Hey guys. During timed prep tests, I take a long time to answer Parallel Reasoning and Parallel Flaw questions and I only get them right 20% - 40% of the time. Even with this issue, I score pretty consistently in the low 160's. I am considering skipping these questions altogether by guessing after a 30 second preliminary P.O.E. for questions of these sorts. Actually trying hasn't worked much better for me from a percentage standpoint and I think it would probably save me 3-4 minutes over the course of each LR section. Any recommendations? Does anyone else skip problems under timed conditions?

Hey guys. During timed prep tests, I take a long time to answer PR and PF questions and I only get them right 20% - 40% of the time. Even with this issue, I score pretty consistently in the low 160's. I am considering skipping these questions altogether by guessing after a 30 second preliminary P.O.E. for questions of these sorts. Actually trying hasn't worked much better for me from a percentage standpoint and I think it would probably save me 3-4 minutes over the course of each LR section. Any recommendations?

Hi Everyone

In the beginning of doing prep test, my highest actual score is 152 with highest blind review score 162 after 7 prep tests. I figured something went wrong and I stopped doing prep-test and focused on drilling cambridge RC, LR section. I just restarted prep test this week. I got 155 in prep test 47 with BR score 167, and I got another 155 with BR score 173 in prep test 64. Does the difference between BR score and actual score signify how much I can improve?

Another thing is when I do LR sections, I always have second thoughts. Something like "oh man, why do I get stuck even before question 10, this should be easy" and I vacillate between 2 or 3 answer choices a lot, which wasted me lots of time. When I BR these questions, I usually found I chose right answer or I got it after several thoughts. It happened to me in the RC as well since I want to get all of questions right in the first passage which is supposed to be easier than other passages. I normally get above 20+ questions right in LG. Did what I said ever occur to you guys? How did you guys overcome this barrier? Thank you so much 7sagers!

Hi All,

What's the general consensus on PTing up until test date? 2-5 PTs a week? 1 PT per week?

Hi!!! I have written my history before, but I'll do a general recap. Studied (mostly with Cambridge) before the December 2014 LSAT. Finally purchased 7Sage with less then three months of studying left. Studied 5-6 hours a day and worked full time. I didn't use that many PTs. I still have (I believe) 50-70s left. Which is good!

I've been through the curriculum 2x now (ultimate package). I wrote my first prep test (for this study cycle) last weekend. I wrote #36. I plan to write #50 tomorrow and prep test 1x a week (Saturdays) right until test day (either October or December).

My question is..... what do you guys do for studying between the prep tests?

What I did last week was....

Saturday - Prep Test #36

Sunday - BR the entire exam. Go through each section. For LR, I identified which questions I got wrong and what question type they were. For LG, I noted which game type gave me the most trouble. For RC, I went back and review where in the passage I could have found the right answer & which types of passages were hardest for me.

During the week....

In the AM I would write 2 times RC passages from both my weak areas (Natural Sciences and Humanities). I would then print off a LG section from the LG Bundle and do that under timed conditions. I made sure to BR the RC passage. I then reviewed both and noted which were harder games/passages so I could go back and redo them.

At lunch I would go through the Cambridge packages and do questions on my weakest LR areas from the prep test (Flaw, MSS, and Parallel Flaw). Before I started prep tests, I reviewed the Cambridge packages for each question type and did #s 1-60. So Now I'm doing #60+. I blind reviewed these, wrote out the corrected reasoning for the questions I got wrong, and went over the answers the next day to reinforce the concepts.

I also read through my notes for about 10 minutes in the morning before work. Just basic notes from 7Sage about the question types, how to solve them, how to negate conditional statements, ect.

I guess I'm wondering if it's "enough". I know I still have a lot of time, and I have now been studying for about a year....... does anyone see anything I could be doing more? I also have taken up reading in my spare time so my mind is more actively engaged. Nothing crazy, just a few leisure books.

Thanks!

