So here's the thing. According to NYU's website, their 25% LSAT is a 167. I got a 166. I have slightly above a 4.0 in my undergrad major, however, for a particularly hard major, and I also have relevant international experience (I've been to Israel, Mexico twice, and Tanzania. While I was in Tanzania, I literally sat down and talked, through a translator, to a missionary who was a native Tanzanian but worked on Zanzibar, about how he'd been persecuted, such as literally having his house burnt down for his faith, while he was sleeping. Now I'm organizing charity boxing to fund raise for him. This is just one example.) Also, I am really involved in my community, working at the homeless shelters, mentoring youth, regularly preaching at my Church, and have a lot of leadership experience (In high school, for example, I received a character award that my football team gave in honor of a player who had died.)I also have some internship experience with the DA. Lastly, I can be very sincere in explaining why I want to go to NYU. They have such an intellectually cosmopolitan and stimulating atmosphere, the #1 international law program in the country, and a number of intellectuals I really look up to who either teach there or lecture regularly (Peter K. Unger, Michael Walzer, etc.), and they also have the type of loan repayment where it's not unrealistic to work public or nonprofit sectors.

These are my weaknesses: I have a weak LSAT score, I don't know any foreign languages (and aspire to practice foreign law eventually, and specifically, criminal law in one of a couple developing nations), and I don't have any advantages going for me as far as legacy enrollment or affirmative action. Also, I need to figure out how to pay for this whole thing, and I didn't perform well enough to get any merit scholarships, at least as far as I know. Also, I have to work to pay for my school, so retaking the LSAT is a little unrealistic. That may make it sound like I'm disadvantaged, but I'm really not compared to a lot of people, and I'm not gonna sit here and go "well screw those people who get that money," cuz' honestly, a lot of people need it more than I do. I already know I probably don't qualify for any of that though.

Does anyone know how 7sage assigns the difficulty ratings for questions? Also, when you look at the answers for a question, there are percentages associated with each answer choice. How are the percentages calculated? Are they based on the 7sage students who have submitted responses to those questions?

I do not see this test on the addon list yet ? Does someone know when it would be available.

Mostly a question for those who are on the fence between law and another career field. Took the LSAT in June, got a 174, pretty pumped. However, my GPA is weak in comparison (~3.4) so im wondering if its even worth it to pursue law school given the costs and the fact that I still probably wont get into a top school even with my score. Tempted to just go into finance (what my degree is in) and abandon law school or maybe wait a couple years and then go. Anyone else is a similar boat? How did you decide?

Ok so I am currently doing my masters in counseling. Long story short I got into this field because it was "convenient". I always wanted to go to law school but always had an excuse (im too old, too expensive, too long) I enjoy my field but I think about law school all the time!

I am 27, my gpa for undergrad is 3.4, gpa for grad school is 4.0 first year 2nd semester.

Should I take a "leave of absence" from my masters and aim to study for the December LSAT? I have a lot of student loans and I would like to get a scholarship for law school. I am aiming for Seton Hall or Rutgers Newark (NJ). What LSAT score would I need with my gpa? Do they even look at my MS gpa?

Also would you even bother with law school, or just continue with my masters? Im sorry for all the questions, I am really confused and would like some opinions!

Thank you

I have a 3.3 GPA (I know) and unique softs (international WE for a MNC and I teach Legal English at an international law school) but I would really like to target T14 schools. This is my 3rd time taking the LSAT (took it twice in 2013) and frankly I am feeling so frustrated because each time I took it I scored lower than practice exams. This time I was BRing in the low 170's and PTing in the high 160's. I also just received a promotion at work so I am expecting more work and travel in the near future so I don't know if I will be able to study as hard as I did for the June exam. I guess my question is this: at what point to you make peace with your LSAT score and move forward?

I took the June LSAT abroad so I only got the test results this morning. Scored a 170, which I'm pretty happy about, but I'm thinking of retaking in October anyway. I have a 3.5 GPA from a prestigious liberal arts college, and have worked abroad for 2.5 years at a MNC until I quit in April to study full time. My dream school is Columbia so I was going to retake no matter what, but then I started reading some posts about retake decisions elsewhere and began to have doubts. (170 is already a solid score, etc.)

I did about 51 PTs total and averaged around 171 overall with lowest at 164 and highest 176. On more recent ones I averaged around 172, which is where I'd like to be after the retake. Granted, I'm glad I pulled off a 170 and it's more or less how I've been doing, but I would also love to increase the score to compensate for my GPA.

