Discussions

General

New post

33 posts in the last 30 days

A reoccurring nightmare of mine is to wake up on September 16 and drive to Starbucks and to accidentally lock my keys in my car (with my ID and admissions ticket) or have my battery die or get a flat tire. It's a somewhat irrational fear, since I've locked my keys in the car once in my life and have never gotten a flat tire.

I did, however, have my battery die once. The day before the June 2017 test actually (Thank God I had postponed my registration weeks before anyways).

This lovely Labor Day morning, 11 days before the September test, I was going about my normal PT morning routine to realize that I left my experimental section at my boyfriends' house (he has an awesome office so I sometimes use his office to study). I called him and asked him to bring my manilla folder out to me so I can just swing by and quickly return to my normal route. So I drive by to grab it and notice that I have some unwanted garbage in my car, so I get out to grab the garbage and dispose of it, only to lock my keys inside my running car. To my dismay, my spare keys are packed away somewhere (I am currently in the process of moving, so many things are packed away in boxes) and now I have to find a lock smith at 6:30am on Labor Day. With no luck.

I called the police department, no luck. I called the Sheriff's office and they were willing to help. So we waited about 30 minutes when a very kind officer came and broke into my car.

But then I noticed that my experimental section was not in the manilla folder. I searched frantically for it, to no avail. I must have left it on my desk at work? Who knows...so with limited PTs scheduled in my future and this being one of the final ones, my Type A personality got the best of me and I started to panic at my loss of control over the situation. I went back to my house to try and find a section-any section-but most of my old LSAT books are used and, therefore, I packed them away thinking that, from this point on, I'll only need the newer stuff. But then I decided to take miscellaneous questions from some practice material I gathered for my warm up and create a custom experimental section. So now I have a hand-made experimental section consisting of 2 LGs and 2 RCs. I may have taken them in the past too- I don't recall haha. Better than nothing I guess?

I've had a lot of weird things happen during a PT morning (one time, I kid you not, a bird flew into me at Barnes and Noble during a PT. Apparently a bird had gotten in the building and then saw the girl trying to study for the LSAT and figured that I was a good target to attack), but this morning really threw me off.

Nonetheless, I am about to go take PT78 with my customized experimental section. It's much later than I usually start and my mental game is a bit thrown off, but I guess I have to prepare for anything right? Including being attacked my birds and have my worst nightmare come to fruition during my PTs (even though, if that happened on September 16, I would, without hesitation, break my car window. This is war, people.)

0

Hi all,

I was going to take the September LSAT but know I can perform a lot better on December's so I just registered for that. Now that it's too late to get any sort of refund on September's LSAT, should I still sit for it and take it as practice? I realize I can still withdraw without it being reflected on my Law School report, but I'm also super worried because December's my last shot if I want to go to law school fall 2018, so I'm thinking maybe just experiencing the actual LSAT, even though I'm probably going to cancel, might prepare me a little bit more for December (test taking anxieties, etc).

In short, does one cancellation affect the competitiveness of my application? If so, how?

Thank you so much in advance!

0

Hi,

Don't know if I'm abusing my limit of posting on the discussion forum but pls have mercy.

Could someone, anyone, possibly walk me through a typical PT review, one that emphasizes quality and allows me to gain the most traction for future PTs. I can't seem to adopt a specific ritual. Please share your techniques! I do the logic games again, do the LR questions I got wrong, try to see why I got them wrong, and do the RC passage I skipped (since I only attempt 3/test). For example, how long do you professionals wait until reviewing the test after writing? Teach me your ways!

I'm writing for the September 16, 2017 test and hoping to squeeze in a few tests during the next two weeks. Could you guys also possibly recommend a specific number of tests I should try to reach while maintaining good practices of reviewing to ensure a good score on test day?

Thanks again! You guys rock!

0

Hi there,

I've finished all the prep-tests (35-81) but still want to try out some timed sections with questions I've had no exposure to. I just found these random Preptests in the Analytics list, but am not sure how to access them. Do they come with the Ultimate package?

0

So my transcripts were fully processed and I accessed the Academic Summary Report and saw that there was pretty big gap between the "Degree (summary GPA" and the "Cumulative GPA". Not sure as to what the difference between the two is even though I read the description box. And not sure as to which one is used as part of my application. Also if I have received A+'s during undergrad how do I find out if they counted as 4.33 or 4.0?

