Hi Eliza, sorry to hear that your score is not getting close to where you need it to be. I happen to have started preparing for LSAT at the same time you did, though I am taking the October 14th test in Hong Kong. Still, I can highly relate to your anxiety and GPA situation (my GPA sucks more), and I can certainly understand why we both would like to get as high an LSAT score as possible (shooting for scholarship here as well).

First thing first: perseverance matters. I, as well, had a tulmultuous college career. One thing, however, that I learned from my closest professor back in college (who stood by me when I was going through a period of perhaps the most difficult time of my life) was this: perseverance. What perserverance really means, per my understanding, is this: to just keep going even if things are not working out well for you. When I was a senior back in college, once I had my entire backpack stolen, along with my laptop, ipad, kindle, and most importantly - my handwritten notes for my courses - all gone, all of which I absolutely needed to study for my exam due next day. I was, and still am, confident that I had every reason to ask for an extension for the exam and my professor wouldn't say no to me. However, when I emailed my professor (the one who helped me out so much), aside from consoling me, she asked me " so when do you think you'd be prepared then?" Her question got me thinking - indeed, when do I think I'd be prepared? Later that night (after filing the report at the campus security and crying for a long time, lol), I decided that I should take the test anyway, and went out and collected all the notes from other students in my class (who are angels, btw), and pulled an allnighter on the materials, since I was too anxious and distraught to sleep anyway. Of course I didn't ace the test, not having been able to sleep, but I nevertheless did pretty well given the situation (disclaimer: I am not a genius when it comes to studying). That exam carries more significance than any other major events in my life, in that it taught me why perseverance matters, and how sometimes the only thing required of us is just to keep going, regardless of how bad the situation is. I am sharing this personal story with you to let you know that things suck at times - I for one, have had my fair share of very unfortunate events that are completely out of my control. But they wouldn't matter in the long run as long as you don't let them, and you can rise up from even the direst situation, if you let yourself.

Now, let's go into your questions:

how you combat low morale/tunnel vision? Do you change up your routine?

First of all, it is my belief that everybody suffers from low morale from time to time. I personally have been depressed for an extended period of time during the past few years, and I woulnd't say I have entirely recovered from it. What I mean is, I understand completely how one can feel beaten for a long time without things getting any better, particularly if the project you are working on is not giving you any positive feedback.

More recently, I am going through a time when I am consistently missing 10 - 13 questions on my timed PTs, whereas I don't miss more than 4 questions on the few untimed PTs I took recently. This sucks because my BR score has been consistently over 175, whereas my real PT score is hovering around mid to high 160s, despite the fact that I have a) a good grasp on the LR section and drilling PTs everyday for the past week or two, b) hardly ever missing an LG question, and C) studying about 6 - 8 hours everyday for the past two months (less daily input before that), having finished all of the by time LG, LR and RCs for PT 1- 38 and reviewed them at least once, drilled some of them over three times, and finished most of the books and available courses relevant to LSAT I could get my hands on.

Do I not get beaten down by this fact? Of course not. Just yesterday I slept through the entire day because I felt so awful about not improving: I must shoot for a high 170s just to close up the gap between me and those people with median GPA for law school, and why am I still not seeing visible improvement with my timed PT, despite all my efforts?