Am I being unrealistic/too optimistic about this? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

For LR questions in which there are two authors with opposite views and the question stem only refers to one, do you recommend immediately reading the portion of the argument that the stem is referring to or reading the argument in its entirety? I figure if you only refer to the argument the stem refers to, it may save time. but then again it may cause you to miss something such as what the two authors disagree/agree about.

JY says you have the same subject in both parts of the sentence that has "the only." Ex. The only kids with green eyes are the ones with red shoes." But, what about this sentence. "The only way to New York is through Florida." Way to New York is not the same as through Florida???

Does anyone know how important MBA rankings are for job prospects???

Hey, Sarge, how do I send you a private email or direct message? Or can you send one to me? This is strictly legit from an honorary tanker to a ???. I came across something you might find useful.

I was looking on the Cambridge LSAT website, and I noticed that you can buy 6-section practice tests . It includes 4 sections from one PT, plus two additional sections from another PT. Has anyone taken 6-section test before? It might be a good way to build more stamina for the real thing.

The 6 sections are all multiple choice. The writing sample doesn't count toward the 6 sections.

I Started 7sage in June and have been really pleased with the program so far. I couldn't be more pleased with my friends suggestion to use 7sage especially since he used it last year, scored well and got into the school I am attempting to get into. That being said my friend had the luxury of not working at all during his LSAT preparation and while my job is only for the purpose of paying bills until I move to wherever I will be going to Law School, I am closer towards the spectrum of full time than I am part time and especially after purchasing the course cutting back my hours is not an option. While I have kept pace with the study schedule 7sage created for me in preparation for the October LSAT so far, I am feeling constrained and as the material thickens I haven't been able to throw myself into the lessons because of my limited window to study each day. Particularly this past week I caught myself working to get lessons completed as opposed to ensuring I fully understood each lesson before moving on. My goal is to be able to apply to Law School for Fall 2016 and while I am certain that taking it in December instead of October would improve my score immensely I was wondering if it would hurt my chances of getting in?

junior in college here. What do people think is the lowest GPA you should have to even consider applying to law schools?

Answering required assumption questions like:

"I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for a right answer, I can tell you I don't have a very good memory, but what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you show me the trap (those darned sufficient assumption options), that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you and I will kill you."

I took the June LSAT and scored 150. Needless to say, I would like to do better next time around. I had a pretty demanding job this past year (as many of you here know, it is very difficult to work/study), but I followed through with the Premium 7sage course + many PT's + the Trainer. However, I am committed to retaking the test with the best possible strategy in mind. I am currently in a time of transition with work and here are my two options, which I am hoping to get your advice on:

1) I could try to stay in the city I live in currently and get a part time/full time (less demanding than my previous) job + take a BluePrint class and see if my issue all along studying was that I am not very good at self-study.

OR

2) I could go back to my hometown (the suburbs) and dedicate all of August and September to not working and only self-study for the LSAT (there are no BluePrint classes...or any good LSAT prep classes) whatsoever in my hometown. This would also mean that I would most likely extend my 7sage package and work through Cambridge Packets, Logical Games Bible, PT's, etc.

I am 22 years old and I definitely want to come back to the current city I live in for law school (which means option 1 would be good for establishing residency in this state). However, I would need a 165ish to get into law schools around here. So overall, what seems like the better study plan to help me get the best score possible for October? Thanks in advance for any feedback.

Ah, the fallout of the June 2015. Brutal fights won and lost by 7Sage soldiers, but still - so many slain egos lay on the battlefield.

Mine included. (Which may turn out to be a very beneficial learning experience - but that is not today's topic.)

I scored a 169 - the low of my range (168-173), but not the score I wanted. I am grateful that I work well under testing conditions, but I still felt miserable after the test, and even worse after receiving my score. Despite praise from friends and family from the outside world - as I scored in the 97th percentile. They can't understand that for me, a 169 instead of a 175, or even a 172 means I can't go to the law school I want to attend, and even if I scrape by admissions, I won't be able to attend without scholarship. I am a splitter with a very low GPA.

So - to retake or not to retake? The obvious answer for most would be yes, retake. But I am so burntout from studying that it is hard to pick up the Trainer or open lessons on 7Sage without immediately putting it down/ closing browser windows again.

So if I don't retake, I resign myself to a regional school that I don't really want to attend. Again, the obvious answer would be to retake. Even if I do go to a regional school - a higher LSAT score can only help with scholarships.

So the issue - how do I get over burnout? And how do I prevent it from happening again?

