Mastered CR? Oh man, how wrong I was..!!

After completing Powerscore Critical reasining bible, I was practicing one set daily from 1000 LSAT/CR collection. I was also using these tests to fine-tune my approach to CR. In GMAT sets, my average accuracy level is certainly improving. Starting with 15-20% mistakes, I have improved to < 10% mistakes and those mistakes are mainly because of carelessness. But, I am also concerned because I find too many OG-11 questions repeated in these tests. I am not too sure if I really improved my accuracy under test condition, or it's because of the repeated questions from OG-11. I certainly don't want to get into the same trap as I did in the last attempt.


So, I decided to try LSAT sets and see whether I maintain the same level of accuracy. I took up one of the LSAT test sets today (Test - I, Section - I & IV). The questions were much tougher than GMAT sets and are much lengthier too. The results are not encouraging. I did too many mistakes in both the sections. Here are the details..

Test - 1, Section I - (Total Q# - 25, Time - 43minutes, Mistakes # 6)
Test - 1, Section II - (Total Q# - 26, Time - 41minutes, Mistakes # 11)

Some of the observations/learnings

1. Time pressure did me in! Many of the mistakes happened because I didn't read the argument carefully and missed some important keyword (what MLIC calls modifier words).

2. Conditional reasoning is damn comfusing. Identifying the necessary and sufficient condition is not as easy as I think. I need to go back and read the Critical Reasoning book once again.

3. I need to work on Formal Logic concepts. There was a Question that could be solved using the Some Train to draw inference.

4. I took more than estimated time in some questions. I had to hurry during the last questions. This resulted in 5 consecutive mistakes in the last set. I must have done something like this in my last GMAT attempt.

5. Practice to use POE in tougher questions where the argument isn't clear to me.

6. Practice to focus more right after a question where I'm not confident of my answer choice. I MUST avoid consecutive mistakes.

I will try focussing on these mistakes and continue taking tests everyday.

Good Luck!!