I couldn't find any discussion about what to do in my situation, so here's a post:

I've taken 3 actual tests, done the CC twice, and have taken every available PT at least once. I've also completed all the powerscore books, and the LSAT trainer. I've BRed 180 before and PT at about 170, but can't see to get higher. I think it has a lot to do with my reading speed, which is really slow (max = ~250words/minute), which forces me to be overly aggressive. I think I did average on the Sept test, but still want to be prepared to take the Nov test. I have about 6 weeks left. What do you guys think I should do now? Anyone currently or previously in a similar situation have advice on how to improve, and what to do?

I plan to redo a PT a week, watch some live PTs, record myself doing a few sections, do some confidence drills, and focus on the hardest question types. What do you guys think?

Hello all !

Long time lurker, first time poster.

As the title suggests, I want to take the LSAT but I don't know when nor how I should given the time constraints that I have.

Here's my situation :

Im a canadian student in my 2nd year of undergrad, studying full time and working part time and trying to find a way to study effectively for the LSAT.

I intend to finish my bachelor's degree in 4 years instead of 3 to maintain my gpa and because of my EC's ( where I live a bachelor's degree is 3 instead of 4 years, considering we have a pre-college school ).

The last rule of this LG question is that I need to apply to my desired law school either next year, or after my 4th year.

I bought the powerscore bibles & practice books. I intend on studying them 5-7 hours a week for the next 7 months. Then, my plan is to study full time the whole summer 35-40 hrs a week to take the september LSAT. I will be getting the LSAT ultimate course from 7sage.

My cold diagnostic was 148 ( 12 LG, 33 LR, 12 RC ). Yes, RC just killed me. Last summer, I focused only my reading comprehension skills for 1 month of part time studying and I increased my score to 154.

Do you guys think this is a good study schedule ?

Thanks in advance for reading through this insecure mess and thank you all for being part of this great community.

Depending on the school, the students and faculties sometimes talk about clerkship as if they're a really big deal. All I understand about them is that they're prestigious and competitive, and can offer a unique experience. Schools like Cornell seem to pride themselves on it, and use it as a point of advertisement. I am a fan of Cornell, but more for their international law specializations. Other schools like UVA also focus heavily on clerkship. Other schools almost completely gloss over it, even though they have high clerkship placement, like UPenn, Columbia, or UChic. Does anyone here know why clerkship can be such a big deal?

Hi, I just got two acceptance from u of Miami and Georgia state law. I never even been two cities. Just for school wise, where shall I go? Thinking to focus in M and A

Hey everyone, This post is intended to be an overview of how the sufficient/necessary flaw appears on the LSAT and how we can develop a system of attack for the questions on which the sufficient/necessary flaw appears. I have collected my approach to these questions to 1 single thread.

I want to build on an analogy here that we all might not be entirely familiar with. It is rooted in my understand of the philosophical principle of Occam’s Razor. Suppose your car won’t start and you need to get to work. In an effort to solve this problem, you start deducing what is wrong with the car on the simplest grounds first: you check to make sure the car is not out of gas. We start here prior to checking more elaborate/expensive and time consuming problems: like replacing the transmission, because why potentially waste time with the more elaborate problems if the issue can be solved by appeal to something much simpler?

We do this all the time in our daily lives and I will submit, we should do this on various aspects of the LSAT: start with the simplest explanation of the problem on flaw questions that contain a sufficient/necessary flaw in an effort to save time. If that simplest explanation does not appear, move on to the next description. I might not be the first to apply this system to a problem, but this is the process I use:

1.Identify the “form” in which the argument has taken. This step is a convergence of several skills outlined in 7Sage’s core curriculum. From recognizing conclusion/premise indicators, to properly translating conditional statements, here is where our drills pay off. Extract from the argument both the conditional statement and what the author of that argument does with that conditional statement, here is where the flaw usually occurs.

Drill tip: any time we have a flaw question and our author is using conditional language, alarm bells should be ringing, for our chances of landing in sufficient/necessary territory have increased (although this is not a “silver bullet” it is a decent place to start.)