0

Hey everybody,

It just wouldn't be a week if I didn't ask a million questions. So yesterday I did prep test 54 and scored 154 flat out. I knew it was going to be a low score (rough day) but I was committed. It didn't bother me that much because I normally am around 158 and the big tank was in LG when I hit a game that my brain just could not compute to save my life. I decided to post pone my BR to today after I got some much needed sleep. My BR was 173. My highest score what so ever to date.

Now here comes the question, how do I close that 20 point gap because I would LOVE to do that. Any tips? Advice? Is drilling the way? The questions I missed in LR and RC I saw the answer almost right away for 80% of the stuff I got wrong. I could easily tell my brain had been general MUSH yesterday. I was considering doing some drilling tomorrow on the major question types I got wrong and doing a PT on Sunday. Is that a good idea?

Help your favorite-always-posting lsat kid out.

Love, Victoria

32

I have been trying to stick to the group 1-4 method. Previously, if I read "except" I would make what follows the necessary condition and then simply negate the remaining and make that the sufficient. For example, "Mark goes to school except on Sunday" would be /MGS--->Sun and /Sun-->MGS. So my question is do you guys categorize "except" in group 3? Negate the sufficient? What about this example, "Mark does NOT go to school EXCEPT on Sunday." I would again, choose except as the indicator, make what follows the necessary, and negate the remaining and get MGS-->Sun and /Sun-->/MGS. I am trying to rewire my brain with JY's computer algorithm, but "except" is the only glitch.

1

Up until last week, I was feeling really confident.

My previous five scores (under strictly timed/bubbled/public conditions):

PT 57- 179 (definitely an outlier)

PT 72- 173

PT 66- 173

PT 71- 173

PT 77- 176

PT 81 comes out and all the cool kids are taking it. 169. (LR -6; LG -0; RC -4)

To be honest, I didn't BR it as hard as I should have because I was anxious about the score so it only went up to 173. I have since gone over every question on the test and feel like I understand it inside and out. And then I took off two days to avoid burnout because I really am trying to learn from y'all's wisdom.

But I was still pretty freaked out about the drop so I took 80 to convince myself that I just had an off day and that I really could do the most recent tests.

...166. (LR -8; LG -3; RC -5)

(BR brought it up to 177; -2 LR, -2 RC)

For both 81 and 80---nothing really stood out in regards to having a bad day or anything. I always feel panicked during a test and grossly underestimate my score, but these tests didn't feel noticeably worse.

Perhaps I felt a bit more pressure since I knew these were the most recent and hence the best comparisons to the real deal and then feeling like it was do-or-die for 80 after the previous test. But if it really is an issue of underperforming under stress, things aren't going to end well on the 16th or in law school anyway.

Several of the questions were stupid mistakes, but I realized there was an RC passage I didn't fully understand the first time through and a couple of LR questions that I didn't understand under timed conditions (but I get them now.) I haven't been unable to finish an LG section in about 10 tests, but even if that had gone perfectly I still would have been stuck with a 168.

Is this because I haven't taken enough recent tests? (72, 71, and 77 are the only ones I've done in the 70's. I was trying to save them.) Is it just a couple of off days in a row and I need to chill the #%*$ out? What do I need to do to move forward? How do I assess if I need to postpone (and much more importantly--how do I avoid postponing because ughhhh)?

Thanks so much for your help!

1

Hey all.

I've taken 30+ PT's by this point, but found that I skipped the June 2007 diagnostic exam. I took it, untimed, today just for practice drilling questions, and actually found it to be really really difficult. Like 9pts lower than my average score difficult.

The LG was easy, but RC and LR - which felt deceptively easy - actually destroyed me (-5 on RC; -9 on LR). Coupled with a non-existent curve and my score was abysmal lol.

Anyone else find the diagnostic questions difficult?

0

Hey guys!

I had my LSAT break through a few days ago and I wanted to share. After studying for 4 months, I decided to postpone writing the LSAT until the December sitting.

I've been having the most inconsistent scoring these last few weeks, from 155's-175's and yesterday I BR'd at a flipping 180. I'm at that awkward stage where I understand the logic behind it, but not consistently enough to trust myself to write the LSAT. A little disappointed, because it's daunting to know that this test will be my life for another 3 months, but I think I'm making the right decision, since my dream school is Columbia (and Harvard but it seems crazy to write that).

