Hey guys - I just took PT86 and scored 1 point higher than my PT average so am really happy!! Typically after completing the digital test I'd see the option to blind review each section before scoring, but this time it only said "show questions" and immediately showed me which ones I got wrong. I was kind of upset because it's not a true blind review that way.

Anyone know if I clicked on something wrong or if the BR option will be coming back?

Thanks!

For those of you with the loophole book and CC, did you find Chapter 9 and on to be helpful?

I found the book helpful so far, but would opt to skip if there's not much new stuff.

Before I started focusing on improving my LG/RC I was averaging about ~8-10 missed on LR sections combined. Spent around 2 weeks bringing my LG/RC to a point where I'm getting ~2-4 wrong on LG and ~4-5 wrong on RC. I just took a full PT and missed 10 on a single LR section... any tips for getting back into the groove of things without seeing my work with LG/RC suffer?

I found myself second guessing a lot of my answers, especially when I was between 2 answer choices on LR, and of those questions many were either NA or SA questions. Any tips would be appreciated! I'm signed up for the September LSAT so the pressures on lol

Hi everyone,

So far I have fool proofed games from PT 1-18 and another 10 between PT 36-50 (the PTs I have taken so far) and I am wondering if it is a good idea to take a week or two just to focus on foolproofing the remaining games before I start taking prep tests again? Or should I continue with fool proofing 4-5 games/week?

I just thought I should focus on fool proofing for a while since I have still been averaging around -5 of LG sections. Would appreciate your input.

How do you keep yourself motivated when you are tired? I am doing LSAT study part time and gunning for one of the fall administration exams this year (probably november or october if the burn out doesn't get me first). Sometimes I just keep getting everything wrong, other days I'll get everything right. It's hard to be okay with the bad days when you've had a few good ones.

If you're someone who is motivated or is well-adjusted: what keeps you going? What motivates, encourages or pushes you? How do you find ways to cope? Or, if you're in the same boat as I am: how have you been trying to adjust to these struggles?

I'm having a very "off" day -- I'm getting everything wrong, even though I know I can get it right. I'm struggling to accept that I'm going to have bad days and good days. I understand the logic of it all -- I know that the learning process isn't necessarily linear and that I'm going to have to expect the occasional set-backs, etc. but are there any mental/emotional/physical/etc techniques (for ex: meditation, etc) that you guys do that work for you when, and if, you find yourself feeling this way? I'm looking for camaraderie and also looking to learn from what you all have to share about your experiences.

Hi everyone,

I am in the midst of writing my personal statement and I discuss two experiences that lead me to two different types of law, family and real estate. I am interested in these two types but should I choose to write only about one in my PS? Will it make me look indecisive if I have not fully decided which area I want to choose?

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you!

Hi all,

So I've been studying for the LSAT for the past 9 months. I started with a 138 and now PTing around 157-159. I struggled to balance studying with a full-time job until I decided to quit in April and focus mainly on the LSAT. Unfortunately, it feels like days are passing by and I'm not improving. I was usually pretty good at LR with -3 to -6 wrong on each section. I would get -5 wrong on the LG and would totally screw up the RC (my worst section). I began focusing on the RC and managed to get -8, but currently miserably messing up the LR. I've registered for the Sept. LSAT and really hoping to gtet at least a 163-165. please give me advice on what I should be focusing my time and energy on. Any tips or suggestions would be useful.

So right now - just in the midst of restarting my academic semester. This summer has been killer for me school & work wise. I have been studying. However, unfortunately my studying time took a huge impact.

So just wanted to know - especially from those who put in consistent hours per day/week - how do you do that? what are some tips and tricks look like? how many questions do you a day? do you focus on section per day to be more effective or do you do a mix (LR/LG/RC)?

Trying to structure my day as follows:

going to post a picture of my schedule tomorrow and see what others think. but until then, just wanted to know how the real go getters get it done.

thanks in advance for the help.

Hello,

First time poster. I am starting to PT, I am not sure if BR is helping me. Does anyone have any tangible evidence in their experience with PT and BR impacting or improving their scores?

Thank you,

S.

So frustrating to lose points out of carelessness. I try to keep it in mind to read closely, but I fail at it far too often. Any tips in this regard?

Hi guys, I'm just wondering how does everyone typically use the 7sage videos? Do you guys go through the course first and the do PTs, or do both at the same time? Also, I've heard sayings about don't study each LSAT section individually, study them at the same time, ie. studyl RC, LR, & LG everyday, So in that case do you still watch the videos vertically, or you can mix and match the videos? Thank you for sharing!

