and you're not properly going to be focusing on what you should be focusing on.

And then it also puts you in a position where it feels like you're working, you know, and by not doing that, like I'm able to convince myself that I'm not really working.

Like I'm able to just say like, this is just not my red and I'm just going to like, you know, reckon with it.

Oh, there was a task that you guys asked me to do. Okay, fine. You know, at the end. But instead of just being like another one, oh, oh, it's going to look hard.

I just don't recommend it. So there are many instructors who do it. I think they're wrong for the reasons that I just said.

But like, you know, I mean, it's up to you. The other thing is like, if your mind, like normally you click next and your mind is like capable of perceiving like a wide range.

to have text in just a visual. If you see the question stem before you read the stimulus, don't punish your eyes for that.

That's totally normal. Like, I'll see it and be like, blah. Like, I just see the word, blah, It stands out to me because I've been doing the LSAT.

I'm trained. You see some bone question, one question, stem. that's probably an argument structure, because it's going to say, what role does blah, play in the sense.

So that's all good. But like, don't focus on trying to attack, like, to trying to use the questions down to your advantage before you've broken down the argument.

That will not work. And that's going to be true with what any instructor is saying. Like, no one's, no one is saying.

out here. I don't know that for fact, but my guess is because it's a wildly implausible way of doing anything.

No instructor saying, okay, now that you know it's a strengthen, read the first sentence and see if there's anything you strengthen there.

No one's doing that. If they did that, that's gonna be like the, that's a technique that didn't work, but they got a high score.

That, you know what, if they did that, ask them what their diagnostic test was. It's probably gonna be really high.

That technique does not work for mortals. Okay, any questions on any of that or on blind review or on a method that that I endorse half blind review?

You know, for some of the recap on this, like blind reviews helpful in telling you whether you have comprehension issues or pacing issues, whether your strategies are like good, but like you just haven't built

them up enough or whether your strategies are really good, but not implementable in the time of exams. It's going to be super helpful in that, which I find is one of the most difficult things that people struggle with, just figuring out why you got something wrong and how to improve with it.

So that's it for today. I'll be back tomorrow talking about high yield questions, for those of you who want to like little teaser, you know what I'm going to say for high yield questions, arguing based questions.

Those are the high yield ones. Yeah, anything else other than that, we're done. You know, I mean, I also want to be fair to, like, I only went off on this not reading the question stem thing, because A, I had 10 minutes.

And B, it goes into the concept of like making LSAT studying and practice more and durable and therefore better for you.

There's a little bit of a perspective that you are going to gain from just wrestling with arguments and enjoying that process rather than being continually presented with a task.

If you don't like to be continually presented with tasks, you have problems with authority or something, then probably the thing that I recommend just reading the darn thing first.

The stimulus first is going to work a lot better for you. If you're not doing that, I wouldn't sweat it.

just like what you're doing is not extremely unlikely to be doing anything. for you. It's like it's not contributing any value and it's probably just getting in your way.

And you can think of that every time you reread it and be like, is this really what I want to do?

Was this instructor really right about this? Has anyone been on the staff as long as Rob