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So I've got three weeks left in the Army before I start terminal leave and I've finally reached the end of the learning curriculum and the only thing that stands in between me and 4-5 months of PTs is the LG Bundle. As I finished up the last few LG sections in the curriculum I saw a lot of people were having the same questions, concerns and other issues with how to approach their LG studies and utilizing the Fool Proof Method and since I don't really have a job or much to do at work anymore I thought I'd offer up my solution and strategy to address some of these problems. I think the Fool Proof Method is awesome, but I tweaked it very slightly for my purposes and I think it could help some people out to employ a similar strategy. If this helps you in any way, please pass it along to anyone else who may be struggling.
Top concerns I have seen from other people:
1) I think 10 copies of every LG is wasting paper.
2) I don't have enough time to do all the LGs.
3) I want to know the categories for every LG I'm doing.
4) When do I do which games and how often do I do them again?
Before I answer these questions directly, here is what I've actually done to set myself up for success. If you were fortunate enough to get the LG Bundle before LSAC made it vanish, then you have all the games from PTs 1-35 which is 140 games. If you have anything less than that, just scale down what I'm prescribing, but everything should still go along as I outline here. I got a few 2" 3-ring binders and filled them with document protectors. I then began with PT 1 and printed out 4 copies of the first game (more on this later), which if you have the LG Bundle is 8 pieces of paper since 7Sage was kind enough to format the old LGs like the new ones with 2 pages and plenty of room to work. If you don't have this I'd say add a piece of scratch paper in with each game to give yourself extra space to simulate what you'll have on the LSAT. I then placed all 4 copies of the first game in a document protector and put a sticky note on the front denoting the following: PT#, LG#, and then a chart with 1st-4th attempts on the vertical axis and Date/Time/Score on the horizontal axis (more on this later as well). I then repeated this process for each subsequent game so that now I have a binder full of 4 copies of each LG, although due to the volume of paper you'll need at least 2 or 3 binders like I mentioned above.
All the information I collect on the sticky notes I will put into a very simple Excel spreadsheet I have designed to track my progress. If you've read this far and are still interested, feel free to message me your email and I will send you a blank copy of the spreadsheet I designed so you can use it and tweak it how you see fit. In a nutshell it has space to log the date/time/score for every attempt for every LG in the bundle.
The first attempt is simply that, just my first shot at a new LG. I time everything with a stopwatch so I know how I'm doing, but I don't set a timer because that doesn't really make sense to me since I'm working to standard and not to time. If you time yourself and stop then you won't know how long the game is actually taking you, so always use a stopwatch (I hope this is common sense at this point). So once I finish I record the date and the time it took me and I blind review and then check my score. I then record only the score I got while timing myself since this is LG and there is no way you should get LG questions wrong during BR since you can just brute force the answers if need be if you really don't understand something. If you're missing LG questions on BR then in my opinion there is something seriously wrong in your methodologies and you need to perhaps relearn the basics unless you just misread a question or something like that.
After recording the data on the sticky note and transferring it to my spreadsheet I watch JY's video explanation and go over the game and then I put that LG in the back of the document protector it came from behind the clean LGs and take out the second copy. I then make my second attempt, timing myself, doing my BR, recording all data, and then rewatching the video if necessary. I then make my third attempt the next day, and my fourth attempt I make a week later, always following the same methodologies as I did on the first attempt.
My thinking is that if I'm really serious about this, I should be able to conquer any given LG in four tries. Two in a row should see a huge time and accuracy improvement since it's so fresh in my mind, then the third and fourth attempts simply reinforce this improvement and the retention of the strategy. This also makes you more efficient since you know that each LG is simply a 7-8 day practice exercise. Trying to schedule out an additional 6 attempts to do all 10 copies just seemed ridiculous to me given that there are 140 LGs to do in the bundle. In my mind it's better to be able to develop mastery more quickly and then encounter a wider variety of games in order to make sure you're ready for everything. Of course, if there is an incredibly hard LG then obviously that may require additional attempts, but this should be a rare exception to the rule.
So to revisit the concerns I noted above, here are my solutions:
1) Obviously you're going to have to get over using some paper, so cutting that down by 60% should be a good tradeoff to help get you into law school in my opinion. And once you get your 170+ you can go recycle all that paper!
2) If you don't have time to do all the LGs, just scale down the above and do what you have time for. If you know it will take a week turnaround per LG and you can do 5 per day, then you know you can get at least 30-35 done in a two week period depending on if you take a day off or not. At this rate you could do more than 100 LGs before the June LSAT if need be (but you should probably be focusing on PTs). If you have to scale way down I'd recommend randomly picking PTs from 1-35 and doing all the games in that PT so you shouldn't end up doing all of the same kind of question and will get a better feel for the variability within a given test.
3) In my opinion you absolutely should never record the category of any game you attempt. If you do, it will negatively influence your work since you will know going in to use a chart or to sequence and group rather than just deducing what needs to be done. When you take the LSAT it doesn't say GROUPING GAME in bold type at the top of the page, so you should practice like its the real thing, which means no knowledge of categories.
4) I think I addressed this well in my strategy above, but it bears repeating: Make 4 attempts: 1st - Today, 2nd - Immediately afterwards, 3rd - Tomorrow, 4th - In a week (either a week from attempts 1&2 or a week from your 3rd attempt, that's your call schedule wise).
Anyways, I know this is a bit long but I hope it helps at least one person because as a longtime lurker I have gotten a lot of help from the community here and I wanted to try to do my part to give at least a little bit back. If anyone is still reading this and wants more details or wants photos of my binders or that Excel spreadsheet, feel free to hit me up anytime. Best of luck to all the June LSAT takers and to everyone else in your studies!
~Pacifico
P.S.- Though I am more than happy to help anyone here with any issues they may have, I will not send you the LG Bundle as that would violate both 7Sage and LSAC regulations. Please don't put me or anyone else in that position because I am trying to help people here and won't break the law to do so. Thanks for your cooperation!
P.P.S. - I don't check my inbox on here anymore, but if you have any questions you can DM me on Twitter @pacificosoldati and I'll do my best to help you however I can.
Bumping for any fall test takers still needing help with Logic Games.