So, it's June 8th and I'm ready to take my exam. The school location changed at the last minute and I seem to be in an industrial building. As confused as I am as to why the location was changed, I'm still just trying to stay focused and remind myself of the different strategies I intend to use to attack the LSAT. I walk into the room and it's different than any other classroom I've experienced. There are no windows, the walls seem to be made out of dark metal sheets, and the lighting is very dull. Our seats are arranged in a square like fashion. If I look in front of me I can see someone directly facing me and there are people immediately to my right and my left. I'm worried because this just feels unnatural and depressing. As I look up I see the proctor walking in, and it's the TA from "Writing I" during my freshman year of college. This confuses me. He was also heavy smoker, and I am reminded of this as he proceeds to fill the room with a dull smog of cigarette smoke. Suddenly J.Y.'s voice pops into my head, he says "you can do this, remember all of your training, and the countless hours you watched videos of Jon and I explaining simple answers you got wrong." The proctor administers the test and shortly after I begin.

I open to the first section and it's LR. "This is awesome", I think to myself. "LR and LG are the sections where I've produced the best results and intellectual advancement, just like J.Y. said I would." However, by the time I get to #14 time has been called and I've missed answering half the questions. I'm going crazy. I think to myself "Is this the experimental? Should I cancel my score? Should I continue?" The next section is LG, attempting to shrug off the crappy feeling the previous section bestowed upon me, I move forward. Time is called again, and once again I only finished halfway though. This makes no sense to me. My 180 watch has 15 minutes left on it. Somehow everyone else in the room comfortably finishes except for me? "Is this a joke?" I think to myself. At this point, I go through all of the mathematical possibilities for me to at least hit a 155 (assuming one of the sections was experimental.) I eventually move on to the third section and it's RC. This is my worst section, yet I finished it on time with 5 minutes left to spare. It's weird, he didn't call time early and I finished RC early?? "I must be dreaming" I thought to myself. It's time for our break, but, it's 45 minutes long. "This must be why he cut the first two sections so short, he wanted to add 30 minutes to the break so he could smoke half a pack."

During my break I go home and contemplate suicide. The stress is eating at me horribly, thoughts of 1L at a crappy school are haunting me, and I feel like all I've studied/worked for was for nothing. I started to cry and feel ashamed to look into my family's eyes, my girlfriend's eyes, and all I could think of was being an outlier of the 7Sage curriculum. 7Sage has produced so many high scoring awesome individuals, but I couldn't live up to that standard. I get ready to go back to my testing location and try to at least finish the exam with some dignity.

As soon as I get there the test had already started. I WAS 15 MINUTES LATE! well, I really wasn't, but the proctor decided to cut the break by 15 minutes. I rush to my exam and it's another RC section. I only answered 10 question before time was called, and it was horrible. I felt tense, I felt everyone's glaring eyes staring into my soul through the smog, and I started to laugh hysterically. I looked at my test booklet, and it was infinite. I was stuck in a room with an LSAT test that never ended. As I was laughing J.Y. appears and clears the smog away. I then looked at my test booklet and it was brand new with 5 sections. As I look up I noticed I was in a new testing room. J.Y. is the proctor and everyone's usernames I could remember from 7Sage hovered over blank faces. I started my exam and as soon as I turned to the first page I woke up.

I took a well known in person course for my June LSAT prep and it appears that from my original practice testing scores, I have had a serious regression on all of the categories. Is this common? It just seems like with all that I knew (didn't know) has been trashed and I'm more confused now than when I started. I'm feeling bummed out.

I've been cursed by your wizardry, @"J.Y. Ping".

Walking around with my attorney friend yesterday discussing a trial (I'm also her legal assistant), the curse began to take effect:

Words like "unless," "until," "the only," "without": they triggered a response in my mind that went like this: "Negate, make sufficient ... Unless he provides X, we have grounds for Y." This was the case for all logical indicators uttered in conversation. This has continued to be the case today. This is both uncanny (lit. "unheimlich") and amazing.

Anyone else have experience with this ... I'm alarmed to see what was previously such a foreign concept to me suddenly appear as being ingrained as automatic behavior. This is both thrilling and disturbing (but in a way I really like).

Will some of you please share what your diagnostic test score was and what you are hitting now after taking the 7sage course? Thanks!

So I have just begun studying with this program the last couple weeks. Originally, my goal was to take the LSAT this upcoming October, but after the first few lessons, I am worried that I will not have enough time for it. I thought about pushing the date I take it back, but I have also read that the sooner you apply to law schools, the better chance you have getting in and receiving financial aid. So I am torn between giving myself more time for prep and taking it sooner so I can get my application in sooner.

Any advice?