Drill tip 2: I want to place here a skill I have been thinking about a ton lately for my retake. My tutor calls this skill: following the thread of the argument. Following the thread is granting the argument a certain amount of leeway when we read it. Constantly taking the sentence we just read and trying to see how it relates to the sentence we are reading is following the thread of the argument. Among other things, we are looking for possible negations of certain terms that might not be readily apparent. Take for instance PT 43-2-12, “center of the universe” is essentially negated by the concept of “revolves around a star in the outskirts of the galaxy.” The concept of “center of the universe” implies that it is not in the “outskirts.” Negations can be hidden in the argument in this manner. Note here that there is some debate whether this question is really a sufficient/necessary flaw but I believe it illustrates the point I am trying to communicate fairly well, look out for innovative and clever ways the argument negates terms in the conditional statement, this can happen on several fronts, but a great way to be on top of these possible ways is to “follow the thread” of the argument sentence by sentence.

The sufficient/necessary flaw takes two general forms that encompass the vast majority of sufficient/necessary flaws:

Form 1:

We are given:

A---->B

We are told we have a specific ~A

We conclude we have a specific ~B

Note here: that we are given the ~A in the premise of the author’s argument and are given the ~B in the conclusion of the author’s argument. With this structure, the LSAT writers are telling us that the premise functions like the sufficient condition and that the conclusion functions like the necessary condition. this is an insight that I found helpful when I first noticed it.

Examples:

Pt 45-1-13

Pt 37-4-22

Pt 40-1-14

Pt 23-3-17

Pt 27-4-7

Pt 11-2-9

Form 2:

We are given A---->B

We are told we have a specific B

We conclude we have a specific A

Examples:

Pt 24-2-23

Pt 13-2-26

Pt 22-2-25

Pt 39-4-15

Note here that these are not exhaustive lists. So this is our first step, get a grasp on the form of the argument.

Drill tip: note here that the only question I have been able to find in which we are asked to tell the difference between these two forms is: Pt 51-1-20, in which answer choices (B) and (E) contain the sufficient/necessary flaw, but in different forms. Here we are choosing the form that mirrors our stimulus. Know these forms! Knowing the form in front of us is the first step to describing that form with an answer choice.

2.Once we have the entire “form” in front of us, we move on to the question of how a description of the flaw might appear. In the easiest way available: we scan the answer choices for the words sufficient/necessary. This is the analog to checking if our car is out of gas, if we have found a description of our problem that uses the words sufficient/necessary correctly: choose it and move on, congrats, you’ve answered this question in 40 seconds.

Drill tip: the LSAT writers are aware of this surface level approach to questions, occasionally, they will plant a misdescription of the sufficient/necessary flaw. For an example of this, please see: PT 75-1-12 answer choice (B),in which is using our words that we need, but is describing valid logic! Yes, the test writers are this petty. This is not the only question ever to contain a trap like this, so it begs the question of knowing how to describe a sufficient/necessary flaw beyond the buzz words sufficient/necessary. At this juncture, with some back of the envelope calculations, I believe with the first two steps, we are looking at getting 30-35% of flaw questions that contain a sufficient/necessary conflation correct. What I mean by this is that many flaw questions that contain the sufficient/necessary conflation that we have understood due to our application of step 1 will describe it using those words. This is merely noticing the reappearing elements to the question and describing it.

3.So we have reached step three. We have a handle on the form of the argument and we know that the author has committed the sufficient/necessary flaw. We also don’t see the words sufficient/necessary used in the answer choices as a way of describing the flaw in front of us. So at this point, we are going to need and are going to have to deploy an understanding of what makes the sufficient/necessary flaw bad reasoning. In service of this point I recommend three things: Mr. Ping’s individual explanations of questions contained in the various packages available for purchase on 7Sage, Douglas Walton’s book: “Informal Logic, A Pragmatic Approach” and an analysis of the answer choices the LSAT provides us with as credited responses to these questions. Lets take a look at a problem that contains the sufficient/necessary flaw in which we have to describe the flaw by reference to precisely how the reasoning is flawed rather than the use of buzzwords.

PT 37-4-22

Here we are given:

Irish stone--->very old

Premise: we have a particular ~Irish stone

Therefore we conclude that have a particular ~very old stone

Note here that we have to know that Scotland is not Ireland in order to draw this implied negation of our A term. I think we can rely on the fact that the terms are not literally the same here, rather than geographical knowledge. This is an example of ”following the thread” of the argument.

So this is the sufficient/necessary flaw, form 1. We are given A-->B, we say we don’t have an A, therefore we conclude we don’t have a B.

