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Hey. Just wanted to extend some empathy. I totally get the frustration. I took a brief break from studying between January and April and on my August lsat I received the same score I hit in January (164) despite feeling [and knowing] that I had been improving.
I just remind myself that there's variance to the test, my ability given the test in front of me, and how I'm doing that day. I'd like to think I'm always at my peak but I know that's not true and that sometimes I'll hit the lower end of my score band and others my upper.
It's a big part of why I resigned myself to signing up for both October (#4) and November (#5). I've put all this work into it that I might as well give myself the best shot to hit the ceiling of what I'm capable of.
I probably misread because most of the time on the discussion board, I'm bouncing between things. Happy I touched on C then 😅
Something to also note for the question types and if lsac turns it into an EXCEPT question is that A, C, and E could be presented as choices that technically help resolve the paradox to some degree. B and D don't touch it so they'd have to throw in a different ac there but just something to keep in mind.
Strengthen, weaken, and rre will generally have you reaching for something new outside of the stim to do work for you. However, it still interlocks with what the stim is saying to get the job done.
Additionally, B weakens/adds more complications to the farmer's process. Why would they go out of their way to do a more expensive process that isn't even the best way to do it?
It should also be noted that B reaches adds information from outside of the stim too. Yes, it may more clearly relate in your mind but the weather is also explicitly part of the stim by nature of the sun doing the drying. That being said, it should be noted that some questions can and will have you feel like you're reaching more outside of the stim than this one did.
Your goal in the question is to BEST explain why the farmer would go out of their way to do process of drying that isn't even the best one. You weren't thinking about C but that's why it is ruled out compared to A.
An example of an answer that would reach more outside of the stim could be "The farmer deals with pests that eat the corn as it dries that other farmers don't".
I'm a broken record about this but I think anyone who is scoring below or in the 150s would greatly benefit from spending sessions focusing on improving their translation skills. Hitting a 160, means that you are getting roughly 20+ scored questions wrong and obviously that's even a bit more for the 150s.
Focusing on improving the efficiency and speed of your ability to translate the stim and have a pre-phrase to orient yourself towards the potentially right answer goes a long way. Since you've already noted that you have The Loophole, I don't really need to explain translation drills because they're brought up relatively early on (after Chapter 3 or 4 if I remember right).
The "nice thing" is that I think that at the range you're in right now, there's ample room for major break throughs. Getting better with your translation will go a long way in preventing the test from yanking you around and letting you feel like you're in control.
Important things that I've been working to keep in mind (even if they sound stupid):
Keep track of perspective words. It's more a recent addition to my RC habits but one of the 7sage tutors said that she literally highlights perspective indicators and uses different colors to indicate the author's vs. perspectives of other people. It sounds like it adds a lot of time but it really doesn't once you get more used to the highlighting tool.
Pause every few sentences to try to make sense of not just what is being said but the overall point of it within the context of the passage. When I'm doing everything properly, I'm able to either jot down or make a mental note of what the paragraph represents in the passage, making it easier to answer questions about purpose in context and structure.
Read the question. Read the question. Read the question. I know that I've bled points - and still do to a much lesser extent - because I didn't actually read the question leaving me to assume what I was looking for leaving me either to bumble around for a bit or to pick a clearly wrong answer.
I got my first "real" 170 on a PT yesterday and I counted at least three questions I clearly misread, leading me to lose time when I didn't need to or get them wrong.
One thing that can act as a giveaway is that if it's the parallel of a flawed argument, it should still be a flawed argument. A is a legit argument because the conclusion contains "may".
The flawed exhibited in the stim is that it's assuming something should likely happen because it hasn't happened yet. C is saying there are usually errors so there's probably errors in the last few pages.
Timeline wise, I'd encourage you to be open to not needing to get into law school this cycle but you know your life better than anyone else here.
I don't think it's impossible to improve your score to what you're aiming for but I would also encourage you to be more flexible/even be open to taking it again in January to then apply. November and then January into applications is what I did last year and I did get into a school and was even offered some scholarship money. It's absolutely doable.
How much time are you able to commit to studying? I'd argue that for where you are, translation drills along with a mixture of untimed assorted question drills and untimed drills of priority questions with a good blind review would give you more bang for your buck. I'm trying to get myself from the mid 160s to 168+ and all my drills are still untimed.
