This is probably a silly question, but I'm wondering if we're supposed to do anything after receiving our acceptance letters/emails. I've heard from a few schools (sent a quick LOCI to the one that I was waitlisted to...more like an email). However, should I return emails to the schools that I have been admitted to?

Oh, and I got a decent scholarship offer to a T40 school, but no offer from the TT school I was accepted to. I've heard of applicants being offered a scholarship after showing that they received one from other schools. How do applicants go about this?

I already sent out an email to Daniel (one of the sages) about my planned schedule and wanted to receive feedback from other sages if they had the time to chime in.

So, I've already gone through the phase of learning the fundamentals, and right now I'm trying to tackle each section individually before entering the PT and BR phase.

So, in terms of LG, I'm in the process of foolproofing the LG Bundle from PT1-35 and right now I'm at PT 14 and I can already see my LG skills improving. I definitely do each game more than 5 times in total to make sure I have all the rules and inferences down.

For LR, I'm taking Daniel's advice and basically going to focus on Flaw, Strengthen, and Weaken questions (7sage analytics pointed out these three areas as my main weaknesses) and starting tomorrow do 10 questions of each of those areas untimed and really break down the argument, get to the root of the argument, and try to anticipate the answers, and write out an explanation for why I think the correct answer choice is correct and why the other four are incorrect. And then I would check the answers and if I got a question incorrect, I can review it, cut it out and keep looking at it from time to time. The next day I would do the same with a different set of flaw, weaken, strengthen 10 questions each from the Cambridge packet.

For RC, I'm trying to read a lot of difficult prose out loud each day for about an hour because it forces me to focus on difficult material, builds up my overall endurance, and increases my familiarity with different concepts. Also, I try to go through one or two RC passages a day and make sure I understand reasoning structure, any distinctions or evaluative statements/opinions.

I'm only planning on taking a preptest only after I've done the LG foolproofing method. Do you guys have any further suggestions? Much appreciated and thank you Josh, Daniel, David, and Nadar for the awesome webinar!

P.S. I really want to join in on the BR call but I won't be in the PT phase until next month. Should I wait?

Thank you guys!

So I am about to print my ticket for the February 4 2017 test-does it have to be color since my photo is on it? or can i take a black and white? Just wondering, thanks!

Admin edit: No titles in caps, please! Don't yell at me! :'(

Hello 7sagers in LA,

I have either entirely or mostly blank (with writing has a note next to them) copies of some LSAT books. And because 7Sage has been so good to me, I'm giving them away to some of my unused material to you for free.

I'll give away one book of your choice first comment, first serve. You just have to pick it up from me at some point.

Here's what I have:

The 2015 LSAT Trainer (first 40% has writing in it) TAKEN

Official LSAT Preptest 73

Official LSAT Preptest 74

10 New Actual, Official LSAT Preptests 52-61 (One of the games sections has writing in it) TAKEN

The Next 10 Actual, Official LSAT Preptests 29-38

10 More Actual, Official LSAT Preptests 19-28 TAKEN

10 Actual, Official LSAT Preptests (7,9-16,18) TAKEN

If there aren't enough Angelinos, I'll let folks claim multiple books.

