Hi guys, I’ve mostly been a lurker on the forum, but now that my cycle is officially over, I wanted to share a little bit about my LSAT journey and methods. It might not help, and I am no way attempting to plug my study methods. This is just for reference.

My LSAT journey started out in 2016 with the Blueprint Games book. I spent a whole semester on and off familiarizing myself with the games section and going through the book. I took a lot of notes (which in hindsight was not very helpful at all). Then, I learned about 7Sage and purchased the starter pack. At the time, I was still in school full time (STEM major) and working part-time as well, so not a lot of prep time for the LSAT. I was PTing around 160-164, and because I wanted to head straight to law school after graduation, I decided to take the test and wing it. Definitely do not recommend this. I did horribly and did not finish four of the five sections. There was a terrible game section that I believe was an experimental. There was a game about beer companies and different types of beer that I completely blanked on. Got my first score back, it was barely over 160 and it felt like my whole world was ending when I decided to take a year off to study and better prepare. Now looking back, the year was totally worth it, both in terms of the score increase and my mental health. I was able to focus on my classes and enjoy graduation without stressing about the LSAT.

After graduation, I tried a few different approaches to learning the LSAT. Velocity LSAT, LSATHACK, Powerscore, LSAT trainer, etc. In my humble opinion, and everyone is different, I think my score increase mainly came from perfecting the games section, and that I have to attribute that to 7Sage and Blueprint. I preferred using the Blueprint method when drawing diagrams for games and using 7Sage when it came down to reviewing the games. My diagramming technique ended up being a blend of 7Sage and BP, which I found super helpful.

The Blind Review method was very good for the LR sections, but didn’t really do much for me in RC. There were just always a few questions in reading comprehension that I got wrong regardless of how long I looked at them. I honestly don’t think I ever mastered RC, which is my my final score wasn’t as high as it could have been.

In summary, this is what I think worked for me:

NOTE: I would recommend trying to memorize the formal logic component like the back of your hand, but also understand that it is only a small portion of the points, and that grasping the skill of finding the conclusion/supporting claims and being able to figure out the logic gap is the most important part of LR.

It took me about three to four months of full time study after graduation to get to 177-178ish blind review scores. I averaged 170 during the last few PTs (PT80-84) and I barely made it over the mark on the actual test. Although I did hear multiple people say the test I sat was super super hard, I don’t really think it would have affected my score too much, maybe 1 0r 2 point upward fluctuation?

I don’t think my method was actually the best or the most comprehensive, and I honestly don’t know if I can say that I succeeded on the LSAT, but I did end up somehow getting accepted to Harvard (after much struggle and the most awkward interview of my life), so I think that it might be safe to say the LSAT is just one (albeit very important) component of your entire application.

Honestly, this is such a supportive place. Special shoutout to @"Leah M B" for answering so many of our questions. Hope everyone can get into their dream school!