I called CSU to know the testcenter's conditions, but no one there knows where LSAT takes place.

Anyone take LSAT at CSU Hayward? If so, which building or room you took at and who proctors the test?

Hi all, there are a lot of lessons on 7sage and I was hoping if you guys could share which ones you found the most helpful.

Hi All,

I'm reaching out to see if you all have any tips on how to manage your study time when you're working full-time and in a committed relationship. I'm shacked up with my partner, who also works full-time, and even though he's quite supportive of me taking the LSAT [again], it sure seems hard to just come home every day after my 9-to-5 (often 8-to-7) and completely ignore that I'm in a long-term relationship. Then there are the weekends...

Considering that the LSAT is not a cakewalk, I've realized lately that I'm letting my studying fall by the wayside due to the guilt of ignoring my beau. My situation was very different when I studied for the GRE & applied to grad school, so this is new territory for me.

Thoughts? Am I just making major excuses to avoid studying (due to the fear of sucking on LSAT #2) or are there others out there who have grappled with a similar situation?

(No, I'm not ditching my guy for the LSAT, thank you!)

Hey guys! I made a study guide on Quizlet with LR question types (like Mike suggested) that I wanted to share/ get feedback on (particularly with respect to #18, types of arguments). It's purposefully not as dense as it could be because it's what I intend to use to prime myself before taking a PT and the real LSAT.

1. Agree

Step 1: Read the stimulus

Step 2: Underline conclusion

Step 3: Ask yourself the following questions

-- (1) Do they arrive at the same conclusion? POA (point of agreement): conclusion

-- (2) Do they use the same premise to arrive at different conclusions? POA: premise

-- (3) Do they use different premises to arrive at different conclusions? POA: subject matter

2. Disagree

Step 1: Read the stimulus

Step 2: Underline conclusion

Step 3: Ask yourself the following questions

-- (1) Do they use the same premise to arrive at different conclusions? POD (point of disagreement): conclusion

-- (3) Do they use different premises to arrive at different conclusions? POD: premise

Note: It is really important to understand what they are talking about. Think back to the ESP disagree example -- you would have gotten this question right if you thought about the fact that what they're talking about is the extent of public opinion on the existence of ESP.

3. Explain

4. Flaw

Step 1: Underline conclusion

Step 2: Find premise

Step 3a: Use typically fallacious terminology to properly identify the flaw (e.g., correlation =/= causation)

Step 3b: If you cannot draw upon existing knowledge of term bank, write down what exactly the argument doesn't take into account

Step 4: POE (process of elimination)

- Wrong flaw (not in the argument)

- Mixing of flaw (gets the right elements of the flaw but in the wrong order)

- FIC (factually incorrect)

- OS (out of scope) (specifically when they talk about information that isn't present in the argument -- this can feel odd when you're in the test because you won't know how to classify this answer choice since it almost seems like no parts relate to the main argument)

Note: It's really important when you're eliminating answer choices to really understand what the answer choice is doing. There will be some instances where you get two answer choices that relate to S/N confusion but will reverse the wrong one (so it will say confuses the sufficient for the necessary). You need to be extremely careful and if necessary, come back to these to give you the time you need.

5. Logically Completes the Argument

Step 1: Read the stimulus

Step 2: Underline conclusion (if you can)

Step 3: Identify what part is missing (typically the conclusion but could be a supporting premise)

Step 4: POE (process of elimination)

- Eliminate AC's that aren't the correct AP (argument part)

- Eliminate AC's that aren't MBT

6. MBT

Step 1: Underline conclusion

Step 2: Link up premises

Step 3: Chain them up if you can

** pay very close attention to a solitary conditional statement

Step 4: Go to answer choices and POE

- Mixes up terms (very common)

- FIC (factually incorrect)

- MS (modal shift)

- DS (degree shift)

- OS (out of scope)

8. MSS

Step 1: Read the stimulus

Step 2: Link up concepts (if you can)

Step 3: Go to answer choices and POE

- Mixes up terms (very common)

- FIC

- MS

- DS

- OS

Note: Be extremely wary of very strong answer choices but do not eliminate because they are strong.

9. Necessary Assumption

Step 1: Underline conclusion

Step 2: Identify premises

Step 3: Diagram into P -- C format

Step 4a: What's missing? Term shift? Do you need to eliminate alt. causes?