Hi All,

I was just waitlisted for the DC area October 2019 LSAT. Does anyone have any experience with waitlists and when they are likely to inform you of your test center location? The standard email says that they will notify you at least a week before but I've read elsewhere that they can put you anywhere in a 100 mile radius. For someone who is already prone to anxiety, this makes me slightly nervous. I'm sure all areas and dates are different but does anyone know typically how soon after being on the waitlist you are to be notified?

Thank you!!

Hello All,

I have recently started a full time job, and before I got a job, I have been grinding at the library for 5+ hours, but now that I have a job it is extremely hard to focus and not stress over the fact that you have so much on your plate!! I work from 7 am - 4 pm and after that I go straight to the library. I usually try to study for 4 hours, but end up not being able too, because of how stressful it is. I feel like if I cannot handle my job AND studying, I will probably end up quitting.

If anyone has any advice on how to handle a full time job AND handling the LSAT at the same time please comment!

Fortunately found an test center for November, but worst case is January too risky for applications?

I only see games section. Anyone knows when will the LR & RC be available?

So I was all ready to leave for my European vacation when I receive an email from the system telling me I have a private message on 7Sage. Hmm, what is this? Oh, it’s @nicole.hopkins suggesting an article topic? Grumble grumble. Whoa, it’s really been like a month since I’ve written one? Grumble grumble. FINE, I guess I’ll put something together. Don’t say I never did anything for you, Hopkins. Better watch your back.

OK, so. BURNOUT is the word of the day.

Cutting right to the chase - I recommend Burnout: Paradise. It’s a really sweet open-world driving game that’s held up surprisingly well over the years and…oh, not that kind of burnout? Darn.

How to tell you’re burning out:

The ideal learning attitude is for you to come into the whole thing expecting to make all kinds of awful, terrible mistakes that you have to spend hours upon hours cleaning up. When you just get started with a new task, that’s the high that accompanies it. “I’m going to get this”, you tell yourself. And for a time, you’re willing to roll with the punches and (assuming that you’ve put your ego aside, as we’ve discussed a few times previously) learn what needs to be learned without it affecting your mood too much. Frustrating as it may be, you work through your mistakes because you can feel yourself learning.

But like all ideal things, this cannot last forever, no matter how much you consciously try to maintain it. Usually, it starts when something doesn’t click right away or when you otherwise plateau, however temporarily. Don’t worry – nothing’s wrong with you. That just means you’re human (or a highly-realistic cyborg clone). It’s normal to get irritated sometimes when you feel like you’re not progressing (or even if you’re not progressing as fast as you feel like you should be, though that again has to do with the ego thing we talked about before). But that’s where it usually starts. Because here’s the thing – have you ever heard of someone burning out when they’re on a constant upward trajectory? Yeah, right. You show me a student who goes +1 scaled point every test, and I’ll show you a student who will never burn out.

Assuming you hit snags on your path like a normal person, you will eventually reach a low point where you dread studying because you’re sick of making mistakes and always having to struggle to find the right way to fix them, only to make what seems like negligible progress. Instead of properly analyzing the latest error you made, you just throw your hands up in frustration and complain about how ‘nobody writes like that’ (and since that’s one of my biggest pet peeves, I’ll state for the record – yes, they do. All the time, in fact, so you'd better get used to it). Mistakes make you increasingly more irritable, as you lament the fact that you made a sufficiency/necessity mistake, AGAIN. I mean, can they really just stop that? This test is so dumb sometimes.

Many times, this increased irritability and loathing results in avoiding studying, sort of like one avoids doing the laundry in favor of lounging on the couch catching up on back episodes of Pokemon (no? just me?). Go downstairs to put my laundry in the dryer? Maybe later, Ash is about to finally gain the trust of his Charmander! That scene always hits me right in the feels. Who cares about the laundry, anyway? Maybe I’m just not cut out for laundering.

That’s a state of burnout in a nutshell – the apathy, the excuse-making, the frustration finally boiling over. Which, if you’re a particularly nervous type, can even result in you panicking about not studying while simultaneously making excuses not to study. A pretty odd spot to be in, frankly, but it happens more than you might think.

Addressing the issue:

There are degrees of burnout. Small instances of burnout happen all the time, and usually just necessitate a bubble tea run to clear your head, or perhaps a quick trip to these discussion forums to bask in the schadenfreude of your similarly-suffering peers, or maybe just yelling a swear word at the top of your lungs and scaring the dog. Larger instances of burnout happen over a period of months, as your dedication continues to wane on a macro level. But the micro instances of burnout are instructive, because they suggest the solution for larger instances. Which is rather simple, in my opinion.

