White heterosexual male here. Ergo, don't have any 'typical' diversity factors and I'm curious if I could write a diversity statement about the languages that I have learned/studied.

I actually think I have an interesting story to tell around learning languages - committed myself in High School to learning another language because I thought it would let me see the world through another lenses (the linguistic/psychological research actually says that this is not one of the many benefits of bilingualism lol); self-studied Arabic for 9 months - FAILED, self-studied Spanish for ~1 year - FAILED, self-studied French and it actually worked out! I was able to teach English in France and have around a ~C1 proficiency (can communicate well but not fluently). From there I studied Chinese (studied abroad) and got my HSK 3 which is a true intermediate level and have also circled back to Spanish and am working on that which is slowly improving.

Don't want to write another essay per se but I'm hoping to be able to express how intellectually curious I am since I didn't attend a prestigious undergrad (although have solid GPA). In general, learning languages have also been a big part of my adult life and I feel like it would be important to include.

On the flip side, I don't want this to feel like a stretch especially because I am not claiming actual fluency in anything but English lol.

Thoughts?

Any input/feedback on my approach of how to close the gap between my last four timed PTs (172, 172, 168, 168) and their associated BR scores (176, 176, 177, 177) would be much appreciated.

Timing (and also confidence in my timing) has seemed to be a big issue in RC. To mitigate this I have been doing full fresh RC sections and redoing full-RC sections (1 of each/day). I’ve been doing this for ~week now and am now much more comfortable with an full RC section. I plan to continue to just do this. And also thoroughly analyze the mistakes I make in both my repeat and fresh sections. My BR for a fresh RC section is typically -3 to -1 but seems to be a downward trend which is good so I think I’m making gains in accuracy as well.

Timing in LR is sometimes okay and sometimes not. It just seems that when I’m in a good section I can have up to 8 minutes left after giving each question an attempt. Other sections I only have 5. I don’t think I have a particular weak point in terms of a question type so my strategy here is to just get into a rhythm with taking PTs and really BR and analyze any question that gives me trouble. I don’t know if doing LR sections would be super beneficial to practice timing since it seems that my speed just tends to correlate with how good I feel in the questions. I typically make 1-2 mistake I feel like I could have avoided and fall for 2-3 curve breakers.

LG has been pretty consistent with usually -1 or -2. I never get a question wrong when I blind review the games (which I just do timed a second time) so I’m hypothesizing my issue to be with the initial setup. Also, I find that I can just make stupid mistakes (like not manipulating symbols correctly in my head). My goal here is to just continue to full-proof LGs and do full LG sets such that my speed in making inferences allows me to “buy” extra time in working out the questions so that I don’t feel as under pressure or can even write more things out. Also, after every game I think I am going to take a second and reflect on what aspects of the game mandated that specific setup; hopefully that will give me a greater comfortability in setting up a new game.

I’ve taken about 10PTs and have been studying for 6 months. Any feedback or comments from the other side if you were in a similar spot and how long it took you to reach your goal would be greatly appreciated!

Is anyone else feeling the tendency to try to write out a 'Why ___ Statement' for each school they apply to. I've written two unsolicited ones to essentially my TOP choices and I don't think my application is a shoe-in at either so I'm hoping this will be beneficial. I am also writing two other mandatory 'Why ___ Statements' (Michigan and Duke).

Weirdly now I feel 'guilty' for not writing unsolicited Why ___ statements to some of other schools lol.... Probs just stressing out at this point and I feel like any other Why ___'s would not be as convincing since truly they wouldn't be my top choices. Idk...

Anyone else feeling this?

LR used to be my strongest section but because LG and RC have improved so much LR now seems to be what is holding me back from the mid-170s and looking for some advice.

My hypothesis is that it is because I have not taken that many actual PTs (14 in total over the course of 7 months of full time studying with a lot of those in the past couple of months. (That being said, I have seen a TON of LR material: EVERY SINGLE LR question from PT 6-36; 72-81 (used as individual sections) and then my 14 PTs on top of that).

