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I am not new to LSAT prep, I previously took a course for another company, but I wanted a program that could help me study further. As such, I have already taken numerous tests on LawHub prior to buying the monthly subscription for 7Sage. I've linked my LawHub account, but it doesn't show any of my previous scores. Do I need to manually submit all my answers? (Or did something go wrong) Thank you for the help.

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I notice I often misread a question, which can either waste a lot of time (if it's a logic game and the board no longer makes sense) or lead me to the wrong answer. On paper you could avoid this by underlining and marking things with your pencil. Unfortunately, you cannot do anything like that on the LSAT flex with the digital interface. Are there any tips to reduce misreading errors on a digital interface?

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Last comment friday, feb 19 2021

worse on blind review

it seems my initial choice is usually the right choice. when i go to do blind review i second guess myself and pick something different. I am also doing worse on my diagnostic tests. I am wondering of this is a normal part of the process or I am just regressing and doing something wrong

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Last comment thursday, feb 18 2021

Game Plan

Hi Everyone! Can someone please share their game plan for 7sage? What should I start with first? I work full time and can only study 2 hours daily. How long is the core curriculum? Any guidance will greatly be appreciated. I am planning on taking the test in June.

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Hey all! This is a vulnerable post for me to make so I'd appreciate no judgment, just constructive advice!

I have really struggled with the LSAT and it has made me question my capabilities of attending law school. I am an incredibly driven person which is why I'm not giving up on my law school dreams, but upon entering a fifth attempt I know I need to be strategic about the way I approach it.

My past scores are:

1) 146 (Nov 2019)

2) Cancelled (Jan 2020) - I'm pretty upset about this one now that I'm going to need to utilize a 5th take. I tried to appeal to get another attempt. Long story short I have a permanent medical condition and my endocrinologist switched my dosage causing severe stomach cramps DURING the exam... she wrote a doctors note but LSAC still rejected it; if anyone has had success with appeals for another attempt please don't hesitate to PM me.

3) 151 (February 2020)

4) 150 (January 2021) - my latest and greatest disaster (not that it's a bad score - for anyone who is scoring there now - but I had worked for a year to push past an early plateau and had finally gotten to a place where I was consistently scoring high 150s/low 160s. I was absolutely devastated to find out that I had scored worse than I did a year ago.)

Going into June I know I've done the hard part (increasing my score from my first diagnostic which was a 142). After studying for this exam for nearly 2 years, I decided to take a plunge and speak with my family doctor who prescribed me beta blockers for performance anxiety. I will be practicing with them each time I take a test until June.

I would love to hear from others who achieved their goal score on a fifth attempt or simply had to take one and was nervous about the pressures of it. I would also love to hear from anyone who has had success using beta blockers.

I tend to put a lot of pressure on situations, which I think is what causes me to set myself up for failure. Ultimately, while this will be an important exam for me I am trying not to put the weight of the world on it but instead focus on doing the absolute best that I can.

Thanks to anyone that took the time to read this or comment, it means the world to me to have a safe space like 7Sage.

Best of luck studying.

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I have searched for about an hour and haven't found the information that I'm looking for so I'm hoping someone here could direct me to where this was mentioned but legacy accounts can't be extended so the price is jumping from 25$ a month to... what? $69? For the exact same information or is there going to be more included?

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Last comment wednesday, feb 17 2021

LSAT Flex Dark mode

Is dark mode allowed on the actual LSAT flex? I would hate to start practicing on it and it not be an option on actual test day. Can anyone else agree that is is SO much easier on the eyes?

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Hello, I just took PT 62 and got a 163 on actual but 175 on blind review.

However, I submitted my LG section when I still had 6 minutes left, and had the most wrong answers there. The section was just tough!

Can anyone provide reassurance/advice on how to get my actual score closer to my BR score?

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Hi 7sagers!

Given that several people expressed interest in my RC methodology, here is the basic outline of my approach for the Reading Comprehension section based on my own progression. This covers some very broad concepts that were significant for me. If there is interest, let me know and I will work to do a couple more installments like this and drill down on some very specific areas that are much more targeted, such as how to approach specific arguments, subjects, and question types in RC.

