Would you be so nice as to share your timings pages and detailed question by question responses please? It would be nice to have JY Ping & Kevin do an analysis of the test.
Amazing!! I also got a 145 diagnostic and am aiming for at least 171>. Can you share a bit about your process? What did you spend most time on? How much time did you spend on foundationals? How many hours a day etc?
@soleluna883 with regards to time spent on foundational, I spent about 4 months (4 to 5 hours almost every day), thus August 2024 to December 2024. Most of my time was spent on drills using pen and paper (I've tackled close to 1000 drill questions, I'm not sure about the numbers as I use pen and paper but I know I've solved over 800 questions), I always try to break all stimulus into parts, understand the tone and predict answers before moving to answer choices. With regards to RC, I developed a strategy where I always summarize every paragraph in the passage to understand their roles, the authors tone etc. I developed this strategy for assumption questions too, I've not seen it in any book, it's just my strategy which has been working for me so you can also try it; the strategy is I handle all assumption questions as must be true; thus the correct assumption answer must be true according to the stimulus. I used this strategy to replace the negation strategy because the negation strategy has not been working for me that much, but this strategy of tackling the questions as "must be true" has worked 100% for me even with the most complex assumption questions.
@Senator94 Congrats on such a great improvement!! Yes, you can definitely still apply to T-14 schools for Fall 2026. Many of the schools' deadlines are February 15 and having a great score trumps applying earlier with not as good of a score. I would have the rest of your application materials all ready to go in the LSAC system by the end of January so you can submit as soon as you get your scores back.
And thanks for sharing about your study journey. Can you share a little more about the must be true strategy you use for the assumption questions that you mentioned? The negation strategy also doesn't work for me and I also find that applying strategies typically used for one question type to other types has helped me too. For example, creating a principle out of every assumption question stimulus even if it's not a principle question can often helps narrow down what I'm looking for in the right answer. To your point, thinking about the difference between a NA and must be true question as being that NA focuses on the conclusion has helped make NAs click better for me. Is that the type of strategy what you're referring to too? Curious about how else this looks like for you if you don't mind sharing!
@LemonDragon Thank you very much. I will surely prepare every material and ones scores are released, i will submit my application. With regards to your question, my must be true strategy is just like how to handle the standard must be true questions. So when I approach either NA/SA, I always rule out any answer choice that cannot be true based on the stimulus and so far, the only answer that turns out to be true always happens to be correct choice. I've used this strategy with more than 300 questions and its been 100% so far. So first, break the argument to its parts and understand what the argument is saying, you don't need to create principle, just absorb the whole argument and your analysis must be solely on the argument, go to the answer choices, eliminate any choice that cannot be true or unrelated to the argument, so far base on my experience, the correct answer is always "must be true". Try it if it still didn't work for you, we can schedule a zoom call and try it out together.
@Senator94 Makes a lot of sense, thank you! I'll definitely give that a try. Curious if you do that just for NA/SA or for all questions that involve assumptions, like strengthen/weaken. I struggle with those because of knowing when it's acceptable to bring in outside info. I'd love to meet on zoom and talk a little more, and also about the RC strategies you mentioned on your other post, whenever you have some time. Thank you for offering! Will message you.
@LemonDragon you welcome. I use that strategy for every assumption question. But with regards to strengthen/weaken questions, my biggest strategy is identifying the method of reason, (for instance, is it a casual reasoning, correlation???? etc.) to attack those questions. I just saw your message. Will surely be open to talking with you.
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13 comments
Would you be so nice as to share your timings pages and detailed question by question responses please? It would be nice to have JY Ping & Kevin do an analysis of the test.
@ArthurWhite how can that be done? Let me know and I can do it
@Senator94
see example screenshot of the timing below. call me with any further questions 207 521 4703
apologies keyboard issues, hence brief
@KevinLin'sOldUserName maybe the person above is amenable to a walk through
Amazing!! I also got a 145 diagnostic and am aiming for at least 171>. Can you share a bit about your process? What did you spend most time on? How much time did you spend on foundationals? How many hours a day etc?
@soleluna883 with regards to time spent on foundational, I spent about 4 months (4 to 5 hours almost every day), thus August 2024 to December 2024. Most of my time was spent on drills using pen and paper (I've tackled close to 1000 drill questions, I'm not sure about the numbers as I use pen and paper but I know I've solved over 800 questions), I always try to break all stimulus into parts, understand the tone and predict answers before moving to answer choices. With regards to RC, I developed a strategy where I always summarize every paragraph in the passage to understand their roles, the authors tone etc. I developed this strategy for assumption questions too, I've not seen it in any book, it's just my strategy which has been working for me so you can also try it; the strategy is I handle all assumption questions as must be true; thus the correct assumption answer must be true according to the stimulus. I used this strategy to replace the negation strategy because the negation strategy has not been working for me that much, but this strategy of tackling the questions as "must be true" has worked 100% for me even with the most complex assumption questions.
@Senator94 Congrats on such a great improvement!! Yes, you can definitely still apply to T-14 schools for Fall 2026. Many of the schools' deadlines are February 15 and having a great score trumps applying earlier with not as good of a score. I would have the rest of your application materials all ready to go in the LSAC system by the end of January so you can submit as soon as you get your scores back.
And thanks for sharing about your study journey. Can you share a little more about the must be true strategy you use for the assumption questions that you mentioned? The negation strategy also doesn't work for me and I also find that applying strategies typically used for one question type to other types has helped me too. For example, creating a principle out of every assumption question stimulus even if it's not a principle question can often helps narrow down what I'm looking for in the right answer. To your point, thinking about the difference between a NA and must be true question as being that NA focuses on the conclusion has helped make NAs click better for me. Is that the type of strategy what you're referring to too? Curious about how else this looks like for you if you don't mind sharing!
Best of luck!
@LemonDragon Thank you very much. I will surely prepare every material and ones scores are released, i will submit my application. With regards to your question, my must be true strategy is just like how to handle the standard must be true questions. So when I approach either NA/SA, I always rule out any answer choice that cannot be true based on the stimulus and so far, the only answer that turns out to be true always happens to be correct choice. I've used this strategy with more than 300 questions and its been 100% so far. So first, break the argument to its parts and understand what the argument is saying, you don't need to create principle, just absorb the whole argument and your analysis must be solely on the argument, go to the answer choices, eliminate any choice that cannot be true or unrelated to the argument, so far base on my experience, the correct answer is always "must be true". Try it if it still didn't work for you, we can schedule a zoom call and try it out together.
@Senator94 Makes a lot of sense, thank you! I'll definitely give that a try. Curious if you do that just for NA/SA or for all questions that involve assumptions, like strengthen/weaken. I struggle with those because of knowing when it's acceptable to bring in outside info. I'd love to meet on zoom and talk a little more, and also about the RC strategies you mentioned on your other post, whenever you have some time. Thank you for offering! Will message you.
@LemonDragon you welcome. I use that strategy for every assumption question. But with regards to strengthen/weaken questions, my biggest strategy is identifying the method of reason, (for instance, is it a casual reasoning, correlation???? etc.) to attack those questions. I just saw your message. Will surely be open to talking with you.
@Senator94 I would love to join this as well if it happens! thanks for sharing all these tips, this has definitely been the most helpful perspective
@soleluna883 Sure. I will send you message ones we fix the day and time. For the mean time, you can update me on your preferred day and time.
Great job!
@candace thank you