Good luck studying,

Benjamin

I took a cold diagnostic last month the day before Christmas eve and ended up with a 146. But after going through a whole curriculum with the online Testmasters course for about one month, I took another PT(21) just to see what my weaknesses and strengths were and got a 161 (BR 167). The breakdown was -8 LG -4 LR1 -7 LR2 -6 RC. I was generally happy with the improvement, albeit some of the logical reasoning questions were ones I've already seen before. I don't want to lose hope because initially I thought I was incapable of pursuing this task of defeating this ridiculously difficult standardized test. But I'm determined to try my best so I've signed up to take the real test in June. If my scores are not up to the range where I want it to be (preferably +170) then I'm willing to postpone. Some things I already know I have to work on are LG by doing the fool proof method from PT1-35 (recommended by 7sagers) which I'm currently in the process of doing. For LR, I'm not sure whether I should refer back to the fundamentals or simply hard core review the ones I've missed. All the questions I've missed are from #15 and onwards. Also timing is an issue for me for some reason. For RC, I definitely had time left to spare and I was sure about all my answers, but they turned out to be wrong unfortunately. I won't take another PT until I've fully gone through every single question I've missed as well as the ones I was unsure about and also I'm done with the LG fool proof method which will take me another 2 weeks I think. Any advice from any of the 7sagers will be much appreciated! I've been perusing through the discussion forums and everyone seems so friendly and almost all the advice I've seen are top-notch! Long story short, I'm happy to be part of this community!

P.S. I would also be willing to join in BR calls in the future if that's helpful as well.

Basically, for each LG game that I get wrong or am off on time, I redo once and figure it out with a slight overkill on time. The second time, I get them right and am 2 minutes under time. Same with the third pass.

I stop after the third pass. I know we are supposed to print ten copies, but is there a minimum amount we can drill if we pick it up on a second retry for instance? Would you do one more? Go up to 5?

This professor is a good guy, and I like him a lot. He was kind enough to send back a draft. Can I pm one of you guys to get your opinion on the quality?

It seems games can be mastered with practice,

is it the case with LR as well? Or perfecting LR just not a realistic expectation?

I haven't seen any kind of limit on length for these. Do you guys think that will be okay? I know personal statements are supposed to be 2-3 pages double spaced, so this will still be about half of the size.

Hello,

Is anyone aware of LSAC having an infrequent tendency to introduce a question stem in double negatives?

Example: Instead of stating, "Which one of the following, if true, would weaken the argument?" They otherwise state, "Each of the following, if true, does not weaken the argument EXCEPT?"

Thank you.

Alright so, I have already posted about having regrets, but now we are getting to crunch time. I am hovering around that magical 160- 165 PT range ( 161, 163, 163, 164, 164, 164, 165) which puts me right where I want to be for 94% of Texas schools. If I score like this on test day, I will most likely get into UH, Baylor, SMU, St. Mary's, while missing out on UT Austin. So here's what I can do:

Accept a (most likely) good sized scholarship from St. Mary's. They are not a great school, but have good influence in San Antonio. That is where I want to practice post graduation.

Possibly accept smaller money to go to UH, Baylor, or SMU. Be 2-4 hours away from my wife and dogs since they will be in the San Antonio area. So I will have to commute every weekend to see them. The drive is not that long, but it does stink to be away from the ones you love.

Most of my improvement has come in the last month. I shot up from a 153 to my current range, and I am beginning to see some improvement that could make jumps elsewhere possible. Do I forego this year, study for September, and go for the big Kahuna at UT?

Which option would you choose?

Hey there, has anyone on here seen of, or complied a list of the more difficult RC sections in LSAT history? Wanted to try and tackle them all before sleighing the beast in two weeks.

Are their any more premise or conclusion indicator(s) words that have been found that we can add to the list?

And even words indicating a switch in the argument?

I have a half page C and F and 1 page (double spaced for both) diversity statement ready to go. Anyone have a couple of minutes to take a read through and give me their opinion?

Hello all! I was hoping I could get assistance with the order in which I should study for the LSAT! I am taking the exam in September but I thought it's better to study earlier since it's my first time taking the exam! I have been studying logic games for 30 minutes a day for a week now. I was wondering if that's a good amount or the right thing to study first. Should I start with logic games then reasoning then comprehension or is there a better order? I am going to try and do an hour a day for the remainder of the time I have before the exam I just want some good tips starting out so I am best prepaired! Thanks so much!

Is there generally a drop in the score of the actual test when compared to the prep tests? By how many points is this drop?

Hi everyone, we're putting in performance enhancements for the site today!