When you’re burned out, you need to take a break. Yes, you. Listen up:

Take.

A.

Break.

There’s no way around it. You are no longer in the mindset required to learn, and you need to get it back. Studying more isn’t going to help, because remember – you’re already no longer in the mindset required to learn. Which begs the question – if you’re not going to get anything out of it, why would studying more ever be the right call? It’s not. You have to take a break and recharge your batteries.

Q: But what if I don’t have time to take a break?

A: Yes, because you’re accomplishing so much more by forcing yourself to study when you clearly aren’t learning anything from the time spent.

Q: But the test is just two months away!

A: And?

Q: So I need to be studying all the time, right?

A: That’s not how it works.

Look, here’s the deal. If you aren’t getting anything out of studying, you might as well be banging your head against a brick wall. In the process your mood will continue to worsen, leading to further frustration, panic, or both. (Frus-panic? Pan-stration?) Whatever you call it, it’s bad. And, not only are you literally wasting your time studying with that kind of mental state, it can be actively detrimental to you because this is precisely the time where you are most vulnerable both to lapsing back into old (bad) habits and also creating brand new (bad) habits in your attempt to make things make sense again.

Never confuse the steps you take to get to a goal with the goal itself. Having a consistent schedule is important, but it is not the end goal – learning is. Studying consistently is merely a means to that end. When the circumstances change, you need to adapt. You would not go to the gym and try to do leg presses if you broke your ankle. Why are you trying to ‘go to the gym’ (study for the LSAT) with a ‘broken’ brain (a mindset that will not allow you to do what you need to be doing)?

The hardest part is actually giving yourself permission to take a break without feeling guilty. My suggestion – write yourself a contract. You are going to take 48, or 96, or 144 hours away from the test. During that time, you are expressly prohibited from opening an LSAT book, looking at an LSAT question, visiting 7Sage, or anything else. Use this time to remember what life was like before you put the weight of the world on your own shoulders all those months ago. Read a book, sit by the pool, go out with your friends. Give yourself permission to punch anyone who asks you about the test in the face, too. In exchange, when you come back, you promise to do 30 minutes of (X), where (X) is some combination of fundamental tasks like question stem drills or conditional translation exercises. Just 30 minutes, to get back on your feet. And then take it from there, one step at a time.

If your mental game is in shambles, no amount of LSAT mechanics will save you.The test will be there when you get back; you just need to be ready to tackle it. Do what you need to in order to preserve your state of mind.

Just like I'm going to do, right freakin' now. No LSAT for 10 days for me! Catch you suckers later!

Hey everyone,

Like many others, I took the July exam without much preparation (just because, hey, free retake). I got a 154.

I was scoring 152 consistently prior to writing -- I feel like I lucked out on the exam? Or maybe its because I would not grade my "guesses"/did not give myself the point even though I got it right. I am currently scoring 155ish (and doing the same). This is after 3 months.

I have been studying HARD since the beginning of june. My BR score is ~165 (but it is taking me FOREVER -- I am still correcting the PT I took monday, and im sitting in the library ~10 hours a day). My strength is LG, weakness is RC.

I am intending to write in October & November.

I intend to work very hard the next few months. My biggest worry is that I am never going to improve and do WORSE in october, and this is really what is preventing me from cancelling (since I already "mastered" LG)

I dont think a 154 will get me in anywhere in Canada. U of T is my dream school. And McGill (a top choice) averages LSAT scores.

What course of action would you take if you were me?

Hello!

Im currently working my way through the CC and have noticed a pattern throughout my studying which i'm assuming is attributed to mental fatigue. From the start of my study day until about the half way point I feel significantly sharp, often not missing a question. From about the half way point towards the end of my day I begin to miss more questions (not because I don't understand a question but rather because I misread a question or don't correctly process the information) and find it harder to focus. I would imagine that this is rather common and is addressed over time? With that being said, does anyone have any suggestions/tips on how to strengthen your mental stamina/endurance?

all feedback is appreciated!