Nevertheless, through years of suffering from a lack of motivation, here's what I learned: you would always feel beaten from time to time, especially when you are going through significant challenges that might as well alter the course of your life. By definition, challenges are the things that would require a great deal of your input, without necessarily giving you too much positive feedbacks. That's what essentially makes a challenge challenging - it is, on one hand, difficult; on the other hand, deblitating to your morale if you do not have the mental strength to deal with it. Having straighten that out, I realized that I will never be able to stop feeling a lack of motivation, but I can always give myself a break when I am not seeing improvement; in other words, I can actively accomodate a lack of morale from time to time. Now, that doesn't mean I can anticipate when I would feel low - nobody can do that. What I mean is, when I am not feeling it, I wouldn't push myself through the drills; instead, I would let myself decide what I want to do - perhaps sleep a bit, perhaps watch an episode of my favorite show (or maybe binge through the entire season!), perhaps getting a big meal that I always told myself I didn't have time for, or perhaps call a friend and whine. I find it important to not push myself to do things when I don't want to (particularly given my high intensity study schedule), and NOT PUNISH MYSELF PSYCHOLOGICALLY (this is important) when I am not doing what I am supposed to do. Let's be real here: we all feel horrible from time to time, and there's nothing wrong with that - it is almost always periodic. If you are not feeling it, then give yourself even a week off just so you know you can be rejuvenated by the time you come back to your studies. Always gauge your ability realistically and CARE for yourself. There's nothing that's more important than loving yourself unconditionally no matter what is going on, and there's nothing more toxic than pushing yourself to go for a goal that, realistically speaking, may not be achievable under certain timeline (e.g. blasting through 3 PTs a day).

One thing I find particularly motivating is, in fact, my anxiety. My awful college years have substantially damaged my mental wellness besides my GPA, and since two years ago I started to have occassional panic attacks. At times, I also suffer from acute anxiety sitting through preptests, when I would be simply staring at the words without mentally processing them at all (hell the stake is high for me in this game! And just couldn't deal with the "what ifs" roaming in my mind). When that happen, I would usually call it a day and just throw away anything relevant to LSAT and go for a walk, watch something, or eat something. Whatever. I'd usually either give myself a day or 3 - 4 hours off before I feel more comfortable with the whole idea of LSAT and then come back to finish off whatever I was doing before. Nevertheless, since I have been constantly anxious about this whole law school ordeal, I really couldn't find myself peacefully enjoying a movie or a book without thinking about how I can improve my LSAT scores. As I'm writing this, I have come to realize how important that anxiety has been in the past two months of my studying: what happened was, even when I felt I couldn't drill more and I needed a rest, I would relax for about an hour or so (usually doing sudoku on my phone), and then go do something that's pertaining to LSAT but less stressful - read some LSAT relevant posts, read the manhattan/trainer/powerscore books, review some of my previous LR erros, or type up the recent erros I made in my LR section, etc. So, in a way, I have subconsciously categorized my life into two parts: LSAT drilling time (mostly PTs now), and downtime (review errors, read posts, writing posts, etc), which means my anxiety has actually helped me to immerse myself in LSAT completely without my realizing it.

Motivation, to me, seems largely stemming from my anxiety as well. Because my GPA sucks too hard, I need a super high LSAT score to set that off. In a way, I think wanting a high LSAT score badly is key to success in LSAT, at least for me. I can't say I have much of a success with my PTs so far, but I know one thing for sure - I have never wanted anything more badly in my life than this. At times I feel like I'm breathing LSAT when I, say, blasted through 40 LG questions a day, finished 5 sections of RCs, or finished 100+ LR by type questions a day. I don't think I could manage that intensity of studying without wanting a high score that badly. On the other hand, since I am constantly anxious, drilling was the only way to give myself peace of mind, and these are the reasons why I think I was able to pull of 40 hours + weeks of studying for the past months. (Having said that, I don't think high intensity of studying necessarily yields good results. LSAT requires some strategic approach, alongside with dilligence. ) The point here, I suppose, is that if you are also feeling anxious like I do, try to turn it into your friend rather than your enemy. I know for one thing that anxiety is best tackled when you are doing the thing that freaks you out the most.