Overall I think this was a really good strategy because it gave me a good foundation in the basics but what I seem to struggle with is that there always seems to be a new cookie cutter or trick or flaw that I wasn't quite familiar with such that I could not get it right under timed conditions. When I do a new section; my average for an LR section is -2.5 but the variance is what worries me; sometimes I'll go -1, other times I'll go -4.

Whenever I don't understand a question under timed conditions, I print it out, rip apart the logic of the stimulus, write out why each AC is incorrect and why the correct AC is in fact correct and if it is a new logical form that I am unfamiliar with I have a whiteboard next to my desk that I right down the logical form on so that I am looking at it all day; I also put particularly interesting questions into playlists and study the logic of the question from time-to-time. All to say, I think I am doing all of the right things but progress in decreasing the variance has been slower than what I would have hoped.

Any feedback or advice from others who might have had this problem before?

(Side note - I have also worked on timing strategies as well and think I have something that works for me so I don't know if that is the problem either)

Anyone else feel like the difficulty on the earlier LR sections has an ENORMOUS variance? PT6 LR1, for example, went -0, with time to spare; PT6 LR2 on the other hand was hands down one of the hardest LRs I've seen!! (in my opinion).. somehow walked out of there with a -4, which I'm super proud of given the perceived difficulty of that section.

Anyone else feel this way???

Been waiting months to write this post.. The journey to this score was longer, more difficult and more much painful than I imagined when I picked up some Kaplan Prep book in mid-2019.

It's taken a couple of days to be able to physically process but I finally scored 171 on an official take!

Took a ~diagnostic (had been studying a little before) and scored a 166.. this was what I would later melodramatically refer to as the 'kiss of death' - it was a total fluke and in no way was this representative of my skills at that point in time...subsequent PTs would prove that I was actually closer to high the 150s to low 160s. In the next month I took around 10 PTs (with no BR and no drilling) and never once was able to hit at or above 166.

Months later, 'I saw the light' and signed up for 7Sage. After completing the CC and doing about a month of drilling LR/RC full sections from the early PTs and full proofing every LG from 1-35, my first PT was a 169. This was my first major victory, which inevitably was followed by what felt like a setback, a 159.

First official take was May and I got a... 166. At the time, my PTs were all over the place (169, 159, 171, 163, 165...) and 166 was actually my prep test average. At the time May was the only flex scheduled and it felt like this Covid thing would be over by now and we'd be back to full length tests so I never put too much stock into this one. I had taken a PT during the interregnum (after I wrote it but before I got my results) and had gotten a 172 (highest yet) which fueled me to push further still.

Going into August my PT average was just above 170. But something happened on LR of that section.. its been commented that the first questions in that LR section were unusually hard and that just got to me; i'm sure that it tanked that LR section and also probably the first part of my next section which was RC.. if it was a 5 section test then I'm confident than another LR would have been able to balance me out to a 168 but alas another 166. What was crushing was looking at an official take that was the same as my diagnostic; even though I knew by this time my diagnostic was inflated - I was frustrated and embarrassed that I "hadn't" made any progress (even though I know I had)...

Anyways, something happened after August and I just started to care so much less. By this point I had not had a PT below 168 since April... I felt assured that I would be able to get above a 166. But then, about a week before October I had two back-to-back PTs where I got a 167... these PT scores felt crushing, it felt like I was slipping at the very second I needed to be at my peak. In some ways this weirdly made me care less... 'caring less' weirdly ended up being the key to doing well on that exam.. anyways felt like I did okay on LR, RC and LG but my couple of low scores before the exam made me second guess... I was hoping for anything above a 168 and was registered for November as well hoping that I could at least increase my score and then to push forward and get out of my slump by the November exam.. but alas it wasn't necessary I got a 171!!!

And yet, I still feel like this post has not adequately captured the ups and downs that have comprised this journey. It wouldn't have been possible without 7Sage and J.Y.! Thank you to everyone who interacted me me on the forums (particularly on my posts where I was asking for help or, oftentimes, just complaining and looking for solace).

Has anyone else full-proofed the so-called 'pattern', 'circular' and 'mapping' game types as a set?