If you have the time and endurance, I'd also say do one PT (ideally with a blind review) a week as your timed aspect. Once you're like 3 weeks out, if you want to throw in timed drills, go ahead, but a PT a week will "force" that aspect regardless if you do or don't.
Disclaimer: This is a copy paste of a response I gave someone else but I think it easily applies to you as well. I credit translation drills a lot of how I scored 160 initially when I took the LSAT in November last and then a 164 in January. If you have any questions, feel free to shoot me a message.
In my opinion, people who are scoring below the high 150s likely have some key gaps that could lead to major breakthroughs and, with it, score jumps.
Translating accuracy: You're potentially not doing the best job at taking what the stim is saying which prepares you to tackle what the question is going to present you. When you leave the stim, you should have an idea of what's the flaw in argument, what the premises would be adding up to, where the point of disagreements and agreements are, or what could resolve the paradox
You don't need to always have a "prephrase" but your reading should automatically have you oriented to think about these things
Translating speed: This goes hand-in-hand with the prior point and is obviously also important. Accurately understanding what the stim says is great but you need to be able to do that in a timely manner. Get more and more comfortable with translation drills and over time this will come naturally if you commit to it
Self-assessment: Do you know your own weaknesses? Where are you consistently falling in the same pitfalls? What are things you can do to prime yourself going into a type of question?
7Sage analytics are a good start for this, letting you focus on specific question or passage types. However, you should also be working on being able to do this both without needing the analytics to tell you which things you can improve on but also so you can deeper understand what is leading you to getting the wrong answer instead of the right one. This is where Wrong Answer Journals are clutch so you can spot not just what question times are tripping you up but also so you can reflect on how you're making a mistake consistently
Unfortunately, it's what ever feels best but maybe this will help give you an idea of what works best for you.
I prefer to read the stim first because I feel like I'm doing a good job of tracking the stim and having a prephrase ready. Quite a bit of the time, I have a good idea of what the answer will be even before checking out the question.
On the other hand, reading the question first gives information about what you're going to be trying to answer. If you feel like this helps you orient yourself going into the stim to find your answer, this might make more sense for you.
I don't know how feasible this is but I feel like I would benefit and the analytics for the information as it directly points to what I'm thinking about as I digest the question and ACs. I'm sure people have many different strategies in how they hide/unhide an AC but I feel like there's a lot of good information there that could be utilized. There's probably some patterns that the AI would be able to help identify and give some potential insight into.
On the other hand, I'm sure it would give a lot of noise but I'd rather noise I can try to get insight from rather than not having it.
I'm sure there's some legitimate reasons but I think LSAC knows they benefit from the deadline for the next month's test being before score release. People are put into a position of signing up for an additional test they aren't sure they necessarily "need" to take. For example, they're probably going to get a free $250 from me so that I feel like I can go again in November one last time before applications go in even though I would like to stop after October.
Yes to taking a full PT once a week and doing a blind review of it (whether that be with flagged recommendations or fully blind). Getting some reps in of "doing the thing" so that you know the kind of experience it will. It will help you manage the fatigue of doing 4 timed sections. You don't want to be blind sided by it on test day and it's good to improve your endurance.
Along with that, I think you should be trying to focus on a few more key skills that will help you get to the mid 160s: Efficiency and speed
Focusing on becoming more efficient and effective in your translation of stims will help you push your 1-3 star question times down and accuracy up. Your goal is to use those first 10 or so questions in LR to bank time. However, that's only valuable if you have closer to 90%+ on those 3 stars and are faster at the 1/2 stars.
This can be done through "translation drills" where you literally only go through a bunch of LR stims and translate them without doing the questions. This both lets you focus on translating as the skill you're improving and saves you time that you'd be using to do the question.
To complement this, you can then do drills of specifically 1-3 star questions in larger quantities, like 20+, where your goal here is truly speed and accuracy. Even though you would do this untimed, your goal is to also practice grabbing answers you know are right and moving on. That doesn't mean don't slow down at times because some lower difficulty questions hit a blind spot of ours. So, you're also practicing the decision making process of discerning when you should be confident to grab and go and when you need to take a beat.
@Aquamoon yeah. You still have a lot of open space but not as much as in your picture
@Aquamoon Oh, yes. He's right about that aspect of it but I think in a general sense the amount of negative space is still substantial. I don't recall ever seeing a glaring contrast between the tester and the app itself.