As for my routine, since I don't have to work, and I am not doing college anymore, I have committed myself to full time LSAT studying everyday. Though, from Feburary to April I'd say I was only half time studying LSAT - finishing off the basics and just started to drill (averaging perhaps 3 - 4 hours a day, while I was playing video games more intensely than I preppred for LSAT); since Mayl I believe I have commmitted more time to LSAT studying (average 5hours daily according to my time-tracker, with occassional 2-3 days for a break), and for the past month or so I have upped my game to 6-8 hours of studying daily, with usually 1-2 days for a break (during the recent breaks, however, I would usually stick to doing some low-stress LSAT stuff such as re-reading books, watching courses, etc). As I have finished off drilling PT1-38 sorted out by sections and types, my recent schedule is largely comprised of drilling 4-5 sections PTs daily, sometimes 2 PTs in a day (one for morning one for afternoon/evening, during the break I would blind review + review everything). Initially, consistently doing PT sucks - I couldn't finish my LR and RC sections in time (usually leaving out 10 questions). But after a week of drilling PTs consistently, I have found myself comfortable with finishing all of my sections in time, although I have noticed a significant drop of rate of accuracy - as compparing to two of my recent untimed PTs, on which I have missed 4 questions each, averaging 2 for LR and 2 for RC. For the recent timed PTs, I am missing an average of 4 - 6 questions on LR, 2 - 4 questions on RC, and 1 question on LG. So my game plan right now is just to get more PTs done, reviewing my past errors everyday (I type them all up btw, just to give myself a good chance of rereading them carefully), and drilling more PTs. For now I have been doing 2 PTs a day (usually 4 sections), while working through the LSAT trainer. By my calculation, my past two weeks of input in LSAT is averaging about 8 hours daily, with my most recent break of steak happening two days ago when I had a panic attack.

One thing I find helpful is that once you are drilling intense enough, your anxiety somehow melts away as you grow more familiar with the test. On the other hand, though you may not necessarily improve your score by drilling intensely, you can always try to focus on the brighter side of each PT - for example, when I just finished off my first PT today (PT 45), I missed about 13 questions in total, and by BR missed 4 questions in total. Instead of feeling awful about not breaking into -10 errors, I try to focus on the fact that I am now consistently finishing off LR sections within 33 - 34 minutes, which gives me some time to recheck some of the questions I wasn't sure and successfully corrected a few of them. Or, for example, I try to focus on the fact that I now no longer miss any flaw questions, even the hardest, even though I suddenly start to miss inference questions and parallel questions. While I review diligently all of my questions, instead of focusing how many mistakes I have made, I would try to calm myself down by telling mysel that these errors are giving me a road map to a higher score, and really focus on why I got each individual question wrong by writing down notes, and routinely review all of my accumulated errors so that I won't get tricked up by the same traps next time. While I am still hovering around mid to high 160s, I think my devotion to LSAT and my becoming more strategic with improving my scores by reviewing carefully and reviewing available materials (books, posts etc) helps to ease my mind a lot.

Some other things that helped me throughout the process includes:

Finding a study partner (though he is shooting for the test next year, we’d still drill some hard questions together or post our study result to each other daily, which keeps a comfortable amount of peer pressure between the two of us. We’d also whine about the mistakes together and unload all the negativities to each other, which is very helpful when we are unwinding)

Announcing to everybody that I am taking the LSAT and occasionally posting feeds on my social network announcing my study plan for the next couple of days (I only occasionally do this since constantly updating on my LSAT might become a nuisance to my beloved friends, but I have also asked most of them to bear with me before October and they seem understanding :))

Quit using social network and my phone - this helps a lot because phone and social networks really SUCK OUT YOUR TIME and influences your motivation. I only look at my phone during break (when I also do my sudoku games to wind down a bit) and only stay connected to a few really close friends, who I have daily banters with and with whom I always have a good time talking when I’m done with the day.