Step 4b: If nothing's missing, then the necessary assumption will need to actually link P -- C (ex: P actually has an effect on C)

Step 5: Find the correct answer choice and use POE (the wrong answer choices will typically focus on the wrong part of the argument so knowing what terms or links you need to focus on is crucial to not getting messed up)

Step 6: Confirm the correct answer choice using the negation test

10. Parallel

When reading the stimulus, look out for and write down:

1) Underline conclusion

2) Argument structure in stock variables (A --> B, B --> C // C)

3) Pay attention to the degree

4) Pay attention to the modality

When going through the answer choices, the fastest way to eliminate them is to eliminate based off of degree, modality, and then mapping out the argument structure. Even if you don't really understand the argument, look out for these three things: argument structure, degree, and modality.

11. Parallel Flaw

When reading the stimulus, write down the flaw you are looking for (luckily, these can be easily categorized or identified).

When going through the answer choices, find the answer choice that matches. If stuck between 2, compare the argument structure, degree, and modality.

12. Principle

Step 1: Underline the conclusion

Step 2: Identify the main premise

Step 3: Put into argument core (P -- C)

Step 4: POE

Note: Principle questions can be like Sufficient Assumption questions where the AC tightly fills the gap between P and C OR they can be like Strengthen questions where the AC helps fill the gap between the 2 but doesn't necessary fill it.

13. Reading Comprehension

-- As you're reading, answer the following questions:

1) What is the MP?

2) What is the AA?

3) What is the structure?

4) What are the main examples?

-- When you're answering questions, pre-phrase the correct AC before looking at the correct answers. Find the AC that matches the correct answer. It is even more important in RC to read every single answer choice carefully because 1 word can make or break an AC.

-- Typically, answer choices will be wrong because:

- MS

- DS

- OS

- FIC

-- If you don't know how to answer a question or are really struggling with a passage, eliminate as best you can (do not OVER eliminate) and then move on. Do not get sucked into spending 3+ minutes on answering a question right.

14. Resolve

(1) Are the 2 groups treated the same?

-- Correct AC: needs to show how the 2 groups are different

(2) Are the 2 groups treated differently?

-- Correct AC: needs to show how the 2 groups are similar

15. Role / Argument Part

Step 1: Read the stimulus

Step 2: Identify the argument part

Background -- sets up context for the stimulus

Premise -- supports something (note, even if the premise supports the IC, it is still the premise)

Intermediate Conclusion -- both is supported by something and supports something

Conclusion -- is supported by the argument and supports nothing else in the argument

16. Strengthen

Step 1: Identify conclusion

Step 2: Diagram argument core

Step 3a: If causal, strengthen the argument by showing SC --> SE (same cause, same effect), NC --> NE (no cause, no effect), lack of reverse causation, and lack of alt. causes)

Step 3b: If not casual, strengthen the argument by linking terms

Step 3c: If the argument draws on evidence from 2 groups, then show that the 2 groups are similar (if the argument treats them as such) or as different (again, if the argument treats them as such)

Step 4: POE

- FIC

- OS

- MS

- DS

- Weakens

- P+ (premise booster) (this can be tricky)

Note: Sometimes, all it takes is one word to destroy what might seem like a correct answer choice. Pay very close attention to the answer choices.

I know its a ways off but started to study for the LSAT. I purchased the LSAT Trainer. Should I read the book first then do 7 Sage or vice verse. I am a teacher so have all summer too study.

I'm normally making in the low 160s when I prep-test, which isn't too bad - it is good enough to get in to the school I want to go to, but I generally miss half of my questions solely in reading comprehension. I normally miss 10-12 in RC, and then 3-4 in each of the other sections. I'm just not retaining any of what I have read. I can do it no big deal when I BR because I don't have the pressure of time...but when I do have the timer I seem to be always picking the most common wrong answers. Does any body have any tips for what I could do to improve retention/understanding of what to pay specific attention to while reading?? I take the LSAT in June! Thanks!!

Today, we have our first discussion about attitude. This is a rather sensitive topic, because nobody likes to be told that their attitude sucks, but the fact is that sometimes peoples’ attitudes suck and sometimes they don’t even realize it. I also tend to be very blunt when I talk about this stuff (could you tell from the prior sentence?). Nevertheless, I think that it’s an important topic worth discussing.