Unfortunately, this will take a while, and the discussion forum will be acting strange and/or offline until it is done. I expect the total downtime to be 3 hours or less, and the update will be starting very soon.

Sorry for the trouble!

Hey guys! If you're taking the Feb. LSAT and your account is inconveniently set to expire a few days before the test date, just email me (dillon@7sage.com) and I'll extend your account for free through the Feb. test. (Make sure you include your 7Sage email!)

I can guarantee you that my inbox will fill up with these, so give me time to reply to them all. If your account expires by the time I get to your email, don't worry, I'll reactivate it for you. :)

For those of you who are expiring after, good luck on the LSAT! We here at 7Sage are rooting for you.

I am working towards a faster pace for the test questions but have tremendous difficulty lowering the time spent. I can score close to perfect on the logic games with an additional 20 minutes and LR & RC roughly the same. I am not certain how to overcome this with multiple factors of working full time and being a single mom of 2. I am scheduled to take the Feb 2017 LSAT and feel unprepared for the time factor. What is the most efficient way to decrease time? And should I schedule to take the LSAT in June 2017 given the issues above? Thank you for your help:)

Hello, I have a question about the letters.

1. Should we show our PS DS or any essays to the prof?

2. I have a couple of letters and wonder what steps to take after LSAC received the letters...I thought we can choose letters, but no? If we submit them, will all of them be sent to all schools?

3. When they say at least 2 letters, but accept 3, how many do you submit? I heard 3 is better, but also heard if the contnt is the same (almost) you should not bother Adcom to read the additional one.

4. I'm meeting another professor. She is quiet busy but I hope I can get a letter from her asap...how can I be polite but still ask her to write a letter as soon as she can?

Thank you for your help.

Sorry if this is redundant due to being asked and answered elsewhere. Direction there would be good if so, but I can't find an answer with a few searches.

I just upgraded my membership. Previously, I had used the question bank + filtering to drill questions marked as high priority from my PT + blind review. Now that I have access to new questions, I would like to filter again for those question (yes, I still suck at some of them) but not see all the ones that were available in my lower level subscription. That is to say, I only want to see the "new" ones that are available given my new upgraded membership. Is there a trick or way to do this? I guess it won't kill me to redo old questions if not. . .

Many thanks.

I am just curious to know for logic games, people who are scoring well in that section, once you find what you believe to be the answer choice. do you move on to the next question? or are you also verifying the the other answers as well just to make sure the answer you chose is correct?

I like James Clear.

He's one of those people who's constantly trying to improve himself. I get his emails once per week, and they always challenge me to ask myself, "Could I be doing this better?"

This is his guide to Deliberate Practice (I've also provided a link because many of the ideas he writes about are hyperlinked to sources.) I think there's a lot here that could be applicable to LSAT. Take a read a let me know what you think. Maybe you have some specific ideas of how to deliberately practice the LSAT.

http://jamesclear.com/beginners-guide-deliberate-practice

The Beginner’s Guide to Deliberate Practice

by James Clear

Read this on JamesClear.com

In some circles, Ben Hogan is credited with “inventing practice.”

Hogan was one of the greatest golfers of the 20th century, an accomplishment he achieved through tireless repetition. He simply loved to practice. Hogan said, “I couldn’t wait to get up in the morning so I could hit balls. I’d be at the practice tee at the crack of dawn, hit balls for a few hours, then take a break and get right back to it.” [1]

For Hogan, every practice session had a purpose. He reportedly spent years breaking down each phase of the golf swing and testing new methods for each segment. The result was near perfection. He developed one of the most finely-tuned golf swings in the history of the game.

His precision made him more like a surgeon than a golfer. During the 1953 Masters, for example, Hogan hit the flagstick on back-to-back holes. A few days later, he broke the tournament scoring record. [2]

Hogan methodically broke the game of golf down into chunks and figured out how he could master each section. For example, he was one of the first golfers to assign specific yardages to each golf club. Then, he studied each course carefully and used trees and sand bunkers as reference points to inform him about the distance of each shot. [3]

Hogan finished his career with nine major championships—ranking fourth all-time. During his prime, other golfers simply attributed his remarkable success to “Hogan’s secret.” Today, experts have a new term for his rigorous style of improvement: deliberate practice.

