The LSAT was the last hurdle for me in order to get into law school, and because of that, it was the exam I dreaded. I was petrified of getting a bad score and having all of my hard work go down the drain after working hard after four years at university. Because I amped up the LSAT so much, I had extreme anxiety over it, and made it seem like the most important thing in my life.

So after graduating and receiving a Fulbright, I started studying around May of 2018 towards the end of my Fulbright. I came home in June and was rushing and thought it would be a good idea to take the sept 2018 LSAT. Despite having a concussion and having personal things happening in my life that were impacting my mental and physical health, I took it, thought it did okay, and kept the score. Then, my worst nightmare had come true- I had done extremely poorly on the exam, at least 10 points below what I was PTing. After that, I entered a deep depression and even questioned going to law school. Then I began to talk to people on 7sage, who encouraged me to keep going. I knew that first score didn't define my abilities, and that I could do better if I studied the right way. About a year later, I took the September 2019 exam and received a 169 - 21 points up from my diagnostic which was a 148. I went through so many tutors and so many resources that I feel my experience would be helpful with someone who is still in the process of studying, so I want to share some things I learned here:

1- Dont EVER listen to people who doubt you. I drove my family crazy being so obsessed over this exam, and if it was up to my family they would have let me settle for a mediocre score. I also broke up with my significant other because he thought I 'studied too much' and I am not sorry about it. You need people who believe in you.

2- This one is especially for girls. I have always performed really well academically but with the test I was a literal mess; i lost sleep, lost like 12 pounds and was not okay most of the time while studying until a couple months ago. (side note- taking care of your mental health is very important) Even when I had studied hard and knew I put in the work, I always thought I did bad. You need to have confidence in yourself. By and large women are vastly under-confident as compared to men, and obviously this has to do with societal factors and gender roles but practice confidence. A book that helped me do this was called the confidence code. read it. The moment I started to believe in myself is when I stopped having so much anxiety.

3- Try your best not to depend on other's explanations. I started improving when I stopped depending on explanations so much and really trying to ask myself why is this answer right? In the beginning JY's videos helped me alot cause you're so unfamiliar with the exam and its helpful to see the structure of the questions, especially for LR. Also do not use anything else for LG and conditional reasoning except 7sage. It is by far superior than any other resource I have used so thank you 7sage and @J.Y. Ping love u ;*

4- LEARN ARGUMENTATION AND CONDITIONAL REASONING. I cannot stress this enough. Every LSAT stimulus has some logical structure underneath all those words. For example, If I say P then C, you need to know what I am assuming is P ---> C, and then questions will have you weaken, strengthen, or call out that assumption (known as flaw questions).

5- UNDERSTANDING IS KEY. A huge game-changer in my score was the Loophole, by Ellen Cassidy. Ellen is literally amazing, and she taught me that the most important work you will do hinges on actually understanding what the argument is doing/saying. What helped me was reading her book, and then doing an exercise where I would only look at the LSAT stimulus, translate it into my own words, and ask myself: what is wrong with this argument (also known as a loophole). You have to have to be engaged in the stimulus and the loophole is how you do it (if you want more info read her book it is honestly worth every penny). You need to understand that most of the arguments on LR are flawed, and those loopholes are really assumptions that the questions will have you attack in different ways depending on the question type. Dont rush straight to the answer choices before you understand what is going on in the stimulus. Once you understand the assumptions being made in the stimulus and just what is really going on, it becomes must easier to delineate the wrong answers from the right ones.

6- Take this exam seriously. My Fulbright and my work in the US focuses on working with refugees. Alot of the refugees I worked with abroad have literally no rights and do not have access to education. I'm going to law school to change that but you and I have a huge privilege of even getting the opportunity to attend any college at all- something that the refugee women I worked for didn't have the opportunity to do. So if all else fails, have a light at the end of the tunnel. Keep the end goal in mind. Whenever I doubted myself, I remembered the individuals who this law degree was going to be for and that kept me going. I remembered what a privilege it was to even have an education in the first place, and felt grateful. Practice gratitude, and make this journey about something greater than yourself.

7- Dont listen to anyone who says you can only improve by a couple of points because that is a complete lie lol

8- Lastly, I just took the October exam because I am hoping for a little of a higher score. I love the LSAT so much and really want to help people who feel hopeless about this exam because honestly you CAN do it!!! I promise. So I will be offering tutoring for people- if you are interested you can DM me (3(/p)

The LSAT changed me: it made me more patient, a more careful reader, a more critical thinker, and a bigger believer that hard work pays off if you are really dedicated. So thank you 7sage for being on this journey with me and helping me along the way; My journey is officially over!!! (3(/em)

Hi everyone!

