Hi! This is my second time going through the LSAT, and I realized one of my biggest issues on the RC is that when I read through, even if I highlight or take notes, I don't grasp the information and have to waste time by going back into the passage while answering questions. I find that I am subconsciously substituting note-taking for understanding, and even though I can summarize the main points into a quick note, that understanding does not get engrained into my head and I find myself needing to go back into the passage to answer the questions, thus wasting time. Furthermore, the act of note-taking itself wastes time, so I am not sure what the best approach is to efficiently read through the passage without having to go back into the passage to answer most/every question.

I would really appreciate any advice!

Hello everyone, I was wondering how to go about improving my sudden drop in accuracy. My drills have been constantly improving in the past couple months. I was going from -0 to -4 out of 10 on drills. (I usually do 5 to 15 question per drills) Then these past few weeks I've noticed a significant drop, and it culminated today when I did a drill and I got a whopping -9 out of 10. The past few weeks I've noticed that suddenly when I'm drilling I'm usually going -5 to -8 out of 10 (per drill). It's getting to me.

I was wondering if some people here have experienced this kind of slide, or maybe it's something else that I'm doing or not doing. I feel frustrated that I am not improving at all.

I hope this doesn't come off as a pity party to other people, but I am hoping for some tips that helped you along the way.

Hey everyone, I’m new to 7Sage but I’ve been studying for a few months now. RC has definitely been my weak spot so far. Please drop your best tips, tricks, or mindset shifts for reading comprehension. I want to hear the things that actually made it finally click for you. I’m open to anything at this point. Especially anything that helped you understand passages better without rereading everything over and over.

I just scheduled my in-person test date and time for June. I'm feeling very nervous and jittery as always, and I've booked off 4 days from work before my test so I can mentally prepare myself and also complete the argumentative writing portion. Anyone have any advice on how I should spend my time those last few days before the test? Any experience with in-person testing centres (ontario based)? Is it a good idea for me to do the argumentative writing portion that close to my test day?

All law students are readers. Some readers are writers.

Inference:

A. Some law students are writers

B. All readers are law students

C. Some writers are readers

D. Some readers are not law students

I tend to always miss 1-3 questions within the first 15 questions of a section, and always get the rest (harder ones) correct. No idea why, I really want to fix this so I can ace all!!!

I just took another PT after my benchmark. Between the times, I have only finished the foundations section of the course and have done minimal drilling. I studied my wrong answers for my benchmark exam too before taking this exam. I saw a ZERO score raise after taking this 2nd PT. Is this common or is this a sign that I have been studying wrong?

Would love to know if anyone else has had a similar experience or if this is common. Any tips or suggestions would really help.

Is anyone taking the LSAT in June in Chicago? If so, are you familiar with the proctoring location? Looks like it's in an office building. Does anyone have any experience testing there? Tried to look up more information, but did not really see much about the whole process in that specific building. Also, there were 3 different centers listed for Chicago in the same building at the same time... I just picked a random one that had my preferred date, but I don't know if one section is more preferred than the others. Let me know about your experiences!

A couple weeks ago I felt was stagnate but now I generally feel like I'm improving. I got my highest score ever on PT 154 ( a 157)and I'm so much closer to my dream score. I took a practice RC passage from PT 148 after feeling stressed out about RC and I felt more confident than ever took a RC passage and my timing was a lot better. Usually I don't finish a lot of questions and guess but I only guessed at one without looking at the answer.

I don't know what happened. I'm taking the june lsat and had been scoring pretty well, -1 to -4 lr average and a little worse on rc, getting in the high 160s for preptests. last friday i got a low 160 on a preptest. i brushed it off as a fluke so i wouldnt worry myself, but i just got another low 160 today, and my sections have been -7 average...

did his happen to anyone else? i feel like it's not a nerves issue but idek anymore

We just published this video on strengthening and weakening causal arguments: It'll be a good intro or refresher for our Logic of Causation Module!

@EricB7Sage

How are you guys able to stay focused through reading the passages, sometimes my attention dims by the end of the passage and either I reread 20 times or I just pick an answer just to pick one.

