Normal variation, nothing is wrong. I understand it is normal to see something "bad" and try to optimize to fix it. Buuuut, keep in mind you can also optimize in a way that hurts you. You can over index on a particular data point. You're crashing out (you might not actually be crashing out, exaggeration for fun) over two sections. Sometimes you just screw up more than other times and there isn't a lot to take away from that.

As an example, imagine you get cheated on. Sucks, right? So you decide you're going to optimize to never make that mistake again. Next partner you're going to demand their phone password, location, list of all of their friends, control over who they can talk to, and you're going to interrogate them 5x a day to make sure they haven't even looked at someone else. One problem left behind, many more created.

It is a question of what lessons you want to or should learn. It is easy to see that something isn't what you want (getting cheated on, -4) but it is harder to learn the right lesson from it. The wrong lesson can hurt you (I think we call that trauma?)

Sure, you got -4, but the same brain and study methods got you -1, -2. You have a range and perhaps hit the low end of that range recently. No big deal. Now you know -2 isn't guaranteed; you're smarter and more knowledgeable for knowing that. From what you said, you clearly see the value in process; you diagnosed your issue as poor execution. You also know what works for getting better, so keep doing that. If you bomb April, well, there is always June and August. Relax!

Before my first test I scored 170 and then 180 on the exact same day. I was so mad I scored 170 that I sat quietly for 5 minutes, used the restroom, then opened up another PT and scored 180. Variance is normal, especially when you are stressed and focused more on outcomes than implementing productive processes.

The "US News Range" is nice to see.

@alessandragianino7245 I agree. What am I missing? My sense is that this is an incredibly poor question. How do we know the colonies with phenazines do not form wrinkled surfaces? What if every bacteria forms wrinkled surfaces? What if the wrinkled surfaces do not have anything to do with nutrients?

My core objection is that telling us no-phen bacteria are wrinkled doesn't tell us anything about the ones that are wrinkled. Every AC requires us to make major assumptions.

I'm sure people have tried and done fine, but I don't think it is because they did this. Conceptually I can't find a benefit for bashing your head against hard problems first only to leave yourself with little time to solve the easy ones. The harder questions won't take less time just because you do them first. The easy questions are worth exactly 1 point like the hard ones, so why not guarantee you get them first and then move on?

I don't think you can find a trick that makes questions faster without getting better at the LSAT. Reordering doesn't make you any faster.

The only way you could ever close the gap is if you can reliably score 180 (desirable), or you don't improve your accuracy at all with infinite time (undesirable).

I understand it is normal to see your blind review score and think, "if only I could get this score timed." The question is, how are you going to do it? Well, you need to get better at the LSAT. If you went faster without getting any better, you'd miss more questions... which is exactly what is happening when you take a timed test. You go faster and miss questions you would have solved given more time. If you were better, you wouldn't have needed the extra time to solve them.

All you can do is get better and your timed score will follow from that. Keep practicing both timed, to gauge your progress, and untimed to get better. Solve the problems and learn from them. Once you internalize the patterns, doing them again in the future becomes much quicker.

@Keh1965 You're welcome!

Ah, a classic problem no amount of thinking/reasoning about will solve! Maybe you won't improve, but you won't know that until months/years from now when you're done studying. Don't worry about it, keep practicing. Four hours per day is a lot, but if you can manage it, go forth.

Keep in mind the point of formalism is to gain intuitive understanding. You can also pull it out when you are stuck. It is a tool! Mechanics use tools, but they don't immediately jump to a wrench when they see any problem.

Do you think you have any gaps in how you understand necessity and sufficiency in daily conversation? For example, if I told you a car cannot move unless it has wheels, would you understand that wheels are necessary, but not sufficient for a car to move?

In other words, a car can't move without wheels. Wheels are necessary for a car to move. If moving car, then wheels. No wheels, no moving car (contrapositive). Lacking wheels, a car cannot move. For a car to move it needs wheels. The fact that the car was moving indicates that it has wheels. Wheels are an integral part of every moving car.