I know that there is an abundance of forums related to podcast suggestions, however, I was hoping to hear suggestions that can be found on Spotify versus iTunes/Amazon/Google/etc. I have seen JY's suggestion for Radiolab/Planet Monkey and Pacifico's suggestion for audio books, just looking to see if there are any others on Spotify that you guys enjoy listening to! In search of podcast that can subconsciously help when reading topics in RC or LR. Thanks!

I've just discovered the problem sets and have been using the question bank to redo logic games. However, even though I flag the questions I get wrong, whenever I make a set, none of my flags show up. There are just dashes for all of the games, which I don't seem to able to change.

How do you pin an entire game, instead of just a single question, so that it shows up in the question bank?

Also, does anyone know how to edit a set once it's been made? As in adding or removing more questions directly? As of right now, every time I've wanted to make an edit, I've had to remake the entire set from scratch.

With less than a month until the Nov LSAT, I'd like to make my PT's as "real" as the real thing. Any advice on this? I will be using an iPad.

Thanks all, and happy studying.

Hey guys,

I took the test in NYC yesterday, and during the test, TWO times, the proctor would start reading this bunch of rules of the testing center and what you can or cannot do during the test WHILE WE ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF A SECTION.

Seriously, did this happen to anyone else? Is this normal? Because I could not hear myself think for the minute or two they were reading and felt like that was really unfair. Other people in the room was complaining too..

Is this now standard practice or something I could complain about?

Im well past 100 hours of studying. I keep having crazy dreams about the puzzles!!!! Anyone else??? LOL

November or BUST!!

Any advice on how to overcome this gap?

Hi everyone! So I’ve decided to delay going to law school for a year. I’m graduating early and I didn’t feel I had adequate time to study due to summer classes. I took the September test and didn’t get the score I wanted. I’m going to withdraw from the November test, since it’d be a waste since I’m not ready.

I will definitely be studying during my year off, but I know law schools say you should also do something productive during that time off. I currently work in real estate, which is something I will be using for my personal statement but I know a lot of people work as a paralegal during their time off. Should I continue working in real estate or should I try working as a paralegal? I also want to make sure I have time to study so I don’t want to get into something that takes too much of my time. I was also thinking of volunteering with affordable housing programs.

I don't know how to feel but I'm not too discouraged because I know I put in about 50% effort in finishing this diagnostic (HORRIBLE migrane during it, I just wanted to finish the test) . But I'm looking to increase by 20 points & I bought the Ultimate + in hopes of achieving that. Dedicating about 4 days out of the week till March 2020 prepping for this LSAT. Any of you have similar stats and ended up improving? or do I need to get realistic? Please help!

Possible to get into 160s by March 2020?

I bombed this section so so badly. I guessed about 15 questions and I’m pretty sure the ones I “answered” I got wrong. I’m so frustrated because I practiced LG for two days before my PT and was doing so well!! I’m crushed. Any advice would be really helpful.

Was wondering if anyone had any positive reccomendations from any of the 7 sage approved tutors? LR and RC need improvement, games is solid. Mostly RC, especially the variability

So I am days away from the october test and I just honestly need someone to talk to and vent. I started studying for the lsat in february of 2019 with testmasters, cold diag was 151. Fast forward to the july test I was averaging around 159 with my highest two tests being a 163 and 166. Ended up gettting a 155 though I partially blame this on the fact that I got a paper test and had only taken digital practice tests. Currently my average is about a 164 but I hit 166/ 165 very frequently. Although I am planning on sitting for the exam on monday, I also have a seat for november. Can someone please tell me things I can do to maximize my time before the november admin to break 170 on the real thing? I have been testing twice a week for months and have already taken 35 PTs. My weakness for certain is RC (started -12, now more like -7/8) but I am unsure if I should strive to get better at LR to go -0 on that or where my efforts are better spent. I have a 3.7 GPA and my top choice is NYU but I would also be okay to go to Fordham. Is the november test too late to apply to a reach school? Can I hit my goal of 170 on the real administration in one month? Or would I be better off just applying with my october score when it comes? Thank you!

I did one section on paper and then transferred over the answers, but I made a mistake transferring. Any way I can change an answer without having to delete all the test data or at least delete data only for one section?

Hi 7sagers,

I am preparing for the October test. Scores of my PTs went down from lower 170 ~ 175 two weeks ago to 168 (PT56) yesterday, and 167 (PT57) today. The differences mainly come from LRs. Previously I missed 3~6 questions in total in LR, while yesterday and today, I lost 9/10 points.

Really don't know why this happened and have no clue about what I can do today/tomorrow to avoid this in the real test. Anyone had the same experience before? Any tips on coming back to the normal/higher range?

I guess one possible reason of this is I am a little burnt out. Have been studying really hard with a lot of pressure in the past three weeks, and would do 1 or even 2 PTs everyday with some other basic drills. I have reduced my study this week to avoid getting burnt out, although I still spent 6+ hours in the library for LSAT everyday ..