Here we are going to see two hurdles that the test writers throw our way: referential phrasing and what I call the fourth wall. Now, if you have read this far, bear with me for a moment! I promise this will be of value to you.

Quite often with sufficient/necessary flaws, our author is going to take the actual conditional statement that we translated correctly, reverse it and then run some sort of operation on that reversed (flawed) interpretation of the conditional statement.

So we are told if Irish stone then very old. This is the correct interaptation.

Our author takes that conditional statement and reads it as:

If very old then Irish stone

Our author then takes that wrong conditional statement and runs the contrapostive on it.

~Irish stone

Therefore

~Very old

This is what answer choice (E) is describing:

“Takes the fact that all members of a group [Irish stones] have a certain property [very old] to mean that the only thing with that property [very old] are members of that group [Irish stones].”

This answer choice says:

takes Irish stones---->very old

to mean

Very old---->Irish stones

This is where the flaw occurs, when the author has mistranslated the initial conditional statement. At that point the author runs the contrapostive on this wrong conditional statement. Now this is weird, we are essentially engaging with what the author has erroneously translated and ran away with.

So this “fourth wall” of analysis is where we will move to if the words sufficient/necessary are not present in the answer choices. Lets take a look at another example:

Pt 23-3-17

Here we are given:

If punishment deters then punishment justified

We say that we have evidence that punishment does not deter

Therefore we conclude that punishment is never justified

Again, take a look at answer choice (C)

The author has mistaken

“Being sufficient to justify punishment [deters] to be necessary to justify punishment.”

The author has taken:

If punishment deters then punishment justified

To mean

If punishment justified then punishment deters

The author then runs the contrapositive on that mistaken translation of the conditional statement.

Step 3 is about finding how the author might have messed up the conditional statement we were given and that we correctly translated. In the above example the author has taken

Deter---->justified

To mean

Justified------>deter

At this juncture, it doesn't matter what operation the author of the argument takes, it will still be wrong, because the statement is translated wrong.

Here is the heart of what makes a sufficient/necessary flaw bad reasoning: sufficient conditions do not operate the same way as necessary conditions. Lets look at another example to engrain this intuitively:

If something is a dog then it is a mammal

Dog---->Mammal

My neighbor has a cat (not dog)

Therefore my neighbor doesn’t have a mammal

Depriving a necessary condition of its sufficient element does not allow us to draw any conclusions about the necessary element [mammal]. This is covered in the core curriculum. Depriving “mammal” above of something that is sufficient to produce it doesn’t mean we don’t have a mammal in front of us. Something else could be sufficient to produce mammal: cat, gerbil etc.

Now, saying my neighbor does not have a mammal, allows us to draw the conclusion that my neighbor does not have a dog, for (as we all know) depriving a sufficient element (dog) of its necessary condition (mammal) allows us to say we don’t have the sufficient condition, because we don’t have the thing necessary for having that sufficient condition.

Operationally, sufficient and necessary conditions hold different powers for our conditional statement. On sufficient and necessary flaws, the author of the argument (usually through a mistranslation of the initial conditional statement) has granted the sufficient element the powers of the necessary element.

So, if we are given:

A----->B

and the argument says we have a particular ~A

therefore we conclude we have a particular ~B

The argument might be erroneously taking A---->B to mean B---->A

Similarly, if we are given:

A---->B

And the argument says we have a B

Therefore the argument says we have an A

The argument might be erroneously taking A----->B to mean B----->A

There are a finite number of ways in which the LSAT describes how this flaw has taken place and I have found it helpful to look at the flaw the way we do in step 3 as my main method of cutting through the haze of referential phrasing on many of these answer choices, because quite often the heavily referential phrasing answer choices to sufficient necessary flaws will be saying just this: that our author has taken A---->B to mean B---->A. If we know that the author has misinterpreted the conditional statement to mean something that it doesn’t, we can get a grasp on a majority of the ways in which it is described not using the words sufficient/necessary. It has been my experience, that with some back of the envelope calculations, an application of steps 1-3 will net us the form and description of 85-90% of sufficient/necessary flaw questions.

I hope this approach helps:

I will monitor this thread for additional questions and will be adding a part two in the coming weeks.

David

*full disclosure, I'm not sure if there is anyone else out there that approaches these questions like this. Any similarity is purely coincidental. I am also open for any correction you might see fit, we can make our approach stronger together as a community.