What is Deliberate Practice?

Deliberate practice refers to a special type of practice that is purposeful and systematic. While regular practice might include mindless repetitions, deliberate practice requires focused attention and is conducted with the specific goal of improving performance. When Ben Hogan carefully reconstructed each step of his golf swing, he was engaging in deliberate practice. He wasn’t just taking cuts. He was finely tuning his technique.

The greatest challenge of deliberate practice is to remain focused. In the beginning, showing up and putting in your reps is the most important thing. But after a while we begin to carelessly overlook small errors and miss daily opportunities for improvement.

This is because the natural tendency of the human brain is to transform repeated behaviors into automatic habits. For example, when you first learned to tie your shoes you had to think carefully about each step of the process. Today, after many repetitions, your brain can perform this sequence automatically. The more we repeat a task the more mindless it becomes.

Mindless activity is the enemy of deliberate practice. The danger of practicing the same thing again and again is that progress becomes assumed. Too often, we assume we are getting better simply because we are gaining experience. In reality, we are merely reinforcing our current habits—not improving them.

Claiming that improvement requires attention and effort sounds logical enough. But what does deliberate practice actually look like in the real world? Let’s talk about that now.

Examples of Deliberate Practice

One of my favorite examples of deliberate practice is discussed in Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin. In the book, Colvin describes how Benjamin Franklin used deliberate practice to improve his writing skills.

When he was a teenager, Benjamin Franklin was criticized by his father for his poor writing abilities. Unlike most teenagers, young Ben took his father’s advice seriously and vowed to improve his writing skills.

He began by finding a publication written by some of the best authors of his day. Then, Franklin went through each article line by line and wrote down the meaning of every sentence. Next, he rewrote each article in his own words and then compared his version to the original. Each time, “I discovered some of my faults, and corrected them.” Eventually, Franklin realized his vocabulary held him back from better writing, and so he focused intensely on that area.

Deliberate practice always follows the same pattern: break the overall process down into parts, identify your weaknesses, test new strategies for each section, and then integrate your learning into the overall process.

Here are some more examples.

Cooking: Jiro Ono, the subject of the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi, is a chef and owner of an award-winning sushi restaurant in Tokyo. Jiro has dedicated his life to perfecting the art of making sushi and he expects the same of his apprentices. Each apprentice must master one tiny part of the sushi-making process at a time—how to wring a towel, how to use a knife, how to cut the fish, and so on. One apprentice trained under Jiro for ten years before being allowed to cook the eggs. Each step of the process is taught with the utmost care.

Martial arts: Josh Waitzkin, author of The Art of Learning, is a martial artist who holds several US national medals and a 2004 world championship. In the finals of one competition, he noticed a weakness: When an opponent illegally head-butted him in the nose, Waitzkin flew into a rage. His emotion caused him to lose control and forget his strategy. Afterward, he specifically sought out training partners who would fight dirty so he could practice remaining calm and principled in the face of chaos. “They were giving me a valuable opportunity to expand my threshold for turbulence,” Waitzkin wrote. “Dirty players were my best teachers.”

Chess: Magnus Carlsen is a chess grandmaster and one of the highest-rated players in history. One distinguishing feature of great chess players is their ability to recognize “chunks,” which are specific arrangements of pieces on the board. Some experts estimate that grandmasters can identify around 300,000 different chunks. Interestingly, Carlsen learned the game by playing computer chess, which allowed him to play multiple games at once. Not only did this strategy allow him to learn chunks much faster than someone playing in-person games, but also gave him a chance to make more mistakes and correct his weaknesses at an accelerated pace.