PoweScore did a further breakdown of some of the games that 7Sage has labeled as "Misc". Curious if anyone else has done this and if this has helped them further recognize the any meta-inferences within these game types?

(for clarification what I mean by meta-inferences is like in In-Out games where the out group is full so everyone else filters in)

PowerScore Post for reference: https://blog.powerscore.com/lsat/comprehensive-list-of-rarely-tested-logic-games-outliers-and-oddballs/

Okay, I've heard from a podcast or two that NYU allegedly does NOT like multiple LSAT takes and that in the past have asked for an addendum requesting applicants to describe why the average of there scores should not be considered. (and I know... i know... USNWR only requires reporting the highest, but again I've heard that this is something that NYU has asked for in the past)

I can't seem to find anything like this online now so do you think this has changed or what?

Though these questions don't appear on every PT I tend to go 50/50 on whether or not I get these right. Sometimes the right answer speaks to me, other times I have no clue; either way it's pure intuition and I'm curious if anyone has some advice for how to approach these questions more systematically?

Are there any types of cookie cutter wrong / right ACs?

I'll throw out something that I ~think~ I picked up from looking at one of these questions - an attractive, though albeit wrong, AC is one that is internally coherent (makes sense) but goes off in a tangential direction.

Hey everyone, I’m unsure as to whether I should write an addendum for withdrawing from a course while in undergrad after the add/drop period resulting in a “W” on my transcript.

The reasoning is because I was enrolled in a Politics of China class and realized that if I completed the course at my home university then I would not be able to transfer over/ take the associated course on my study abroad trip (in China!!!) in the subsequent semester.

When I withdrew my advisor mentioned that it would be a small black mark on my transcript so I have been somewhat worried about it ever since. I ended up still being a full time student that semester but I’m a little concerned that ad coms would think that I couldn’t handle the course work during a particular semester since I had dropped from ~18 to ~15 even though there are multiple other semesters during which I was enrolled in more than 18 hours.

Here's my situation - I have been out of undergraduate for about 3 years but am fortunate to have incredible relationships with multiple professors particularly in the economic department since I was part of a special program there (did a really great independent study with one, continued to work with and successfully published a paper with another after graduation, and even went back a separate time to speak to current students about why they should be an Econ Major). I think there are probably three professors that could write particularly strong letters on my behalf from this department.

There is also another professor in the Poli Sci department that I had a very strong relationship with my first couple of years while in college (worked with him to present a paper at an academic conference) but not as much during my Junior and Senior years (just happened that I had completed all my Poli Sci classes early and ended up being more involved in the Econ Dept during the latter half of my years) and unlike my relationships with professors in the Economics Dept, I have not kept up with him.

Additionally, I worked for ~2.5 years in a professional environment and think that there are 1-2 people that I worked with in a supervisory role that would also be able/willing to write me a strong letter.

So far, I have decided that I am definitely going to ask two Economics Professors and one letter from my work experience. My question is how I should allocate a 4th letter, if at all? I don't want to overwhelm the application reader with taking on a 4th letter but I know that it would be strong.

Option 1) Additional Academic Letter (from Poli Sci)

Option 2) Additional Academic Letter (from Econ)

Option 3) Additional Professional Experience Letter

Option 4)

No forth letter

I know I'm in a great spot here but just want to make sure that I make the best decision.

Writing this for myself but hopefully someone else finds solace in this as well..

Got my results back this morning and was quite disappointed in the results. Scored a 166, which is the same score I received on the official take in May.

I’m so much better at this test than I was in May (PT average at the time was 166). I have improved, but frankly it sucks that this isn’t reflected in my official score. My PT average is exactly170 right now and I haven’t scored below a 168 in more than 5 months on a PT. My BR is consistently 176+ (and trending upwards) and if I can better my process even more, there are probably a couple of additional points I can add to my timed results.

Something happened in LR where I was just off my game and because that was the first section I could feel myself more distracted in RC. Based on the PowerScore prediction, I had the hardest compilation of sections and that might have affected my confidence too.

Either way, I’m ready for October. November too, if need be.