However, at no point does having wheels mean that a car can move. Maybe cars also need engines and transmissions. That is fine. What we know is that without wheels, she ain't moving. We can never prove the car moves based on wheels being necessary.

Those transformations in your head have to be automatic.

If you wanted to be formal, you could start with thinking about it positively:

If moves, then wheels. If A, then B.

Contrapositive:

Not wheels, not move. Not B, Not A.

Really sit with this and think about it. Why does this make sense? Why can we say no wheels means no moving? If all we know is that if something moves it has wheels, how do we get a contrapositive?

Let's go through the scenario. All moving things have wheels. So if something DOESN'T have wheels, can it move? Uhh... No, because if it moves, it would have wheels. But this thing doesn't have wheels. So... it must not move.

Better yet, imagine there is a closed box in front of you. I tell you, "If Sam is brain dead, there will be a squirrel in the box." If A, then B.

So now what do you do? You open the box, of course. When you look in, there is NO SQUIRREL. NOT B is reality. What can you conclude from that?

Well, Sam must not be brain dead. If he WAS brain dead, there would have been a squirrel, but I looked in the box and the reality is there is no squirrel. We do not live in that universe where Sam is braindead; there was no squirrel.

Which question types do you struggle with? Example question perhaps?

Work on it for an hour every day. Answer questions. Don't stress about or overcomplicate it.

I rarely did more than an hour a day, but I made that hour count as best I could. Like others have said, if you think it has to be an 8-hour slog, you probably wont do it.

It's hard! All I can say is that if you've got it at 50/50, you've missed something. It takes me a long time staring at questions before I can eliminate some 50/50s. I think today one took me 10+ minutes.

Hot take incoming: timing issues don't exist. You just don't understand what you're doing so it takes longer than you'd like. If I tried to put on makeup, I'd be slow. I don't have a makeup timing issue; I do not know how to put on makeup. If I knew how to put on makeup, I would not be slow. Speed is downstream of skill.

Yes, perhaps there are edge cases where someone is skilled but extremely anxious or something and knows they have the right answer but keeps re-reading anyway. If you're blind reviewing 180s we can consider that possibility, but almost nobody is doing that.

When you're drilling, disregard how much time it takes. Solve the question. For PTs, they aren't there to make you better, they are there to measure your progress and make you familiar with the time limit. On the actual test, yeah, you can't spend 10 minutes on a single question. I don't think there is any formula for knowing what to do on a real test.

To put this in perspective, if you're scoring in the 150s, you're rushing through and missing 20-30+ questions per test. Why rush through easy questions and get them wrong just so you can also get the hard questions wrong?

I have never considered how much time it took me to answer a question beyond roughly using it to indicate I was missing something and need to refine that skill.

@sol_chan Dis is great. Getting questions wrong simply doesn't matter much and doesn't make you a failure. You can always get better if you devote yourself to it.

Putting what sol_chan said in different words, do not overvalue individual data points. Getting a question wrong is just a data point that shows you have something to learn. Don't allow yourself to make major pronouncements on the back of bad, temporary data.

Just because you miss a question, or you're currently stressed or sad or anxious, does not mean you will always be that way. Remember that what you think and feel changes over time and what is going on in your head right now isn't that important at the end of the day. Make little bits of progress every time and you'll get there.

Maybe. Make them count, take your time answering.

Do you have any examples? If you can strengthen you should be able to weaken without much trouble. If you're being asked to weaken there is a flaw in the argument, and you're being asked to poke at that flaw and expose it or make it worse.

One thing to ask yourself with necessary assumptions is, "necessary for what?" Necessary for the argument to work.

In other words, assume the argument is true. It is the real world, or one possible universe we are imagining.

"Tom is the best person to be thrown off of the bridge."

Assume that argument is true/valid/reality. What must also be true? One possibility might be: "Samantha is not the best person to be thrown off of the bridge." In a universe where Tom is the best, Samantha cannot be the best.

In another sense, if the argument is true/works/valid, the NA is something that must also be true. This is how the "negation test" comes in. If a NA (which must be true for argument to work) is not true, then it calls into question the argument. If Samantha WAS the best person to be thrown off the bridge, then how can Tom be the best to be thrown off the bridge?