So I retook the June 2015 LSAT and got a 163. Now this is much better than my first actual test score which was a 153 (did not study in the right way or right amount of time), however, I was scoring between a 165-169 before I took the June test. I'm planning on applying to schools of different tiers but my top three T14 schools are Berkeley, Michigan, and Northwestern, which I plan to apply to early binding. What I'm debating is whether to take the October test for probably a max increase of 5 points. I have a 3.81 from Michigan and have been working as a paralegal for a little over a year now. What I'm wondering is if I have a shot at Northwestern and Michigan with these credentials (I'm not a URM). I know a higher score would definitely make me a stronger candidate but I also don't know if it's worth risking getting a lower score than the one I have now. I'm working full-time right now and am planning on applying for the Fall 2016 cycle so I don't know how much intense studying I can do between now and October. The thing is that I feel like it's just a few small differences that caused my lower score so I think I'd need to focus on tweaking certain areas of the test if I did decide to retake for the last time. I know I'm thinking out loud here but I'm really going back and forth on this one. Any sage advice is much appreciated!

I started the 7sage core curriculum in March, and finished it last week.

My diagnostic was 153. Today, I took my first PT (after my diagnostic test) - PT39.

I scored a disappointing 151, with 161 for BR. ( I left 13 questions blank due to the ticking clock...)

My strongest section was RC, then LG, with my weakest being .... LR...

I am planning on taking the Oct LSAT with a goal of 168+.

WHAT SHOULD I DO???!!!! Help me out sagers...

Prep test 31 section 3 - Necessary assumption - Asteroids and extinction of dinosaurs

The answers to this question are as follows:

A) any collision of an asteroid with the Earth would have occurred on a land area rather than an ocean

B) dinosaurs in the neighborhood of an asteroid impact but not within the zone of direct impact would have survived such an impact

C) any event that takes place over a long period of time has many different causes

D) dust from the impact of an asteroid on the Earth would not have had any cooling effect on the climate

E) no more than one large asteroid struck the Earth during the period when the dinosaurs were becoming extinct

Why in AC "D" do we not get to make the assumption that the cooling effect on the climate could lead to the extinction of dinosaurs, but in AC "E" (the correct answer) we are supposed to make the assumption that more asteroid impacts could lead to the requisite amount of dust, rendering the dinosaurs extinct?

Any help on this would be great. Thanks.

I was always a pretty computer-savvy kid; growing up in the heart of the Silicon Valley with parents who run their own custom computer shop will do that to you. As a result of being around computers all the time, I was a pretty reasonable typist by the time I was 10 years old. Though I never actually measured, looking back I was probably capable of typing about 50-60 words per minute with my custom hunt-and-peck technique, which included the brilliant innovation of using both the index AND the middle finger on each hand to speed up the process. Four fingers instead of two, for twice the typing speed! Talk about revolutionary. Those silly 2-finger-using folks just couldn’t compete.

When I was in fifth grade, I was introduced to the devil herself. I refer, of course, to the one and only Mavis Beacon (if that is her real name), and her heretical “touch typing” teachings. Initially, I thought I’d like her. I figured that she’d maybe teach me a few new tricks to speed up even further, and otherwise just reinforce how great a typer I was. After all, how could I possibly have any difficulty with ‘learning’ typing? I was already pretty good – if anything, I figured it would just be some refinement of technique.

Instead, she told me to do some ridiculous stuff. She told me that I should use all ten of my fingers to type, which I thought was completely unnecessary since I was getting by perfectly fine with just four. Then, she told me that I wasn’t supposed to look at the keyboard while typing, which really convinced me that she was off her rocker. What do you mean I’m not allowed to look at the keyboard while typing? How am I supposed to see what I’m typing if I can’t look at the keys? And, maybe just as importantly, what’s the point? Was this lady seriously trying to tell me that the mere act of looking at what I was doing would somehow be detrimental?

I tried it her way. I really did. But as a direct result of taking Ms. Beacon’s advice, my typing speed plummeted and my accuracy suffered tremendously because I couldn’t see what keys I was hitting. I mean, duh, what did you think would happen when you told me not to look at the keyboard? And when I went back to the four-finger method, I was suddenly fast and accurate again! Needless to say, I was quite displeased with Ms. Beacon and her so-called “instruction”, and decided that she was a fraud.

When we conceptualize progression, typically we think about building off of a base that we’ve already established. We spend 20-some odd years (at least – shout out to the older crowd!) speaking the English language, arguing about various things with friends and family, getting As on our essay exams, and so forth. From that, it seems reasonable to think that our base should be pretty strong. This is further reinforced by the notion we discussed last time out that everyone thinks they’re perfectly logical. And indeed, you can often get a surprising amount of progress by bulling forward with poor fundamentals, which further adds to the illusion. In any case, our brain (reasonably) thinks that we’re X amount of distance down the road, so anything we add on top of it should push us even further down that road, right?