Edit 1: more specific elaboration in paragraph starting "There are a finite..."

I know during the actual LSAT, it'll be 5 sections. Does anyone know what JY recommends? If it's recommended to use 5, I'll just take a section from an earlier PT and add it in.

When should you start focusing on studying with timing/timing questions for LR?

I know when you are doing the core lessons it is not recommended. However, if you are doing the problem sets, should you practice with 1:30 timer per question? I am just trying to figure out ways I can start helping myself prep in a manner to build that "internal clock" that is needed when doing timed sections in the future.

Any help would be much appreciated!

I'm using the basic 7sage in combination with powerscore bibles and workbooks. anyone doing the same? and which do you use first or in combination? kinda confused how to go about it for maximum benefit.

How do you commit how to solve a question that you got wrong to memory. For example, I always feel that I sometimes forget what I learned from blind reviewing when I apply it to a new prep test. Thank you!

Hi everyone,

I recently completed my 4 year tour of active duty in the military. I am considering joining the reserves to maintain some of my health care and retirement benefits, while earning a paycheck. If I were to join the reserves it would require a 1 weekend per month and 2 weeks a year work obligation. I am hesitant to do this before I apply to law school. Will admissions counselors look down on my application if they see that I am in the reserves? Joining the reserves means I could be called at any time to service regardless of my school/work obligations. Are law schools willing to work with students in the reserves? I know my prior years of active duty will look great on the resume and personal statement part of my application. Does anyone have any experience or know of someone doing this?

I'm watching his RC reviews(PT 58+) and I noticed that his videos are unusually longer than the previous series...

Is it the first time he introduced the Low-Res/High-Res techniques and AB technique for comparative passages (and for the rest of PT58+) ???

P.S. I am VERY excited to listen to his detailed ver. reviews! : )

Hey guys,

I just had a general question regarding PT's. So if I wanted to take a 5 section PT, how would I go about adding another section to the PT? For example the PT's within the curriculum only have 4 sections in them and I was confused the other day because there is a 5 section proctor available but all of the PT's are only 4 sections. I don't know if I am asking a pretty obvious question but I couldn't figure out how to simulate 5 sections like i'll need to do test day. Thanks guys and any help is greatly appreciated!

Hi 7sagers

I'm back. I took a 1-2 week break after the Sept LSAT.

I didn't log on to 7sage or look at any LSAT material.

Weirdly and strangely, I miss you guys. LOL From logging on everyday and doing PTs. Checking my work. Taking breaks and looking at the discussion board...and then just going MIA for 2 weeks, feels like forever.

My sept LSAT (first real LSAT) was rough. I was nervous and I found myself not 100% focusing on the test. But instead, sweating and thinking about the time. I'll be honest, I don't think I did that great.

I also didn't cancel my score because I wanted to see what I got wrong and learn from it. Another reason why is because 100% of the schools I'm looking at takes the highest grade.

It's be rough and really stressful. but there is nothing I can do now but prepare for the Nov LSAT.

I feel more confident as I know what the environment is like now. I will be back to studying next monday!

I'm excited....which is weird LOL. but I feel better. I know what to expect. I know the questions. I know the format.

I just feel better this time around! of course I still have the nerves because its the FREAKING LSAT! but...not as much.

I miss you guys! good luck to all.

BACK TO THE GRIND!

Hi,

My 7Sage account is expiring in 3 days. I have taken the September LSAT and am waiting for the results. Is there a way that I can keep my account until I get the results back and decide if I want to extent my subscription then? Or do I have to pay again if I decide to take the November test?

Thanks.

#help

Hey guys,

I know some of the videos are transcribed but I was wondering if there was a way I could use closed captioning for some of the videos if its available? And how would I do this? Closed caption while watching would be really useful to me since I try to sneak in some videos while I'm at work and can't use my headphones. Thank you.

Is there a PT score/BR score combination at which drilling becomes an ineffectively use of time and instead one should solely focus on PTing with BR?

Or do even folks with PT170+/BR near 180 still drill?

I'm trying to grapple with how much drilling vs. PTing I should be doing

Lol, it's dumb but I'm actually seriously wondering.

Can we get away with imperfect bubbling? When taking practice tests, I avoid bubbling outside the circle, but I don't prioritize completely filling in the bubbles - many are mostly filled, but not completely filled. Is that ok?