Hi everyone, my name is Matt, or as I will be known on here Journeyto99thpercentile. I recently took the July lsat and was very disappointed to say the least about my score. Over the past several day's I have been reflecting on what went wrong and what I can do better to improve by the November administration of the exam. As an open disclosure I am not a paying student of the site (at least for now), but after having listened to the 7sage podcast and listened to those who overcame score plateaus to reach their dreams scores, part of what they attributed to their success was being very active in the forums and blind review. For this I am super excited to read through here daily to give my insight and seek insight from you. I bounced around the 160's in my practice exams but fell into the low 150's on my July exam. I won't get into the details to save time, but I allowed test day nerves to take me away from my test day strategy, which wasted a lot of valuable time as I had under-confidence bouts throughout my sections .

I'd love some feedback on anyone who has taken the lsat and underperformed, but was able to bounce back and reach their dream score. Please explain what you did and what you attributed your success to. One of my biggest frustrations right now is in LR. Most of my questions that I get wrong I was able to successfully narrow it down to two answers, but chose the wrong one. If anyone can give tips who have experienced similar issues and what you did to overcome it, I'd be immensely indebted to you.Thank you in advance for your replies and I look forward to traveling down this road with all of you until we can reach out dream scores!

Just as a general question, for those who don't have a full-time job and are scoring 165+, how many hours do you study per day? I have less than a month left for my exam and would like to know how many hours I should be devoting to the LSAT in this last month.

Thanks in advance!

It's been 3 months and I've been getting 158 in all the most recent PTs I've been taking (70+). I've gotten 161 and 164 in older PTs. I BR every test but see no improvement on the new PTs I take. RC is by far my worst sections followed by LR. The analytics do show a very strong trend in the types of questions I'm getting wrong. How do I work on those when the CC only has worked examples of a handful of those types?

I am trying to keep a positive hardworking attitude towards the LSAT, but this has been increasingly more difficult when my recent 4 PT scores after the CC slowly dropped to horrific all time lows.

Before starting the CC, my initial practice test was a 141 (ouch). I took the CC very seriously. I paused every video to do the question before hand, never skipped anything, and I have been working even harder during the current PT phase.

My scores for the PTs 36, 37, 38 and 39 are: 157, 153, 157, 150; BR: 167, 162, 161, TBD.

36: LR -11, LR -9, RC - 7, LG -5.

37: LR -11, LR -6, RC -12, LG -8.

38: LR - 7, LR -6, RC -12, LG -5.

39: LR -15, LR -8, RC -12, LG -6.

For my blind review, I go over every single question again, on a freshly printed PT and I look at the analytics thereafter. I dive deep into the questions myself first, then watch the videos for those questions that 1) I chose the wrong AC twice, 2) I chose the right AC initially and changed to an incorrect AC in BR and 3) the questions I successfully changed to the right AC.

For the last remaining questions (right both times), I will check to see if I was at all swayed by any of the other answer choices. i.e. did not eliminate an AC, or I possibly circled and erased an incorrect one. Ultimately, I am trying my best to not only learn why I chose the incorrect AC, but also why I did not choose the correct AC. I then strive to couple this mentality with solidifying the correct thinking I made when I picked the right AC twice.

I really spelled out exactly how I blind review so I could possibly get feedback from the community if I am maybe doing something wrong. It is a bit disheartening to see these scores after the hundreds of hours I have spent studying. Nevertheless, I am determined to do well and will not let this stop me.

Any suggestions on how I can improve my BR mechanism? What more could I add into this process?

Thank you all and sorry about the long post.

Hey guys and gals, I studied all summer for the Sept LSAT and my first two PTs afterwards I've only improved by 1 point. I'm feeling really discouraged and would like some advice on how to proceed. Thinking about waiting out this year and seeing if I can do better with more studying time under my belt.

Edit: Thanks for the advice, friends. It's so easy to throw up your hands and give up, but the only thing to do is keep working at it and until I understand the material.

What did the test look like? Is it displayed like the one on LSAC (somewhat similar to “fixed” rather than “fluid” on the 7 Sage beta), or something different?

Was hoping to test it today, but I got the paper-and-pencil format.

My experience with the digital format in PT is that it saves tons of time transferring and correcting answer choices, and thus, alleviating lots of stress.

Is it okay to have ranges for some activities/jobs and not for others? I know consistent formatting is important but some of my positions were more variable in terms of time commitment week to week.

For my current full time job (big law firm), should I just average out my hours? I’ve had as little as 35/week to 90+/week.

2a. Relatedly, I have 2 sub-entries for that job entry because I switched departments (litigation to an entirely different non-litigation group). Should I put a separate hours/week or just put one for that employer?

Any advice would be appreciated, thanks in advance! Also, if anyone wants to swap resumes, please reach out :-)