So, I'm heading back to the CC after taking this weekend off and will be drilling each LR question type (where I struggle) in between each lesson + webinars when available. I want to focus on studying the structure of each question types, and understand wrong answer choices. My goal is to get through the CC+ drilling in September, so that I have two months to PT and get that 175+ in December. I've been hearing a lot of back and forth about whether or not schools care about multiple sittings, and my take on it is this tests matters too much for me to risk a sloppy take. I'm confident in my softs (I'm an investigative journalist focusing on national security + won national awards for my work + other things), so I don't think applying later will hurt too much. I didn't want to apply ED anyways, because a Columbia adviser said they almost never give scholarships to people who apply binding. Being Canadian, and paying international fees, I definitely don't want to pay law school entirely on loans.

SO, basically, if anyone in Toronto want's to go through a little LSAT bootcamp with me, along with exercising and eating right, hit me up :)

0

Hi, In the Logical Reasoning section, how do you know when you’ve eliminated a wrong answer choice for the wrong reason (because of faulty reasoning) as oppose to a reason that's just different from what JY points out in the explanation video? Do you do anything specific to ensure that your thought process is not illogical, unreasonable, or out of bounds? Please comment.

0

Hey everyone, was just curious if anyone knows whether our photo printout for the LSAT admissions form can be in black and white or if I need to take it to kinkos to print it out in color?

Seeing how anal LSAC seems to be about a lot of these kinds of details, just wanted to make sure!

0

Hello all! I'm signed up for the September LSAT and have been testing in the lows 160s. It terms of preparation, I have completed 70% of the 7sage curriculum and have taken only 3 LSAT practice tests. I am already planning on taking the December LSAT because I am absolutely confident I can make at least a 168 merely by improving on LG, which is the part of the curriculum I have not gone over. I have also been missing around 3 questions in RC and around 8 across both sections of LR, so I know I could also make some improvements there.

Typically I would just say I'll withdraw from/cancel the September test, as I already know I plan to retake. However I am taking the LSAT abroad, as I'm in Europe at the moment (actually in a country that doesn't offer it, requiring me to fly to Paris to take the test). I made this whole plan several months ago, assuming I would be ready. Long story short, I'm not and I know that I am not performing at my score potential.

At this point, I can't get the money back on the flights/hotel/or test in Paris, so should I just go ahead and take the test, knowing I'll probably get a 162 or so? I am not planning on submitting my apps until January when the December results are out anyway. I've already read up quite a bit on whether the December LSAT is "too late" and have realized with a 170+ score, it really isn't. I also have read the policies of each school I plan on applying to in regard to multiple LSAT scores, and the general consensus seems to be they will consider the higher one, and give you the option of sending in an explanation if there is a big discrepancy between the scores.

Like all of us, it has been beat into my head to not take the LSAT until you feel ready for it. Is it irresponsible of me to just take it anyway and then explain the lower score away on my application?

Also, as an aside, I am now in a position where I could devote around 20-25 hours per week for the next two weeks to studying. I know predicting point improvement is hugely difficult, as it depends on the person, but do you think I would potentially raise my score another 3 points or so?

I really appreciate y'alls help. Just reading through the discussions here on 7sage is helpful, the community seems so genuinely helpful and pleased when other's succeed.

0

Hey guys!

Just curious, what's the take on letters of recommendation for graduate students?

Do students get letters from graduate professors or should we go back to our undergraduate professors and hope they remember you? Since our undergraduate grades are the ones that count for admissions, should we ask undergrad profs?

In my case, I went to a grad program that had professors that basically SUCKED and it's literally like pulling teeth to get them to do ANYTHING. I'd probably have a better shot getting a better letter from my undergrad school.

I'd love to hear opinions!

Thanks!

0

So when I uploaded my picture for my admission ticket it seemed fine, but now that I've printed it off it looks like there's a shadow on half my face! Is it possible that they will let me change my picture even though it's after the deadline if I call them or something, or am I basically screwed out of taking the LSAT in September?

0

Hi,

Is there any plans to add caption / closed captions to the videos?

I think it would help with the study @ work as well as those with hearing disabilities.

Just a thought ...............

4

So im one of those perpetual starbucks dwellers. I cannot study anywhere else. I just started tracking how much coffee i drink a day....its insane. Apart from the health ramifications i have realized that a triple shot gives me the perfect amount of focus for 2 sections or so and then my brain shuts off. My score normally starts tanking at section 3 on most PTs EXCEPT if its LG. Im attributing this to coffee over fatigue bc i can do 6 or 7 timed sections and be ok if i have coffee. What do i do?

2

Confirm action

Are you sure?