Self-study
Instructor
MichaelWright
Mike is from the Bay Area and has only recently learned to shut up about that. He studied philosophy at Yale, then went to Yale again for law school. There he discovered a deep, residing passion for not being a lawyer.
After law school, he went home and founded a tutoring company where every hour purchased was matched one-for-one with an hour given pro bono to low income students in Oakland. He did that for 10 amazing years, and he always insisted his LSAT students use 7sage – the company with the best curriculum and the best ethics (it’s not even close).
Now he’s living the dream – making content with J.Y. and Kevin, and helping to refine the curriculum he has admired from afar for over a decade.
He’s a father, a trad climber, a hockey player, and an avidly goofy goose.
Discussions
MichaelWright
Edited 4 days ago
I've had a few students with chronically painful disabilities, and the big lesson I've learned is to dedicate the right amount of care and attention to them.
For a lot of people that means paying more, or more conscious attention to the accommodations that would suit you best. Don't hold back on requesting helpful stuff or practicing in helpful ways just because it feels weird. I've had multiple students get accommodations to take the test lying down, for example, and one who wore a literal catheter to address stress related to bathroom breaks. Sure those are weird things to do, but they're also helpful and personalized so like who gives af about "weird".
On the flipside, though, it's critical not to view your entire LSAT study experience through the narrow lens of pain or disability. Your true identity is characterized by a much deeper set of traits than just "cerebral palsy person", and those other traits deserve conscious attention as well. "How do I manage studying on difficult days?" "How can I stay consistent?" These are everyone problems, not just cerebral palsy problems, and the lens you take on addressing them should be similarly broad.
So bottom line from me is think creatively and act boldly in accommodating your condition, but also view your condition as just one of many factors in your test readiness.
You got this, and you're far from alone :D
MichaelWright
4 days ago
Dude you for shnurz should do the core curriculum, or at least structure your practice around individual tags or question types. So much of this test is pattern recognition -- you're not doing yourself any favors by clouding the patterns looking at all of them at once.
Also, all LSAT tutors say "progress is like a staircase" millions of times because it's true. Very easy to get better at the core content and to have that make you slower, for instance. Keep chuggin along with conscious effort, and make your goal in each session to make new, interesting mistakes.
MichaelWright
4 days ago
Attunement is half the battle. Everyone has those moments; the main variable is how long they last. The physical head shake is for sure a great in-the-moment intervention. I also start reading aloud to myself (mumble style) when I notice my attention flagging. Harder to ignore words you're saying.
MichaelWright
Monday, Jun 29
@MinjunPaik great question, though. not as straightforward as my snippet for (E) makes it seem, I suppose.
MichaelWright
Monday, Jun 29
@MinjunPaik the evidence you're looking for in (E) comes from the "otherwise" clause, which translates to:
If a class does not involve extensive lab work, it will be conducted in a normal classroom.
or, in the contrapositive
If a class is not conducted in a normal classroom, it involves extensive lab work.
MichaelWright
Edited Saturday, Jun 27
Seems like a subset of the "lack of support v. false conclusion" flaw. Your thing is more specific, but to use some conditional reasoning, if you find an example of your thing, then it'll have that tag.
(Which, as we all obviously know, does not mean every question with that tag will exemplify your thing.)
MichaelWright
Edited Saturday, Jun 27
IMO formal argument forms are best understood via whitelist: there are so many ways to mess them up that memorizing what you can do is most efficient. Anything not on that list is verboten, and there's only 6 things on that list.
I recognize that link is just a partial answer, though. As for a list of actual terms, there are too many to actually list. There are lots, tons, loads, gobs, heaps, innumerable terms that just mean "some", for example.