For now, I think that I noticed three distinct tiers or levels that I went through in my RC prep. My hope is that since these three levels represent three distinct stages in my own preparation, people at many different stages of their LSAT journeys will be able to benefit from at least something in here.

  • Good Reading Habits
  • When I started out on the LSAT I frequently missed 18 or more questions on an RC section. I had to work hard to develop good reading habits. But, the good news is that these skills are like riding a bike. Once you have got them, it is just a matter of maintenance at that point. I know I am just going to be repeating things that other people have said here, so I will be brief, but it is so important. Reading with an eye to structure is incredibly important on the LSAT. This includes picking up on the low resolution and high resolution of the content as well as the structure. I think that it is very beneficial to do several RC passages/sections untimed (these can be retakes) and work on ingraining these skills. Although I am sure many of you have seen my posts on the RC passage explanation videos, here is the template that I used.

    Paragraph 1 –

    • Low resolution content:

    • High Resolution:

    • Structure:

    • Sneak Peak:

    Paragraph 2 –

    • Low resolution content:

    • High Resolution:

    • Structure:

    Paragraph 3 –

    • Low resolution content:

    • High Resolution:

    • Structure:

    Paragraph 4 –

    • Low resolution content:

    • High Resolution:

    • Structure:

    Main Point:

    Tone:

    Viewpoints:

    Organization:

    Cookie Cutter:

    For those who aren't familiar with some of the terms, "sneak peak" refers to taking a quick moment after reading the first paragraph to see if you can anticipate what will come next and maybe even glance ahead in the passage to see if you are on the right track. The more you can anticipate what comes next, the more "at home" you will feel. Although we never want to become complacent or neglect to read actively, being "at home" with the passage will reduce the anxiety that I know I can feel when reading a new and overwhelming passage. There actually is a lot of uniformity in RC and many structures and patterns are used over and over again. For example, if the first paragraph describes to me a scientific study that was done a while ago, then my anticipation is that the next paragraph is probably going to tell me that the first group of scientists didn't really know what they were talking about. Another example would be a passage where the first paragraph describes some very complex or unexpected phenomenon that was noticed in nature. My anticipation here would be that the next paragraph will give me a hypothesis to explain what comes next. Those are pretty straight forward examples, but the principle applies broadly. Obviously, some passages are weird and your anticipation will be wrong. That is fine, that is not a bad thing. Anticipating what comes next is a tool to keep you active and engaged in the reading. The correct-ness of your anticipation is not nearly as important as the thought that you put into making the anticipation.

    "Cookie cutter" is a related concept and refers to the common forms that are reused over and over in RC. So an example might be "phenomenon/hypothesis" or "OPA (other people's argument) is wrong."

    "Viewpoints" is where I note which viewpoints we got in the passage. For example, we might have gotten the viewpoints of the author, some economists, and some political theorists. "Structure" under each paragraph is where I note what role that paragraph plays in the structure of the passage. Is it the main point? A premise? A sub-conclusion? Just context?

    "Organization" refers to how the passage is put together structurally, so an example might be "two competing alternative explanations for an unexplained occurrence are given, an experiment is done that indicates one is more likely than the other to be correct, and the implications of this research are discussed."

    In my own prep, I filled out the above template for every single RC passage from PT 7-89. While I think for most people that is overkill (and i'm probably just a slow learner) the repetition helped. I did it over and over for untimed retakes and I did it for every passage that I blind reviewed. Overtime, I developed enough muscle memory that I got to the point where I didn't have to think consciously about these things so much during a timed run. Having all (or at least most) of this information floating around in your head means you will have the information you need to answer probably all but the hardest and most detail oriented questions on the RC section. If you are a beginner in reading comp or are missing 4 or more questions in blind review, then I would say that this is probably the place to start.