I had the same problem. I still do, but it is less than before. You might need to be a super genius to remove that problem completely.

One tip I have is be kind to your working memory. Stop at the end of every sentence, or every comma, and make note of what you know and do not know.

"Marion will be a suspect only if it is decided that the murderer wore red."

Ok. So if they decide the murderer wore red, Marion COULD be a suspect. Red is necessary, not sufficient to make Marion a suspect. If they do not decide the murderer wore red, Marion is not a suspect. It isn't that the murderer actually wore red, only that it was DECIDED that they wore red. Got it.

^I make notes in my head like that as I go. I find the going quickly is where you clog up your memory and make a bad mental pathway that you fall into even if you try re-reading.

Do you find that you read answer choices and think, "Huh, is this a problem/idea I didn't think of" and then go back and look for evidence in the passage? I do that more frequently now that I am better.

This is a great problem to have. 177 BR is excellent.

The more that you answer questions, the quicker you will be at solving them. I don't think you need more theory or lessons, you just need to grind away at questions. Keep taking your time and solving them.

It may not be obviously intuitive why slow and solving works when ultimately you have time pressure on the real test. It works because when you go slow, you catch the patterns, flaws, intricacies, the ways in which LSAC wanted you to misinterpret a statement, etc. When you go fast, you never map those out completely.

When people go fast and miss lots of questions, it is kinda like going into a dark room and feeling around for stuff. You might get the thing you're looking for, but making a map to use in the future is really hard.

Going slow and solving the question and breaking down the passage\answer choices is like turning the light on. You can look at the room and see the layout and the structure and say, "I see how they did this. I know why this works, and I know why those don't. Easy pattern." From there you can take that on to the next question. Over time, you can figure things out quickly and know exactly what you're doing.

@Sunnieqw22 You're welcome! With a good LSAT, 3.8 is absolutely competitive at most schools.

You should probably not take the test rather than putting an LSAT in the 130s-140s on your record. There is no reason to take the LSAT and score 130 anything, it can only hurt you. Study a bit everyday and don't sign up for tests until you're ready for them.

Your topic should be something that enables you to portray yourself the way that you want to be seen. If you just write about a thing, even if you find it interesting, if it doesn't make you come out looking awesome, it doesn't matter.

You have to be the star of your essay whichever direction you go.

Anything below 4.0 will hurt you, but that doesn't mean law school is impossible with a 3.8. What is done is done, now it is time to crush the LSAT and write great essays.

One thing though, do not draw attention to your GPA. Most schools do not have A+. Your situation is entirely normal and admissions already know about it. There are people who could only get As who got 4.0s. It'll come off as making excuses while telling them something they already know.

I've had someone who was able to get a B turned into an A on their transcript by asking, but I do not know how much that can be replicated. They had a good excuse: professor had violated school policy and given them a 0 for a medical absence they should not have.

Well, can't do anything about it now. Law schools accept splitters all the time; don't let it discourage you if this is what you want. 160 is a great place to be, especially one month in.

@AlexandriaDeMattia https://7sage.com/discussion/56374/from-137-diagnostic-to-180-official-lsat-tutor

I endorse. The LSAT requires developing skills, and that requires focus, persistence, and forgiveness. Give it an hour a day and remember the questions are solvable.

I think one of the biggest hurdles with the LSAT is that it requires you to read in a way that you have not been taught to read. Most of school, casual reading, etc. is intended for you to sit back and absorb without much critical thinking. Then you repeat it back and get an A, or have an emotional reaction to what you hear and that is that.

The LSAT demands you pull yourself out of the words, see how things fit (or don't) together, and be critical of what is being said. If you skim over something, in most other situations you can shrug and just keep reading. The next sentences will probably explain the previous one. On the LSAT, if you get sloppy and go too quick, you fill your memory up with fragments and misunderstandings and they compound. Kinda like making a mistake early on in a math problem, then carrying over that mistake until you get the wrong answer. Then you have to go back and look through the entire equation and find out where you went wrong, and that is REALLY HARD.

His take it slow, don't stress, but do the work advice is perfect.