Getting rid of distractions and set up my LSAT shrine - this is also very important to me. When I study I cannot stand any distractions (mom, stop calling me to dinner, on a timed PT here!). So I told my sister and my parents to never talk to me unless I talk to them - till October. This may seem extreme, but I needed this, and they understand. Also, I set up my LSAT station on a clean table with all of the materials I use stacked tidily around the table, with all of my essentials - three dozens of HB pencils, erasers, automatic pencil sharpeners, water and snacks right around the table so that everyday when I wake up I would be able to jump right into LSAT studying, and only need to take breaks when I need to use the bathroom or eat, without having to go look for anything and disrupt my study flow.

how to not freak out and forget about all your techniques when panicking from time issue? How do you not panick if you are a high anxiety person??? (I sometimes panick during PTs, less so during timed sections, when I am not at my goal question number by the goal minute ie. 5 in 5mins, 10 in 10 mins, etc., and start skim reading rather than actively reading with technique just so I can try to reach more questions. Even though I know it works against me and the accuracy is low and still slows me down, I can't help it...)

For this particular issue, while I recommend you, on one hand, to just drop your PT at all and come back to it later if you are absolutely freaking out, I also find it important to just finish it regardless of the time if you can still push yourself a bit further. For example, I have been having time issues with my LR section for a long time, and recently I find myself managing my time more efficiently in LR section by simply focusing on my task and not pay too much attention to the proctor. One thing I have been doing, however, is honing my ability to identify correctly the core argument and flaw in the stimulus. For this particular issue, I find the LSAT Trainer very helpful (chapters recommended: the LR "swatches"). I have also took out stimulus from my previous erred questions and just focus on identifying the flaw/logical gap in those stimulus and write them down. By really forcing myself to develop a good habit with approaching LR stimulus(identifying the core correctly), I find myself more comfortable with time. I believe this points to a very important idea of approaching your drills: good habit MATTERS. Correctly idenfy why you are having certain issues (for me, failing to identify the core and just go with the flow in the stimulus), and really forcing yourself to change that habit so that your general approach to the questions become closer to what LSAT requires you of, seems to me the key to cultivate both your ability to tackle the questions and your ability to quickly move between questions without panicking - if you have finished several PTs in a row with the correct habbits, finishing questions in time comes to you naturally, and that fact alone would boost your confidence a lot in the subsequent PTs. The trick of drilling PTs though, is really trying to see WHY you are missing questions (are you still having problems with correctly identifying the core stem? Are you falling into the nasty little traps LSAC designed in the answers? Did you just overlooked that EXCEPT or took that "must be false" to be "must be true"?). Once you IDed the issue, really give yourself some time to think about how you may improve that particular issue.

Do I push through this last month and try my hardest for September and possibly November and just apply this cycle anyway without potentially reaching my goal score? Or do I take a later test and apply for next cycle and suffer through another year of low morale/sacrificing life to study and push back my personal deadline with the risk of still not getting a good score?

I don't think you would end up with a less than good score, if you are drilling diligently and strategically. The real issue here is knowing what you want, how to get there, and how badly do you want it. For example, I know for a fact that if I cannot get a near perfect score, I would have substantially less chance of being admitted by a T20 with scholarship that I direly need. So, if I cannot get a good score out of my October test, I will just go for a November or maybe December test, even if that means I would have to wait another year. I won't necessarily feel bad about that fact, however, because I can still devote the next year of my life to many things I value as meaningful, and getting admitted by a better school with money would substantially outweight the sacrifices I would have to make. But that's just my reasoning. What I would advice you, again, is to know what you want, how to get there, and how badly do you want it.

Is there even hope for me to get 170s? Are my chances of getting scholarships even good enough with a 170 + such a low gpa? Is it even worth it to keep yearning for that score? Time is also money ya know.

To your first question: it largely depends on where you are right now. If you are mostly struggling with time issues, i think 170 is possible. But if you are still struggling with the basics - say, still missing more than 3-4 questions on LG, cannot finish RC, etc. I would advice you to reschedule your test and really, really think about what's going wrong with your approach to LSAT preparation. Strategy MATTERS.

To your second question: WUSTL has been by far the most generous towards extreme splitters (awarding near perfect LSAT scorers with, say, 2.9 - 3.1 GPA with $150,000 - $180,000 last time I checked the numbers - I may be incorrect with the money figures but there are precedents you can check on LSN and other similar websites). Washington and Lee, and a couple of other schools around T20-30 also give out generous amount of money to high scorers as well.