Wrong. Because sometimes, you’re just on the wrong road. The fact that the you’ve spent a long time on that road doesn’t mean it’s close – in fact, it’s probably just more infuriating when you realize that it’s not taking you where you want to be going, and you need to get off that path ASAP. If you’re halfway to Mexico and you need to be going to Canada, then minor course corrections really aren’t going to help much.

So how do you fix that? Well, the first thing you need to do is backtrack to where the initial error took place. In the process, you will ‘lose’ some ‘progress’ that you’ve made, and that’s terrifying. When people see their preptest scores stagnate or even drop, they inevitably scurry back to doing things the ‘old’ way – the way that has ‘worked’ for them so many times before - because they're scared to death of losing those few points they fought so hard for. That’s an understandable reaction. But if you continue to hold onto your old, unprincipled methods of tackling the LSAT, you can only ever get so far. You will hit walls just like everyone else, but you will never be able to get past yours. Why? Because unlike what it is for others, where it’s just an overgrown speedbump, yours is actually just the end of that particular road. For example, you can get reasonably far without any conception of formal logic, but eventually you won’t be able to fudge it anymore and your score literally cannot increase until you deal with the issue. In the process of backfilling the gaps, you will likely have to rethink a lot of the ‘tips and tricks’ you’ve picked up along the way because they no longer make sense within your new theoretical framework. And so, the ‘regression’ happens as one bad habit exposes another.

Dealing with these issues requires you to internalize things that you haven’t really ever thought about before, and that’s hard. Mistakes will be made, and it won’t feel good. It feels like you’re taking a step backward because your results are decreasing as you continue to backtrack through your shaky foundations. It’s really tempting at this point to just throw up your hands and say that the new ways just aren’t working, just like 10-year-old me did in his first go with touch typing. This is also the point that a lot of people end up with a new set of LSAT books (because their previous materials *obviously* weren't very good), only to be further disappointed when their new materials essentially tell them to do the same thing as their old materials. Sorry folks, there are only so many ways to teach someone how to identify a main conclusion.

One of the most important parts of the process is unlearning all of the awful bad habits you’ve gotten away with your entire life. In the process, a lot of things that previously seemed clear will suddenly get murkier. That’s normal. Your brain is undergoing a course correction and establishing new neural pathways, and there will inevitably be some transition pains. Your brain has had 20 years to build up lazy junk pathways, so of course it’s going to be more comfortable with those than the new ones you’re trying to implement. But as you continue to internalize those better processes, your performance will leap ahead of where it was previously. You just need to give those processes time to lock in properly.

So don’t fret if your test results aren’t shooting skyward as soon as you finish the curriculum. That’s normal, and it’s happened to a lot of people who ended up scoring very well (including me). Instead, focus on making sure you’re learning the theory properly and not taking shortcuts, because if you cheat you’ll pay for it later. And, make sure that you stay mentally strong and resist the urge to lapse back into your old habits. As I sit here 20 years later, able to type 110 words per minute on my awful laptop keyboard and almost 140 on my good mechanical keyboard, I am incredibly thankful that I stuck with it and learned how to touch type. My short-term loss turned into a huge long-term gain, all because I gave it time to click.

Thanks, Mavis.

AHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Mod note: Please don't post titles in all caps!

I am new to 7Sage and just this morning downloaded the proctor app to my phone. I was working through my first timed section with the batman voice. I was so focused that the five minute warning startled me. Yikes!! It didn't help that I was alone in a quiet room. Oh the joys of interactive study aids!

Just wanted to thank the whole 7Sage team for helping me obtain my goal. Your course and a ton of prep tests were the only thing I used. I am really grateful that you guys put such a great product on the market at a price that I could actually afford! Cheers!

Hey 7Sagers,

Had someone write in with a question I thought you could help out with! Here it is:

I was just wondering if you could let me know a list of your recommended formal logic textbooks that might help me with LSAT study. Just to give you a little background, I have read LR Bible once and watched all your lectures and have done all the LSAT prep tests once. I plan to take an official LSAT exam 2015 December.

My problem is that my brain stops thinking for moments and try to re-read stimulus over again and again to process the pasdage or stimulus especially when I encounter convoluted sentences or difficult logics. Especially when I feel pressured by time limit, it gets worse.

I heard from some of my attorney friends that reading law school text books and studying and analyzing actual cases may help. I just wanted to get your opinion on this if it would really helps. I feel only studying with LSAT prep tests is not sufficient at my level.

I would so much appreciate it if you could provide some tips.

Thanks!