What do you do when you study? Have you thought at all about how studying for the LSAT/GMAT/GRE/SAT is different from a biology test or a French exam? Remember that standardized tests test how you think far more than testing what you know. How do you study for something so meta?
The only way to change how you think is to think differently. Sounds like a tautology, right? But if you approach every question the same way, you are going to get basically the same results each time. Remember, test writers have an entire scientific field dedicated to ensuring this is true. So you have to break your brain out of its box, and no, I don’t mean by banging it against a brick wall. Instead, you want to design a study cycle that constantly tries new perspectives and then knits them into the basic test taking experience.
A study cycle involves these steps:
- Take a baseline measure. This might be a timed section, timed test, or just a sequence of 10 questions of the type you are targeting.
- Analyze your results. What questions did you get wrong? Why did you get them wrong? What patterns are there? If you could stop doing one thing wrong, what would it be?
- Brainstorm some exercises that will attack that one thing you want most to fix. I suggested some already, and will continue to do so. You want to look for exercises that take you out of your comfort zone, such as not reading the RC passage. Some are clearly not what you’d actually do on a test, such as the question writing exercise, but they give you a new perspective.
- Practice your exercise enough to give it a real go — don’t stop after one attempt because it is a disaster or it scares the shit out of you — spend real time on it.
- Take a post-exercise measurement. How did your experience change? Did you get more questions correct? Were your mistakes of a different nature? Any progress on that one thing wrong?
- Repeat.
In general, you want these cycles to be pretty short, maybe spanning two or three days of work, one or two pomodoro units a day. Some will be bigger efforts, though you might want to mix in study cycles of a totally different sort to keep your brain nimble and your interest piqued.
A lot of what I, and other tutors, can do for you is suggest creative changes to your process — we have a lot of experience that way. But it is also important that you start to own your own study cycle. Be a little playful, and enjoy the creativity involved in coming up with something new.