My delimma is I read half way through the passage, my eyes "look" at the remaining and by the time I get to the questions I skim through them and just kinda pick one without really knowing why, just vibes.

Its not like I'm not interested, I want to be able to answer the damn question, idk why I do this!

Does anyone else have this? If so, what has helped you?

I'm trying to decide if I should schedule my lsat online or in person. I want to take it in person bc I feel like that professional environment would help me lock in better/less complications overall. However, I can't focus if I hear anyone talk; I get distracted so easily. Do the noise cancelling headphones do anything/did you hear people talk?

I have a pattern of getting qs wrong lately that I’m labeling as ‘forehead slap’, where I skim the stim, ACs, or relevant passage portion a tad too quickly, miss a crucial word, and pick wrong — then groan when I come back in blind review.

On the one hand, the easy solution is to go slower — read the stim very carefully, make sure read all ACs, etc.

But I’m struggling to find the balance between skimming enough to keep a good pace but preventing these ‘forehead slap’ mistakes. For context, I’m usually about right on time for both LR and RC, with a little wiggle room for reviewing + spending more time on harder qs, but definitely not enough to never skim.

Does anyone have any tips for this? Being judicious on what to skim within a q, which qs to skim more or less, keeping mental discipline when reading, etc.

For context, this is usually ~1-3 Qs a preptest (I’m averaging ~2-5 Qs wrong total, so this is a pretty high proportion)

thanks!!

Hi everyone.

Over the past few months of my studying I’ve started to feel much more confident when it comes to the difficulty and pace of the logical reasoning questions. I’ve been making minimal, if any, errors on questions that are levels 1-3.

But now that I’ve been focusing more on questions that are exclusively levels 4-5 in difficulty, I’ve reached a slight roadblock. On questions I do get incorrect it's typically when I’ve been debating between two possible answers. I’ll do a blind review for these questions, and when I select my “second choice” answer, 90% of the time I end up getting that question correct.

I was wondering if anyone has experienced similar obstacles when it comes to choosing the “best” answer. I was wondering if anyone had advice on how to recognize which answer is best when you’re stuck between two options, especially when the answers are very similar. Is there a trick to narrow down the answer options or will it simply come down to practice and pattern/question type recognition?

Thank you so much! Any advice helps!

I've heard that reading nonfiction or scholarly articles can be helpful when preparing for RC since it gets you used to comprehending dense (and sometimes boring) material quickly. Does anyone have recommendations of books/articles/websites that really helped with RC?

Hi All,

Anyone else having trouble registering at a nearby Prometric center? The closest available options for me are 100+ miles away, even though there’s one right down the road. I’m guessing they’re releasing seats slowly — does anyone know if more open up closer to the test date? If not, I’ll probably switch to remote.

I've honestly been inconsistenly studying on and offer 2 years :/ I score at 154 on average. I really want to take studying more seriously, hoping to take my first LSAT in the fall but im not sure how to study.

As of now, im trying to really understand question types... and be better at answering based on those (obvious I know, but I do think this is absolutely necessary) but idk what else I should do. I know I must blind review and keep a wrong answer journal--which I do, but I sort of like to be more active in studying idk...help!!

I feel like I could cry! From beginning at 148, getting stuck in 160s hell, and now this! Studying for the LSAT over the past months has definitely felt like an exercise in patience and endurance, but I'm happy with the progress I've been making!

Hello everyone,

I know for many question stems, especially flaw Q's, the answer choices begins with "takes for granted, " "overlooks the possibility," presumes without justification," etc.

For these type of answer choices, can we apply the negation test and see if it destroys the argument?

The question type is not a strict "Necessary Assumption" question, but the answer choices are phrased as "Takes for granted"/assumptions, so can we treat them as similar to how we treat a necessary assumption answer choice -- and negate them?

Thanks!

Hello! I take the LSAT in June and have been studying for around 4-5 months. For LR, I am getting almost every 3 and below level difficulty correct. However, I tend to not do as well on the 4 and 5 star questions. How do I get better at the harder questions? What makes those questions so much more difficult?

Thank you!