Hey fellow 7sagers,

Need some studying advice - not sure if this has already been discussed in the forum previously. If so, I do apologize!

So far, I have sort of carved out this studying plan model:

Phase 1) Finish Content of the Syllabus for RC, LR, LG

Phase 2) Do ALL Problem Sets (Goal: Strengthening my knowledge and foundational skills)

Phase 3) Do Timed Sections from PTS 40 - 60 (Goal: To improve my timing and strategy)

Phase 4) Do All PTS from 60 and above (Goal: Putting everything I have learned altogether & fine tuning my approach)

At the moment - I do not have a set date to write the test, but my prep goal is to help reach about 170. With that stated, I am currently in Phase 2 of my studying and I sort of want to maximize this opportunity. I really want to improve my LG and RC skills during this phase. In LG specifically- being able to recognize patterns & speed improvement. For RC - at least try to complete a passage below 10 minutes & find tuning my annotating skills.

With this in mind - when folks have tried to improve in certain sections, do you try to dedicate a block of studying time for a particular section? To clarify - for example, take two weeks of full LG drilling to improve in LG sections and not studying anything else besides. Simirarily doing the same for RC. Has anyone tried this? Is there any other approach?

Thanks for the help in advance!

Hi all,

I just bought the LSAT Trainer to supplement my studies with 7sage. For context, I started with the Powerscore Bibles, have done 7sage CC, and have taken 6 PTs. Most recent PT was 165 with a 174 BR:

LG -2 (new PR; finished fool-proofing)

LR -11 (higher than usual despite LR drilling in the past, but I neglected LR for a while b/c of FPing )

RC -5 (new PR)

I am wondering what folks think would be the most effective use of the Trainer.

Keep taking a weekly PT and read the trainer in between? Stop PTing and knock-out the Trainer? Some combination of the two with intermittent PT breaks?

Also, for context I work full-time.

Thanks for everyone's input; I really appreciate it! 7sager's rock

i was doing some brainstorming on ideas for my personal statement

and wanted to get the communities take on them.

i studied abroad in the middle east for 3 yrs and the academy i studied in lacked a gym . the closest gym to us was about an hour away and exorbitantly expensive. i am a fitness fanatic and after a year of working out in my room with whatever objects i could use as weights i decided that this has to end. i went to the school and petitioned them to give me a room in the dormitory to use as a gym, after many long arguments, they agreed to give me a small room as long as the school would have no expenses from the gym. I then went out and fundraised money for gym equipment and new flooring. i was able to raise a few thousand dollars. i travelled 2 hrs to closest gym supplier and purchased whatever machinery and weights we could afford and the flooring, they shipped it to the academy. and i spent a week installing the flooring myself and building all the equipment, for the next 2 years i did the maintenance and upkeep of the gym until i came back stateside.

any thoughts on this idea would be much appreciated . thanks for reading!

I finished the CC in May, have been doing LG and LR drills, as well as taking a mixture of timed and untimed PTs for the past four months. I am writing the November LSAT, how should I structure my study schedule from now until November to maintain my LG score, and to increase my LR and RC scores. Although RC is my worst section, I have been dedicating a lot of time to LR because I think that's where I can gain the most amount of points given the time left. But since I now have more time to study, how should I tackle RC? Drill one section per day? I also struggle to finishing on time. Any suggestions from you will be greatly appreciated!

Should craft a new personal stamenent for a school I’m reapplying to? Also is there any other key things to consider when reapplying? Thanks in advance!

Hey Sagers,

A bit of a strange question here, but here goes: Does anyone know the computer device J.Y. uses (or anything comparable to it) to write on the screen when going through the CC and the questions?

While I am still reserving timed drills and PT's for physical pencil and paper, I think this is a better option to use for drilling other material considering the printing, storing, and maneuvering through hordes of paper of drilling material is cumbersome and expensive. Thus, I am looking for a digital and more eco-friendly alternative.

Any and all help is appreciated!

I am planning to start recording myself while I am doing drills and reviewing my video footage for both LR and RC just wondering if anyone has a system that works for them, especially for RC.

I’m visiting my TC next week and have a meeting scheduled wth an admissions advisor. It’s a 20 min meeting...really short. Do I just ask them what they’re looking for in an applicant and let them talk or am I trying o sell myself orrrr