This first topic is a UNIVERSAL problem that happens up and down the scoring scale, so everyone stands to gain something here. My goal here is to get everyone to think about the mental barriers that may be impeding their progress, so try to remember that if something strikes a nerve. That being said, if I have to be the bad guy and ruffle some feathers to help people, then that is a price I’ll gladly pay.

Ready? Let’s go.

===========================

The #1 most important decision you make regarding your LSAT prep is not about what materials you use, or how much time you spend each day studying, or what your overall timeline will be. Nothing like that. Rather, the most important decision you can make is the decision to set aside your ego and embrace the likelihood that you are actually very bad at logical reasoning and reading comprehension.

That last line feels sort of like I’m insulting everyone who reads this, so perhaps I’d better explain where I’m coming from.

Let’s start by considering exactly why it’s so demoralizing when you don’t do well on your diagnostic. It can’t just be because you don’t have the skills – after all, you probably wouldn’t feel bad if someone pointed out that you didn’t know how to juggle chainsaws. It can’t just be the academic component either – you probably also wouldn’t feel too bad if you couldn’t solve a differential equation or write an academic analysis of Shakespeare’s work.

And yet, just about every single person thinks that they should be scoring better than they are.

Why?

My theory is that it’s because the LSAT is ‘just’ logic and English, and everyone thinks they’re experts at those things.

This is not a universal thing. You can tell the average person that they suck at calculus or chemistry and they’ll probably laugh and maybe even agree with you. But try telling someone they suck at reading comprehension or logical reasoning, and the reaction is wildly different and much more defensive. Math and science can be, and often are, rationalized away as over-technical mumbo-jumbo that is irrelevant to most peoples’ everyday lives, so it’s easy for people to separate their inability to do math/science from their ‘actual’ intelligence level. But reading comprehension and logic? Challenging those things feels to the other person like you’re directly challenging their intelligence, because pretty much everything we do on a day-to-day basis relies on one or both of those skills.

Fact is, everyone thinks their viewpoint makes sense and is arrived at rationally, because nobody considers themselves to be irrational or their reasoning poorly-considered. When’s the last time you heard someone say “My logical reasoning skills are terrible and it’s a big problem for anyone who has to work with me”? Now when’s the last time you heard someone excoriating someone ELSE for making no sense? In most cases, calling someone out for being illogical or being a poor reader is just one step away from straight up calling them stupid, so it’s really not hard to see why most people take so much personal offense to being challenged in this arena.

And yet, the proof is in the pudding. The LSAT is nothing but a mix of logic and reading comprehension. Not doing well on the LSAT demonstrates that one or both of those skill sets isn’t up to par, at least in the specific (and highly relevant!) context of understanding and responding to written argumentation. It’s understandable why people would be defensive about their skills, but that doesn’t make it justified.

Let’s be clear here. The LSAT is not the sum and substance of your worth as a candidate, or as a human being generally. The LSAT cannot tell me that you spend your weekends volunteering at the local homeless shelter, or that you have excellent leadership skills, or that you’re an incredible musician in your free time. But here’s the thing – it’s not designed to do any of those things. Despite its limitations, the test really does do a good job of testing a specific set of logical reasoning skills; just ask anyone who’s made a big score improvement how obvious the mistakes they were making before are to them in retrospect. The fact that there are other considerations relevant to whether a candidate will make for a good law student or lawyer doesn’t change that. Overemphasized as the LSAT may be in the admissions process, it is still a hugely relevant piece of information.

That being the case, it is imperative that our reflexive defense mechanisms don’t limit our learning potential. The most important thing to get out of your head is the notion that you ‘deserve’ a better score, because even if it were true (which it probably isn’t), it doesn’t help anything. Your score is largely the result of your skills, and if you’re dissatisfied with your score then there are clearly some things you need to work on. The test isn’t changing, and if your skills don’t improve then your score isn’t going to change either. This would be true even if the LSAT was based on truly arbitrary principles, but it’s especially true when the LSAT is based on actual logical precepts. You can either get defensive about not knowing how to do it, or you can do something about it. Only one of those things is going to make a difference in your chances of going to law school.