Despite constant drilling and blind review, my timed PT scores stay mostly in the mid 150s for weeks. Don’t know what else to do. It’s so frustrating. If anyone has any advice, please comment!! I need your help ;(

I’ve scored 170+ on PT144 and PT147, but not by a whole lot. I’m hoping to score above a 170 on my June LSAT, but I’m getting pretty nervous that the prep tests I’m using aren’t going to reflect the difficulty of the test come test day (I hear they’ve gotten harder). Does anyone know how these tests in particular stack up to what’s been on offer in recent tests? And should I be using newer PTs at this point?

Since it is Sawyer who is negotiating for the city government, it must be true that the city takes the matter seriously. After all, if Sawyer had not been available, the city would have insisted that the negotiations be deferred.

I cannot figure out how to translate this to lawgic in a way that makes it a valid argument. It feels valid and seems valid, even if its maybe not super strong, but seems valid nonetheless.

I tried

/(Sawyer available) -> city defers negotiations

Sawyer is negotiating

???

------------------------

city takes the matter seriously

Curious how everyone would do this. Try telling me before reading all this, or even just skip reading what I did, I really am curious purely what shorthand everyone uses for conversions.

Ok I just started learning about lawgic and came back to this question. I need some help.

I'm convinced mapping to lowgic is the fastest way to do this in the long run. But currently, I'm really slow at it. I just spend 5:30 on this question!

My problem is reading and mapping to the same thing deterministically. For this question I accidentally mapped like this:

Turned "price it pays for coffee beans continues to increase" into "GC" for "Greater Cost", and "the Coffee Shoppe will have to increase its prices" into "GP" for "Greater Price". So, GC -> GP. So far so good.

Then "either the Coffee Shoppe will begin selling noncoffee products or its coffee sales will decrease" into "NC | DS" for "Non Coffee OR Decreased Sale". So now I have GP -> NC | DS.

Then I turned "decrease the Coffee Shoppe's overall profitability" into "DP" for "Decreased Profitability". So now NC -> DP

Then I turned "can avoid a decrease in overall profitability" into "/DOP" for "NOT Decreased Overall Profitability" and "coffee sales do not decrease" into "/DCS" for "NOT Decreased Coffee Sales". Notice this is where I messed up. I mapped things I had already defined into new acronyms. I had:

GC -> GP

GP -> NC | DS

NC -> DP

/DOP -> /DCS

But I should have had:

GC -> GP

GP -> NC | DS

NC -> DP

/DP -> /DS

Now its obvious that

DS -> DP, and since also NC -> DP, then now NC | DS can just be set to DP, giving:

GC -> GP

GP -> DP

Therefore GC -> DP, and back to english is "If cost of beans increase, Shoppe will have decreased profits", which is exactly what C says, so it took me 3 seconds to find that. But getting to GC -> DP was the key.

...So how do I make that faster, and how do I avoid mistakes like mapping the same thing to two different lawgic acronyms? That is what took all my time to realize I had done that, which is why nothing was coming out of the original mappings I had. Maybe there is better shorthand to use that would help me be more clear, but also short enough to be fast still?

I will try again now after writing all this:

Mapping First:

Bean price increases -> Shoppe increases prices

Shoppe increases prices -> Sells NCP | CSD

Sells NCP -> DOP

/DOP -> /CSD

------------------------

Now Transformation:

CSD -> DOP

Sells NCP | CSD -> DOP

Shoppe increases prices -> DOP

Bean price increases -> DOP

"If bean prices increase, then Coffee Shoppe will have a Decrease in Overall Profitibility", answer C.

...Ok that was a bit faster, but typing was slow, probably faster on paper. Still trying to find that balance of clarity and brevity. If a person could just instantly map this all to something like

BPI -> SIP

SIP -> NCP | CSD

NCP -> DOP

/DOP -> /CSD

-------------------------

CSD -> DOP

NCP | CSD -> DOP

-------------------------

BPI -> SIP -> DOP

BPI -> DOP

-------------------------

"if Bean Price Increases, then Decrease in Overall Profitability", answer C.

That would be soooo fast. That is my goal. Acronyms are so much faster to read and move around in lawgic, but how important is retaining the context of each in your voice in your head? Curious what everyone would do and if you actually read everything I did, thank you and I would love to hear what I can do to improve so I can do this without even thinking.