MichaelWright
Friday, Jun 26
@businessgoose michael.wright@7sage.com for the record and y'all feel free to reach out.
goose i'll hit you back via email but the main advice is to simultaneously treat those scores as good data points on the narrow measure of test-day challenges, but also not to give them too much influence over your conception of your own test readiness if you're consistently PTing higher.
factors that are unique to test day are worth taking seriously and drilling with intention and precision, but they're also not the end-all-be-all, and if you address them you can go into your next test with more confidence that your PT performances will shine through
MichaelWright
Wednesday, Jun 24
@BaileyLuber UHHHH ummmm something something slow is smooth... smooth is good.... fast is dumb.... ur bad somehow... i'm great
MichaelWright
Edited Wednesday, Jun 24
@mvivot you still have to make sure the term used in the conclusion doesn't match the premise. this question is thorny AF so i'll give a different example:
let's say the stimulus gave us:
A -> B
A
----
B
if an answer choice gave us:
C -> /D
C
----
/D
that would still be correct
MichaelWright
Wednesday, Jun 24
@Fsanelli have you clicked the little lightbulb to the right of the text? there are two explanations there (which you can swap between using the little < > arrows below).
happy to answer any follow-up questions you have
MichaelWright
Wednesday, Jun 24
@glazedlayz i think that's a solid read, yeah. b/c of the "clearly".
MichaelWright
Tuesday, Jun 23
+1 to what the others said, but also low key I do LR sections backward for exactly this reason -- when I'm running low on time I'm much better at shooting from the hip on easier questions. Sorta high risk, high reward, and certainly not for everyone, but that's what I do ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ .
MichaelWright
Tuesday, Jun 23
Here's a general video I made on this subject. Happy to give more nuanced advice if you've got any follow-up questions.
MichaelWright
Monday, Jun 22
Here's a general video I made on the topic, but also given what you described in your reply to Serin, I wouldn't count untimed practice out. The BR you're doing isn't truly blind, and the benefits you're seeing seem to lean a lot on the additional info you get from seeing the results.
I'd recommend doing a couple sections totally untimed, or conducting your blind review truly blind, to see where your true content ceiling is.
MichaelWright
Monday, Jun 22
Read RC sections semi-critically (sorry for the vagaries; it's not a simple test). Passages feature plenty of arguments, and often you're asked to Weaken/Strengthen/Evaluate those arguments (here's an example).
Often this comes in the context of a phenomenon-hypothesis passage, where you're asked to provide or eliminate alternative explanations for the phenomenon in question.
Usually these aren't deliberate flaws, as you describe. More like places where more evidence would be relevant, and it could go either way. Still though, there's plenty of value in recognizing common argument forms, especially those that are often flawed (like analogies or weighing factors or eliminating options or causal reasoning). If you see an analogy, for example, you can often expect a question asking you to critically evaluate that analogy.
MichaelWright
Monday, Jun 22
@KatrinaFurman You're already off to a great start -- over the course of your participation in this post, the way you've articulated the difficulties you're facing has gotten much more precise.
Generally speaking, you practice [blah] by isolating [blah] and doing [blah] intentionally, marking your success in these drills not by # of questions answered correctly but by whether you did [blah] well.
1: I don't have a particular opinion on daily scheduling aside from "be thoughtful and intentional and play around with different configs."
2: See the note on [blah] above -- do timed drills where the pure focus is on spending a certain amount of time on various problems. Like do questions 1-10 of a section in 10mins, then do them in 5mins, then 13mins. Mark success based on whether you in fact took that long.
3: You seem to qualify for accommodations, so I'd recommend you apply for those. Use the extra time to take breaks, or apply specifically for a start/stop accommodation, which gives you (I think around) 30mins over the course of the test of break time you can take at will, even within sections.
MichaelWright
Thursday, Jun 18
Sasquatch, Godzilla, King Kong, Loch Ness, goblin, ghoul, a zombie with no conscience.
Question: what do these things all have in common?
NONE OF THESE ARE THREATS COMPUTER EXPERTS ARE EQUIPPED TO ASSESS
MichaelWright
Thursday, Jun 18
@BaileyLuber okay BAAIIILLLLEYY let's see your results. FIRST TRY, STANDARD SPEED, NO HACKING
also yeah i'm such a slow reader that basically any of the "double conditional" ones past like level 5 I ended up YOLOing
MichaelWright
Wednesday, Jun 17
Just for data's sake, here's my first Logic Blitz score. Reading fast is hard!
MichaelWright
Wednesday, Jun 17
This is a cheat sheet of all our stimulus logic tags, which includes a ton of common flaws and argument forms, with links to their relevant lessons and sample problems.
@steamboatwillie Yeah "few" is misleading as a negation of most because it doesn't include "none", which is a legit option. "Half or fewer" or just "not most" should be your go-to negations.