Your ego will take a huge hit in the short term as you make mistake after mistake, but that’s honestly how it should be. Every mistake you make is 100% on you, because sugarcoating your competence level only hurts yourself. You need to be your own biggest critic, and that means not being too prideful to admit when you’re bad at something. We’ll deal with the motivation issues this brings up another time.

Bottom line: the faster you let go of your pride, the faster you can get to the business of actually improving yourself, and the higher your score will rise as a result.

Is it normal that one hits a point in their studying where it all just "clicks" and your score just rapidly increases? Or is it more likely to slowly progress?

Hi everyone --

I know that many of you are getting ready to take the exam, and so with J.Y.’s blessing I thought it might be helpful for me to post a few quick last minute tips here on the 7Sage site (I’ve also posted this on reddit and my tls thread). These tips are not specific to the trainer (though those of you familiar with the trainer will be familiar with these suggestions). I know that at this point, most of you are focused on taking and reviewing PT’s -- what I’m about to mention are all simple suggestions/exercises that you should be able to integrate into that PT work fairly easily. Not all suggestions are meant for all students, so please, of course, pick and choose whichever you think might be useful for your situation -- if any of this accidentally contradicts 7Sage advice, please assume that they are right and I am wrong :) --

For LR

During this final period it can be very helpful to firm up and habitualize your question-specific strategies and thought processes. To that end...

Without looking back over your work, create a notecard for each type of Logical Reasoning question. On one side of this notecard, write out the most important things to know/keep in mind for that q type, and on the other side, write out the basic strategies you generally try to employ. Once you’ve done the best you can from memory, return to your notes and lessons and such and make sure to fill in the q types, key priorities and such that you missed initially. Review these cards before PT’s, then, in your PT review afterwards, use these cards to assess your methods, figure out where you need to modify strategies or put in a reminder for yourself, and so on. These actions can help you notice, and address, those areas of prep where perhaps your learning has yet to fully convert into skills and habits.

LG

The more automatic you feel about your notations/diagramming strategies, the less nervous you will feel about what might appear on the games section, the better you will be able to set up your diagrams, and the faster and more accurate you’ll be at doing the work necessary to solve questions.

So, to that end, without look back over your work/learning products, try to create a list of all the different types of rules that can appear in Logic Games, and try to organize all of these rules in some way (for example, trainer students know I organize rules in terms of ordering, grouping, and so on). Note how you plan to diagram each of these rules. Then go through games you’ve played in the past, just looking at the scenarios and rules, and fill in your notes with all the various other types of game rules you missed initially. Create notecards of any rules for which you don’t feel automatic about your notations, and study those carefully. Review all your diagramming strategies before taking PT’s, then, in your review, review carefully whether you were able to use diagramming methods effectively for every rule. Take note of, and carefully review, those situations when you were not.

RC

It’s very important to understand what pressure does to your brain (and, consequently, to your reading process): it literally changes the way that you think and the way you read. If, in all your practice, you are far more relaxed (and perhaps forgiving of yourself) than you will be during the real exam, it is possible that you are going to find it very difficult to apply all that you’ve gained during your practice on the real thing -- it’s very possible you will end up reading the passage very differently from how you intended to, and end up rushing too much and overlooking important concepts, or being too careful and wasting too much time, and so on.

So at this point you want to do whatever is necessary to train your brain to read the passage exactly as you want it to. Make your decisions about which reading strategies you want to apply, make sure you are practicing applying them under enough pressure, and get enough practice in so that you can feel a “set rhythm” for how you read LSAT RC passages. It gives you a great advantage to go into the test with a consistent, habitual, and effective method specifically tailed for reading LSAT RC passages, one which is practiced enough so that you apply it without having to think about it.

Timing Strategies/Mindset

Finally, you want to use for final prep to set your timing strategies, determine what you are going to do should tough timing decisions arise, and practice applying those timing strategies/making those timing decisions.

Nearly everyone who takes the exam wastes a lot of unnecessary time and energy thinking about section timing, rather than the question in front of them. It puts you in a much better position if you’ve anticipated potential issues, have the right mindset about them, have practiced dealing with them, and so on.

So, getting your timing strategies set should be one of the main goals of your final PT work. You want to think about your ideal timing, and how you’d like to balance your time through a section and so on, but you also want to make sure to practice and think about timing challenges -- how long to give yourself when stuck on a certain type of question, or how to balance your time between two RC passages when it seems like you don’t have enough to finish both, and so on. One way to experience/practice these challenges, especially if you are in a very high score range, is to artificially limit the time you have per section (say, to 30 mins, etc.) for a couple of your PT’s and test out your survival strategies.