Music: Many great musicians recommend repeating the most challenging sections of a song until you master them. Virtuoso violinist Nathan Milstein says, “Practice as much as you feel you can accomplish with concentration. Once when I became concerned because others around me practiced all day long, I asked [my professor] how many hours I should practice, and he said, ‘It really doesn’t matter how long. If you practice with your fingers, no amount is enough. If you practice with your head, two hours is plenty.’” [4]

Basketball: Consider the following example from Aubrey Daniels, “Player A shoots 200 practice shots, Player B shoots 50. The Player B retrieves his own shots, dribbles leisurely and takes several breaks to talk to friends. Player A has a colleague who retrieves the ball after each attempt. The colleague keeps a record of shots made. If the shot is missed the colleague records whether the miss was short, long, left or right and the shooter reviews the results after every 10 minutes of practice. To characterize their hour of practice as equal would hardly be accurate. Assuming this is typical of their practice routine and they are equally skilled at the start, which would you predict would be the better shooter after only 100 hours of practice?”

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The Unsung Hero of Deliberate Practice

Perhaps the greatest difference between deliberate practice and simple repetition is this: feedback. Anyone who has mastered the art of deliberate practice—whether they are an athlete like Ben Hogan or a writer like Ben Franklin—has developed methods for receiving continual feedback on their performance.

There are many ways to receive feedback. Let’s discuss two.

The first effective feedback system is measurement. The things we measure are the things we improve. This holds true for the number of pages we read, the number of pushups we do, the number of sales calls we make, and any other task that is important to us. It is only through measurement that we have any proof of whether we are getting better or worse.

The second effective feedback system is coaching. One consistent finding across disciplines is that coaches are often essential for sustaining deliberate practice. In many cases, it is nearly impossible to both perform a task and measure your progress at the same time. Good coaches can track your progress, find small ways to improve, and hold you accountable to delivering your best effort each day.

For additional ideas on how to implement deliberate practice, I recommend this interview with psychology professor Anders Ericsson, who is widely considered to be the world’s top expert on deliberate practice.

The Promise of Deliberate Practice

Humans have a remarkable capacity to improve their performance in nearly any area of life if they train in the correct way. This is easier said than done.

Deliberate practice is not a comfortable activity. It requires sustained effort and concentration. The people who master the art of deliberate practice are committed to being lifelong learners—always exploring and experimenting and refining.

Deliberate practice is not a magic pill, but if you can manage to maintain your focus and commitment, then the promise of deliberate practice is quite alluring: to get the most out of what you’ve got.

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FOOTNOTES

Interview with George Peper. GOLF Magazine. September 1987.

Hogan’s precision with the golf club allowed him to play the game in a different way than most. Once, another golf pro came to him for advice and said, “I’m having trouble with my long putts.” Hogan simply replied, “Why don’t you try hitting your irons closer to the pin?”

Ben Hogan was relentless in his quest for improvement. According to one New York Times article, Hogan once received a shipment of golf balls before a tournament and examined each one carefully with a magnifying glass. “Some of these balls have a little too much paint in the dimples,” he said.

The Making of an Expert by K. Anders Ericsson, Michael J. Prietula, and Edward T. Cokely. Harvard Business Review. July-August 2007 Issue.

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this email, please forward it to a friend and tell them they can join my free newsletter at jamesclear.com/newsletter

Hey guys! It's me again.

Although, I have just started studying not too long ago... I can sense that time will be an issue for me. I find myself rereading the first two sentences multiple times. I think this might be the case because I'm often that last student writing the test. I have ALWAYS taken my time with writing tests and knowing that I only have 35 minutes per section gives me anxiety.

Not sure how I will be able to get through this.

Help!

The professor that I am receiving the LOR from just asked if the LOR should be school specific or if he can write a general LOR. I am applying to 7 programs, and I haven't seen a specific prompt to make them specific to the school. Can bot my recommenders send an LOR that is generic in nature?