  • Timing
  • As important as it is to master good reading habits, unless these habits are paired with a proper timing strategy then you will have a difficult time translating your new skills into a significantly higher score when the clock is running. For some people this information will be repetitive, but it is worth repeating for those who haven't heard it. The single biggest jump in RC that I had came from treating the RC section similarly to the LG section. Initially, if I ran into a hard RC passage my instinct would be to give myself as much time as possible to deal with the questions, which inevitably comes at the expense of having time to deal with the passage.

    But that isn't how I would approach a very challenging logic game. If I ran into a difficult game with a lot of rules that interacted in complex ways, the first thing I would do would be to see if I could split the game board, force out inferences, and see how much I could figure out before ever getting to the questions. Of course, splitting game boards takes time. But this is always worth it in the end because the questions go by so much faster, I am much more confident, and I am more accurate.

    I used to try to think that I needed to finish reading an RC passage in about 3 minutes in order to have time for the questions. I had to actually let this go and give myself permission to take the time that I needed to understand everything in the passage. For many passages I easily took 3 and a half minutes, 4 minutes, or even more. For some of the difficult passages, I took more than 5 minutes to read it. We all know that 5 minutes is practically an eternity in LSAT time. However, this actually made me faster in the long run. My understanding of the passage was so improved by taking this time that I was able to dramatically cut down on the time spent on questions. In fact, I was able to cut my average time spent on a question by half. After spending so much time on the passage, I frequently could cruise through most questions in 20-30 seconds. This meant that even though I was spending way more time on the passage, my total average time for the passage plus questions dropped noticeably.

    This was a game changer for me for another reason as well. For the first time ever, I started to semi-consistently have time for a second round on RC to go back to a question or two that I had skipped. Furthermore, because I had taken so much time with the passage up front, I had really retained the information and did not need to waste precious time on my second round trying to reread part or all of the passage. I was able to much more efficiently target my time and my effort. This is in contrast to before I had ingrained good timing habits. Back then, even if by some miracle I had a minute or two left over for a second round, I couldn't do anything productive with that time because I basically had to go back and reread the passage to give a question a second chance since I hadn't meaningfully retained the things that I needed to the first time I read the passage.

    In my experience, a combination of good reading habits and decent time was enough to get my average PT score into the low 170s. I think this was because these skills together will be enough to allow you to answer all the questions that deal with the low res (I find that in a typical RC section about 19ish questions will be low res focused). After that, there will be another 3-5 questions that deal with the high-res that are aren't too challenging and can be picked up with a decent understanding that good reading habits will give you. Combined with a good timing strategy then, this much is usually enough to get you to a consistent -3/-4 in RC.

    Now, at least in my case, the last points on the table are typically the result of the extremely difficult questions that are detail-oriented. These are generally the MSS/inference curvebrearker questions. For me, I generally knew that I would take so much time getting them correct that they would cost me points elsewhere, so I just had to accept that I didn't know the answer and move on to save time.

    I knew that to push my score past the early 170s I needed to increase my retention of the very fine-grain information in the passage, which brings me to highlighting.

  • Highlighting
  • Although many people have said that this can be counter-productive, highlighting made a noticeable difference for me. I began to consistently use the highlighting function liberally, including all three colors. I found this had two purposes. First, it just helped me to read actively, remain engaged, and cement details in my head. Second, I also began to use highlighting as a tool to keep track of and remember the little, tiny, out of the way details that the LSAT loves to use as support for very difficult MSS questions in RC. For example, I would highlight any word that was in quotes but was not a direct quote, since that means the author is using the word outside of its ordinary meaning. Whenever I would see something like that, as I highlighted it I would be thinking about the distinction between the way that the word might be ordinarily used in contradistinction to how the word is being used by the author at this time.

    I would also highlight any conditional statement. I actually ended up being surprised how many conditionals are in RC. The LSAT hides these RC conditionals by almost never using group 1 or group 2 indicators, but they are there in almost every section and the majority of passages. For some reason, I was also surprised by how much conditionals matter in RC. I was well aware of their importance in LG and LR because those sections make much heavier use of them. But conditionals are no less powerful in RC. Sometimes they can be major premises and sometimes are they are conclusions. Sometimes they are just "throw away statements" and don't really contribute meaningfully to the argument. But regardless of what they do, they are very powerful. That makes them prime targets for very difficult MSS questions. The LSAT can take a statement that barely even relates to the argument in the passage, but use it to conclusively prove out one answer choice.

