Self-study
I finished my first PT since my diagnostic back in December. My diagnostic was 139 > and this PT was a 158. I haven’t studied consistently until these last 3 weeks, I’d always start and stop. Should I finish the curriculum or keep drilling and working through the Loophole as I’ve been doing the last 3 weeks?
I’m aiming for the August LSAT (I’m okay with taking September LSAT as well) and a goal score of 170+ (I know that might be highly unrealistic in this timeframe).
While taking the PT, on certain questions I knew that diagramming would help get me to an answer I just didn’t know what to diagram if that makes sense. Any recommendations on how to get better at diagramming?
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If you think that you should diagram, you should diagram! Just start writing things down, even if you don't know what to diagram. Just be on the lookout for conditional indicators, and it should hint to you what to diagram. You can practice diagramming drills where you just take a bunch of conditional stimuli and diagram them quickly without answering the questions (this isn't a 7Sage feature, but you can just select conditional question types from the pre-PT100s). It might not be realistic to diagram everything during the actual timed PT, but eventually you'll be able to discern what to diagram and diagram mentally.
I think your LR can realistically go up to -1/-2 by Aug/Sept, but I think your RC may need a little more of a jump. If you're not keeping a WAJ for RC, I would recommend doing that! And take note of the type of passage and RC Question type that you're getting wrong. I like to think of RC as a longer form of LR, with mostly MC/MSS/Inference question types.
You've made a lot of progress since your diagnostic score, so be proud of how far you've come! I think that 170+ is possible, but it's also important to be mentally prepared to study beyond Aug/Sept (as someone who has been in 160s jail for months).
One more thing regarding The Loophole: it's a really good resource and handy tool! But from my experience, I would be careful about using the powerful/provable spectrum words to inform which answer to choose (logic will ALWAYS trump word strength). Knowing the strength of an AC that you need for a question type is absolutely important, but I think the more recent PTs have been starting to stray away from the powerful/provable spectrum language and instead testing more on actual conditional/causal relationships (you might already know this, but just in case other people are wondering!).
Wishing you luck fellow 7sager, you got this!