Yes. There's unfortunately a lot of negative space. You can adjust the zoom but that doesn't address what you're talking about. Additionally, as far as I know, no keyboard shortcuts work on the LSAT tester, or at least they aren't supposed to.
Your 10 minute break will begin immediately just like when you do your PT. I can't speak for all testing centers since I've only been at one but I imagine they're relatively similar. When I went I break [or if I needed to run out to the restroom mid-section], I was told to check in with the proctor at the door so they could note me being out of the testing room and also to check in with them on my way back. That means that you should account for the 20-30ish second process of checking back into the room but also know that it should be a quick process.
And, yes, you will want to be back in your seat a little before the time runs out because, if you don't, it will start without you.
You kind of hint towards it but what would you consider a score you're happy with? It's not impossible to swing above your median PTs but how much higher are you aiming to do?
Significant break throughs aren't impossible, especially when adjustments can significantly improve your accuracy up to the 150s and low 160s but that also requires knowing what that adjustment needs to be and working it in without overly taxing yourself going into your test.
Have you tuned into any of the live sessions where one of the tutors walks you through how they digest a passage in pieces while pausing to think about how things interlock together and kind of label a paragraph or a section of one in their head or on their passage map? I'm assuming you have but if you haven't, either look up when the next sessions are or just look back at past recorded ones because I think they do a great job of breaking down how to try to approach the passages.
Spending 3-4 minutes and sometimes a little longer if it's a really dense passage is worth it so you can tackle most of the questions without needing to mine the text again. Likewise, if you feel like you want to practice doing this, you can pull up old RC passages you've done and drill the passage by practicing the process on a passage you've already done while trying to resist going back to the passage unless it's a specific reference.
Once you feel more confident with the approach, take a stab at a fresh RC passage and then multiple passages back to back as you progress.
Where do you feel your gaps are?
Do you feel compelled to have to go back to the passage to scan for text to support an AC?
Do you feel like you're going back to the passage to get an idea of what the question is asking?
Do you feel like you're being tempted by answers that aren't descriptively correct, too specific, too broad?
Do you think you're spending enough time on the passage digesting it to ensure that you don't need to scan for information when hitting the questions?
Are you doing a good job of making sure that as you go through the passage that you're pausing to think about how things are interlocking together?
Are you tracking when different PoVs are chiming in and noting where it's clearly the author vs a characterization of another PoV?
Are you spending too much time trying to digest the passage so that you feel pressed for time on the questions?
I could only see myself doing that if I assumed that there's a good chance I won't get through all the passages or all the questions. However, I've only heard of people doing it in reference to this.
I could see it maybe making a marginal difference to deal with a 4th passage fatigue by front load the hardest section but then I'm letting myself sink time into doing something that's taking away from my goal of getting through the whole section.
@Lsac’s#1Hater A suggestion from someone who prepped with other material before 7sage, I agree with skimming the foundations to verify that you feel comfortable with them.
Additionally, if you can, the live level of subscription is genuinely worthwhile as a way to supplement understanding of question types if you find yourself running into a pattern of issues that you aren't able to self diagnose or if you feel like you're starting to hit a wall in progress.
I also love it as an intermediary way for me to study when I'm "cooling down" or "warming up" for a session as a lighter mental effort.
Jealous. Congrats on the slow and steady progress and trusting the process. Hoping I can slowly work my way up there by October.
If you ever manually select a date range to look at your analytics, know that it will preserve that for when you look again. If you said you wanted to look at the past 58 days (date range today to 58 days ago), when you look at the analytics again, it will keep that date range even though it's the next day. For example, it wouldn't include August 31 because the last day in the range would be August 30.
And, ultimately, you reach a point where the vast majority you'll be able to do in your head quickly but, when you are drilling and trying to do everything at once, it also means that you aren't spending as much time on the specific skill you're trying to hone and you're taking on extra unnecessary stimulus (haha) for your goal.
I relate a lot of things to running as an analogy and trying to improve at everything is like trying to run as fast as you can for as long as you can to improve endurance and speed. It will kind of work but doing specific types of exercises like sprints allows you to target the part of you that you're trying to improve better than trying to do it all at once.
Another thing I've worked in about once or week or so is a lengthy drill (like 15 - up to 30) 1-3 star questions. Every drill I do is technically untimed but there I'm shooting for speed along with accuracy.