    I also highlighted the little details that are irrelevant to the actual argument. This includes the little things where the author isn't even editorializing (since I would pick up on the editorializations as indications of the author's tone as part of having good reading habits). I'm talking about where the author is just adding extra words. This happens most often in the context of a passage that sets the stage for an argument. Sometimes a whole sentence falls into this category, sometimes it is just a word or two. But a lot of times the hard inference or MSS questions pull their correct answers from these details. All of this is in addition to highlighting things like viewpoint shifts, structural elements, and other things to keep me engaged and reading actively.

    If you are thinking at this point that RC is generally the section where people are most pressed for time and this highlighting strategy sounds like it takes an additional chunk of time, then you are absolutely correct. However, I found that it was a worthwhile price considering how much my retention improved. I am a big proponent of taking a lot of time to understand the passage and then being able to power through the questions very quickly. One disclaimer that I should state up front is that this method takes a lot of self-confidence and trust that if you invest the time you will have a proper understanding. It can be jarring when you glance at the clock and see how much time you spent reading the passage, but I think that this is the path to a high score for many people. It certainly was important for me. If we take the time to really understand the passage in all of its intricacies and nuances (just like we take the time to split gameboards in LG) then we are going to be rewarded by not really having too much work to do in the questions, since we already did our hard work in the passage.

    Full disclosure, with the exception of my proclivity for highlighting, pretty much all of this is material that I originally learned from @Sami who was my fantastic tutor during my LSAT prep. I hope that this helps some people with RC, it really is an extremely challenging section. If you have questions feel free to drop them in the comments. Im happy to try to answer anything!

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    Hi, this is a tricky question, I was wondering, if I wanted to purchase the premium for a month to focus on LG and LR, could I take a break by stopping the subscription the next month, but still be able to access whatever I have done or watched? I am basically trying to see if I can watch some of the PT's LG or LR video explanations, but then have time to review it in another month without the subscription.

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    I've been studying for the LSATs for a little over 3 months now and I'm barely averaging over 150 and my timing for logic games still sucks. I'm taking the LSAT flex in April and I'm beginning to panic. It feels like I'm yet to reach that learning curve and honestly, I'm tired and discouraged. Any advice on how to get better at this?

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    Last comment tuesday, feb 16 2021

    LSAT Flex Desktop

    Hi All,

    I have some questions concerning FLEX requirements. I am planning to use my main desktop computer with attached webcam, and I was wondering if I can keep the tower (PC itself) on my desk or do I need to move it under the desk? Additionally, I would like to use my monitor riser, would it be permitted?

    Thank you!

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    Last comment tuesday, feb 16 2021

    LSAT Flex break

    Folks who have taken the LSAT Flex - are you allowed to do anything in the 1 minute break between sections? Like take a sip of water or something? Just wondering so I don't get too surprised if the only thing I can do is close my eyes and refocus lol. Thanks in advance!

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    I am scheduled to take the April 2021 flex exam. Last week I scored a 172, then a 165, and now this morning a 162. I am worried about these large fluctuations this close to my exam day. Does anybody have any advice on how best to structure my studying from this point forward? In general - just feeling like I was where I needed to be before, but all of a sudden I am falling behind even with so many hours of studying. Feeling lost.

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    I will be a non traditional law student who is interested in going into solo practice right out of law school. I have a 15 year background in sales, so I am quite comfortable generating my own leads and developing a base of clients on my own (which often gets described as the biggest barrier to solo practice). I have no desire to do biglaw because if I am to work 70--80 hours/week, it will be for myself. I live in a large city with several law schools (none of them T1) and a thriving legal market. I am asking that people share their thoughts on the importance of a law school's ranking if one plans to go into solo practice right out of law school. For background, my LSAT score above each local school's top 75%.

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