I would say approach the courses strategically, especially if you are under constraint.

Before I get to the real thing here, I would like to ask whether the time you need to finish the problem sets is included in the recommended time to complete the section - if not, then you're still on your schedule. If they are actually included, then here's some of my thoughts:

For starters, try to go through at least the foundations (e.g. logic, advance logic, grammar, most/some, LG diagramming, must be true, flaw, some RC sections), especially if you are just starting out. In the mean time, I would also recommend you to occassionally supplement your studying with certain available LSAT books such as bible and manhattan, because 1) they might cover something that 7sage also covers, but reading on your own could be faster way of learning than sitting through the 7sage lecture; 2) for the materials covered by 7sage, you can always speed up the lecture (1.44 or above is usually doable) while pausing occassionally just to take some notes.

Do a diagnostic test or two if you haven't done so, just to see what exactly is your weak spot (for many, that would be the assumption family - Flaw, weaken, strengthen, and NA. These questions probably take up 40-50% of the LR section and thus statistically have more hard questions than others).

Once you get a good idea of which kinds of question type give you the hardest time, focus on them. Shoot for the course materials that would best enable you to tackle these weak spots first, and make sure you grasp all of the basics of tackling them, even if you have to spend more than the recommended time. Do not necessarily follow the course schedule because

that might get you into a passive studying mode. Usually, active study is more effective than passive study, and having a clear goal of what you wish to achieve or having a question regarding a particular question type is largely a prerequisite to active LSAT studying;

finishing all of the problem sets, as they are displayed on 7sage course schedule, might not necessarily be the best way for you to grasp the question type firmly, because

A ) for certain question types, such as Must Be True, you might not need that many questions to get the gist of it. Although a hard MBT question might occassionally throw you off, you don't need to go through, say, 10 problem sets, to get 80% of the MBT questions correct.

B ) if 7sage's problem sets are arranged by difficulty, you can always skip around - say, doing problem 1, 5, 7 and 10 just to get an idea of the gradation of difficulty and see how well you are doing them. If you are having a streak of success with the easier and medium questions, then perhaps focusing on the harder problem sets would give you a clear idea of what exactly is required of you to tackle this specific type of question/what kind of gimmicks and tricks could there be with this question type.

In any case, the core idea is that you do not necessarily have to follow the course structure if a) you've finished the foundational stuff and b) you've got a good idea of where your weak spot lies. The idea is to actively prioritize and work on those areas that you are least comfortable with/least familiar with/have the least idea how to tackle.

DEVELOP A SYSTEMATIC APPROACH TO THESE QUESTIONS. On that note, I would highly recommend finishing any course material pertaining to Flaw question type because being able to identify the flaw in LR stimulus is the most important skill you've got to acquire. Developing a systematic approach to Flaw questions would help you tremendously with developing subsequent systematic approach to other question types.

Overalll, the gist is that even if you have quite a bit of time to prepare for LSAT, it would always be a good idea to approach your study materials strategically and actively. What I mean by being strategic is essentially this:

a) Always have a clear sense of what specific group of question you are having the hardest time with.

b) Develop a clear sense of why you are getting this particular quesiton type wrong. For example, I have been categorizing my errors into three categories per LSAT trainer's recommendation (you don't have to follow my example, just giving you an idea here): read the question wrong, failed to identify the core argument properly, and failed to identify the proper answer despite identifying the core argument correctly. Once you understand what is throwing you off, go back to the course materials/question bank explanation to fix those issues.

c) Know that you are free to skip around your materials - including books and other materials on LSAT - and work on those that would best enable you to tackle your current issue.

I hope this helps. Good luck with your test!

I'd love to offer some help, but exactly how should we contact each other without disclosing our contact info publicly? :smile: