Hey! I’m looking for some studying advice from anyone who has been in a similar position or has some insight into what might be most efficient for me.
I took the LSAT twice last cycle without really having the fundamentals down because I convinced myself I had to apply that cycle. Obviously, that didn’t go as planned. I scored a 142 (only 1 point higher than my diagnostic) and then a 145 on my second attempt.
This time around, I joined 7Sage and decided to start completely from the bottom and really focus on understanding the fundamentals. I feel like I’m doing much better this time, but I’d love some advice on what I should be doing differently or adding to my preparation.
I haven’t taken many timed PTs yet because I know I’m not ready for them. For reference, I’ve been scoring around 152–157 on untimed LR sections. For RC, I’ve been doing individual passages at a time, and my accuracy has been pretty inconsistent. Some of my recent passage scores were:
Attempt 1: 100%
Attempt 2: 88%
Attempt 3: 67%
Attempt 4: 17%
Attempt 5: 88%
Attempt 6: 67%
Attempt 7: 71%
Attempt 8: 40%
Right now, every day I do one untimed practice section and 1–2 RC passages. I’m also restarting my wrong answer journal because I really want to make sure I’m learning from my mistakes instead of just moving on from them.
My goal is to take the November LSAT, and I’d really appreciate any advice on how I can make the most of the time I have left. Should I be doing more, doing less, changing my approach, or focusing on something specific at this stage?
If anyone has been in a similar position and ended up making a significant score increase, I’d especially love to hear what worked for you!
6 comments
I'm taking the LSAT in November too! Don't listen to anyone who says you don't have enough time to significantly improve your score. I started studying in August and jumped from an untimed 152 diagnostic to a timed 166 in about 5 weeks. I am definitely not an expert and am still a long way away from my goal, but here are some of the strategies I have used:
I would pause on taking full LR sections and focus on one question type at a time. Doing this provides better clarity in picking up on stimulus and right answer patterns, as well as your own mistake patterns. Something that worked for me was picking one of my weaker areas and running untimed, 5-10 question drills and deeply anayzing every single question. I walked myself through every single answer choice and explained out loud why it was right or wrong. I wouldn't avoid mixed question drills entirely, just focus most of your time on targeted practice.
It can also be helpful to start by drilling level 1-3 questions first and then start looking at level 4s and 5s once your accuracy is high on the eaiser questions. Once you start improving your accuracy, keep track of how long it usually takes you to finish a drill. If it takes around 30 minutes to complete a high-accuracy 10 question drill, next time put 30 minutes on the clock. As you progress, slowly turn down the clock while maitaining your accuracy. Don't force youself to take standard timed drills until you have a solid understanding of a question type. For me, my speed improved with my confidence in understanding.
I have struggled heavily with RC and one piece of advice that set me free was that you actually don't have to understand everything in the passage. The RC passages are confusing and convuluted on purpose to distract you from what actually matters, which is really just the shape of what the passage is doing. It helps me sometimes to think of it as a big argument part or method of reasoning LR question.
Don't try to remember everything in every paragraph, only the things you can't easily go back and read. Try writing down your low-res summaries and identify any opinions or povs, the purpose of each paragraph (is it an example that contradicts a claim? is it evidence to support the author's hypothesis?), and any major concepts (for example, if the entire passage is a debate over a theory, it's a good idea to have a broad understanding of what the theory is and who its supporters are).
You'll be suprised at how many questions you can get right without needing the hundreds of small details from the passage. And for questions that DO ask about specific details, your low-res summaries can help you know where to look for that information in the passage. You can also easily search for key words in the passage with the search bar.
If you aren't seeing progress as consistently as you want, I would definitely experiment and change things up to figure out what techniques help you learn the best. For me at least, I started seeing results when I stopped following a specific plan and allowed myself to spend long study sessions on just a handful of questions or on one specific pattern of weaknesses.
@Alexa16 sending you hugs through the screen cause this was very helpful and encouraging! Trying your tips :) how often do you think I should do sections or full pts to see where I am at? I think what I will do is do targeted drills on my weakest question types that I tend to get wrong in the untimed sections. I have been reading for structure and its been helping me a lot, I tend to struggle w inference type questions for RC, I used to struggle w them on LR too but I have improved a lot and come to think of it, it was probably cause of targeted drills. Thanks again!!!! Also what was your routine like in those 5 weeks, was it strict or you kind of kept trying things until they started working.
I usually take PTs every other weekend and use them as more of a diagnostic/endurance/exposure therapy tool than anything else. Some people learn better by taking lots of PTs, and I'm sure I will have to increase my frequency as I get closer to my test date, but taking them more sparingly and doing sections on the weekends in between has been really helpful for me!
I’ve always had a pretty strict routine regarding the consistency and quality of my study sessions, but am flexible about what I work on day-by-day. I like to set goals at the beginning of the week with room to change things up as needed. If I notice a certain question type is making me miserable, I’ll pivot to something else with no hard feelings and come back to it another day of the week. My main consistency has been spending a lot of time reviewing LR (both my correct and incorrect answers) and, once I figured out how to do low-res summaries, just doing a ton of RC passages back to back.
You’ve got this! I’ll be manifesting our dream scores for the both of us! <3
@Alexa16 sending the same amazing positive energy back! thanks again lovely!!!
For RC, try this method: reading an untimed passage without highlighting and then spend as much time as needed writing down short sentences/ideas of each paragraph from MEMORY.
Then, using these short sentences/ideas only try to answer the questions without referring back to the passage. This may be a bit annoying at first but it will train you to retain more information and really focus on what the questions are about usually.
For RC, you typically want to know the main idea or purpose of the passage, the authors tone and opinions, and any other opinions from 3rd parties. This is general for most passages, but look into the specific passage types and they will give you more insight.
Make sure you review RC implied and strongly supported questions. Also, keep in mind that every answer choice should be somewhat supported or reasonably inferred by the passage. Meaning you want to really pay attention to direct support, specific wording, strong and weak language, and descriptive accuracy in ACs.
@180LSATManifest Thank you so much I am going to try this tonight!