Any advice is highly appreciated! Thanks!

Anyone know if Digital LSAT will be introduced in Asia by Jan?

Or do we just have to wait and see?

I just took PT 88, did my blind review, now I want to foolproof the logic games using the digital tester. I don't see how to do that -- all I see is reviewing answers on the test, or creating a PDF of it.

#help

Hi everyone! I scored a 147 on the September test and am taking it again in November. Since then I’ve improved on LG a ton and RC a little. I’m looking to score between a 155-160 with 158 as my set goal. My last two practice tests were a 152, 158, but then a 145 today. I did a section a day during the week and got a 152. Not sure why my score is fluctuating so much but it’s really discouraging. Does anyone have any study advice?

Today I had my third "breakthrough" score and highest Prep Test to date. Earlier this week I scored 170 on PT 86 and this morning I scored 177 on PT 75. The only thing I did differently was skip every question type in LR I knew I would struggle with. At the end of both LR sections I had flagged three questions and had over ten minutes to think through them. This led to -1 for each section. Needless to say, I am now a believer in this strategy.

I usually miss -1/-3 on one LR section and -3/-5 on the other so having -2 through two sections feels really good. Also, I cleaned 23/23 on Logic Games which is rewarding because I practiced about 15 hours on fool-proofing this week. If you don't fool-proof; you need this in your life!

Finally for RC. This one has been the hardest to improve over the last 11 months but I've gone from a -11 average to -3. Today I missed 2. The method I use in RC is similar to the basic translation drill for LR stimuli. For each paragraph pause at the end and summarize what it means before moving on. After each subsequent paragraph, think about how it functions in the context of the passage.

7Sage works. I was stuck in the mid / high 160's back when I started. This is the best community to learn LSAT with and JYs methods are superior. I'm very excited about November after a disappointing September.

Just wanted to share the word about the tutoring services offered by Nicole Hopkins (nicole@ilovelsat.com). I used her for mainly reading comprehension, but the work that we did together also helped me in logical reasoning. I did 5 hours of tutoring with Nicole, and I don't know what magic she used but I went from getting 7-9 wrong per section to 0-2. HUGE progress and honestly, it didn't even feel like I was doing much work. Nicole is a master at explaining things until you understand them-- she is patient, relatable, and incredibly flexible-- which was great for me as someone who is working full time and located on a different coast from her.

Additionally, I am working with her on writing my essays (personal statement, diversity statement, addendum, and supplements) and she has sat with me through each editing session to meticulously break down every sentence and paragraph to ensure that I will get the results that I want. As a professional writer and editor herself, she has definitely shown me the value in getting outside help for writing and LSAT coaching.

I know that she is currently accepting clients, and highly recommend that people who need help reach out. Working with her has been a joy and a great investment.

So I was just looking up reading comp strategies online and I came across this guy that said reading comp was his favorite section because it’s an opportunity for him to learn new things, since the passages are adapted from real articles and I thought that was a really interesting way to view the reading comp section.

The nerd in me loves learning new things and I’m constantly researching and looking up random things to learn about and I think I’m going start approaching the reading comp section in that way because it’ll help me become more engaged with the material (which will help me with the memory method taught here on 7sage).

I’m just really curious if what he said was true: does anybody know if the reading comp passages are actually based on real-life articles and true facts?

So for one of the schools, I basically have their median LSAT score and median GPA but my chances of getting in is 23%????When I click ED, it jumps to 32%. I was considering Ed'ing but with 32%, I feel like i'm going to be wasting my early decision and I might be better off doing it for a different school. Should I just ignore these numbers and base my decision to ED off of the medians for the school?

Hello,

I suffer from PTSD, OCD and some other conditions that I'd rather not list and as such I have 50% extra time accommodations on the LSAT.

It is really annoying that there seems to be no way to adjust the amount of time per section in the testing tool, there isn't even a way to go back in "restarting" regular time.

I have been timing extra 50% separately as I am doing blind review, but then there is no way to tell between "extra time" and "actual blind review". Also as a result, a lot of questions show up missed that I completed within the time that I will have on the LSAT.

I know that this isn't a common issue, however, I feel that people with disabilities already have a very difficult time with the LSAT and it would be great if 7sage could help us out a bit here. I have the Ultimate+ which was very costly and I intended to do all the tests using the online tool on this site, because it's so convenient. Sorry if I sound like I am complaining too much, its not my intent, I know this isn't a common problem and probably something the site makers simply didn't think of.

Any ideas? Workarounds or possibility of 7sage making a change?

how good of a predictor are the PTs??? any other relevant info appreciated!!

Is there any practice test book for 7 sage specifically?