Final Random Timing Tip

In my experience, one of the most common ways in test takers end up wasting time is by over-investing it in the hardest problems -- you want to avoid this as much as possible.

To illustrate, imagine that you are in the 160-165 range and your goal is to get that 165. Depending on the scale for that test, you know that you can miss about 20 q’s or so and still get the score you want. And if you were to take all the q’s from any one particular LSAT practice exam and order them in terms of difficulty, you’d perhaps find that about 70 of them are ones that you feel fairly confident you can get right without too much difficulty, 20 of them are ones that are challenging for you, and, depending on the day, your mindset, etc., you might get right or wrong, and finally perhaps 10 are so hard that you think it’d be very unlikely you can get the right answer in a reasonable amount of time no matter what.

The best way for you to use your time is to --

1) get through the easier 70 as fast as you comfortably can without making errors.

2) recognize when a problem is of extreme difficulty and don’t allow yourself to spend too, too long on those hardest 10.

3) give yourself as much time as possible for those 20 in the make/break down that will determine where you will score within your range.

Keep that in mind, and make sure you don’t allow yourself to over-invest too much time or energy in those hardest problems -- the harder ones aren’t worth any more points.

Again, not every suggestion is for every student, but if you read this whole thing I hope you found at least some of it useful -- I wish you all the best on test day -- Mike

So I just completed the course and took my first time LSAT, PT36. It had four multiple choice sections and then the written. So, basically, no experimental section. Is that just luck of the draw or do certain years not have the experimental sections? Also, is the same test given during all four times of the year or is there the chance that the Feb 2015 had an experimental section and the October or December will not? Thanks ;)

Hey guys, i'm wondering if any of you have any suggestions or tips for keeping yourself engaged and continue with a stable level of momentum throughout the PT. I've noticed recently that i tend to get these mini-burn outs around the end of the section where i start to lag in situations where i should be going a quicker.

Have any of you taken any foreign LSATs for practice? Three Indian LSATS (administered by LSAC) are available for free on Cambridge's website (http://www.cambridgelsat.com/resources/free-downloads/logic-games-practice/). Since LSAC administers the exam, is it safe to assume that the content is comparable to the test administered here in the U.S.?

@"Jonathan Wang"

@amanda_kw

@nicole.hopkins

@emli1000

@ddakjiking

@"Nilesh S"

@"Dillon A. Wright"

@blah170blah

I wanted to share mine. I frequently look at the law school numbers website to see who's been accepted, how much money has been awarded and etc. I see scores better than my official score, but much lower than my PT scores (either having worse gpas if not exactly the same) getting accepted and even with some scholarship pocket money. I was given a second chance to re-apply to my first choice if I can improve on my June exam. My blood boils at the fact that I can do so well but under performed when it counts, this motivates me to keep going, even when mentally fatigued (I don't mean burnt out.) To clarify I mean that if I've set up an agenda for that day I don't allow myself to fall short OR do it half-assed. GAAA I'm so angry! Fortunately this makes me a crap ton more motivated to keep going and noticing my improvement makes it all more enjoyable! If anyone else wants to share their take please feel free! I just had to let this out!

Hi 7sagers,

I have a question about test taking. At the end of the section the test proctor says "please put your pencils down."

While the proctor is saying this, can we bubble in our last answer(s)? Unfortunately as I am often considering 1 or 2 questions at the end of time on a section, this is a real concern for me. I want to be able to at least fill out a bubble for each question. And there is a second or two between when the proctor starts saying this and stops saying this which (if you are hovering on a last question) can allow you to jot down your best (or automatic) guess.

What are the experiences of those who have taken the test with this issue?

Thanks

So I'm going to be writing the October LSAT, and from what I've been reading scores are generally released 3 weeks after you write the LSAT on the LSAC website. I've also heard that they can be mailed to you in 4 weeks.

My question is how do the scores look like when you login to see them, is it a simple number out of 180, without showing what you got on each section, or something different?

Also I'm a bit worried that I won't be able to apply to schools if I receive scores in November, as that's close to the deadlines for most Canadian schools.