“So what, now what?”

Does anyone have any good examples of LR questions (from PTs 1-35 / 36-46 / 72-82...lol) which deploy some complex causation logic and or use some implicit assumption that is a central part of the argument.

An example of the latter type of question would be a question I recently did (can't remember the PT) where scientists claimed that, "If there was extraterrestrial life 50 million lightyears away then they would be able to contact us. Ergo, there is not extraterrestrial life 50 million lightyears away" [The implicit assumption being that we have not been contacted by extraterrestrials (lol)].

Another example is Disease X causes increased levels of serotonin. Serotonin is correlated with high-blood pressure. Therefore taking a bill which reduces serotonin levels might be able to reduce high-blood pressure [The implicit assumption being that serotonin actually CAUSES high blood pressure].

Questions can be any "type" (flaw/strengthen/weaken/etc.) really would just love to see more of these.

Thanks!

Any suggestions?

7/8 LR mistakes on my last PT were overconfidence errors (didn't flag the question and answered in less than 1 minute). Caught all but 4/7 of these relatively quickly on BR. Any tips on how to overcome this. I don't think it was my nerves on this exam (though that has been a factor in the past).

I typically make 1-2 overconfidence errors per PT but this PT 82 was particularly brutal, I guess.

Trying to figure out a timing strategy without a lot of luck...

Has anyone who took their LSAT writing results on September 3rd or later gotten their writing sample accepted? Worried at this point that my session has been flagged which is entirely possible because I had my backpack in the corner of my room which apparently triggers their system.

Hoping it goes through before the 18th so I can get my results back for August...

Hey Everyone!

Curious about how everyone approaches those SUPER detail oriented questions in RC? I'm talking about the questions that ask something like, "Each of the following is mentioned as an attribute of the opponents theory EXCEPT" so every incorrect AC is more or less explicitly stated in the passage and you just need to figure the detail that wasn't discussed.

I'm happy with my accuracy on these questions (typically get them correct) but they tend to be more of a time sink that other questions in RC (~1.5-2 minutes). For background, I tend to spend a lot more time upfront in the passage highlighting and then even writing a super quick outline of the passage on my scrap paper (3.5-5.5 minutes).

Curious if anyone has any suggestions for me. Do you think that since I spend so much time upfront I ought to answer these questions without looking back at the passage for the most part and I need to work on holding more of the details in my short-term memory? Should I just resign myself to the fact that these questions simply reward the ability to discriminate between what is explicitly stated vs. what is not and accept that these questions do in fact take longer than others?

Hey everyone! Currently in the midst of doing this for UVA which requests that all applicants:

"list your significant extracurricular, extra-professional, community and/or other activities in the order of importance to you. Please provide a brief (1) description of each activity, and (2) specify your involvement, (3) length of involvement, (4) special projects, and (5) responsibilities."

I know a couple of other schools ask something similar so UVA isn't the only one that this applies to.

Anyways, curious as to what the optimal strategy here is in terms of quantity vs. quality - probably like a lot of people I joined a TON of organizations but probably only had a serious and sustained involvement in 3-4. On my resume I've limited the number of organizations that I list to just those that I would be confident talking about if anyone were to ask me about it - I mean after all no one is really going to believe that I had a meaningful involvement in 12 different clubs/organizations.. do you think the same principle applies to this type of statement: List and explain everything you did in the handful of clubs and organizations that actually meant something to you or exhaustively list everything you were engaged in and emphasize those organizations that were most important?

Also, been out of school for 3 years now and have not been involved in any extra-professional activities - how bad is that? Not super worried about it but kind of feel like I probably should have been doing SOMETHING lol.

I think ad-hominem is often colloquially defined as a direct character attack: Jim says the earth is flat but Jim is an idiot therefore Jim must be incorrect. This is probably the most common iteration of ad-hominem.

But contrary to popular notions of an ad-hominem, LSAC defines ad-hominem as anything that distracts from the argument at hand and redirects the aim toward the maker of the argument. To this end, I've also seen ad-hominem take the form of:

Attacking the interest/motivations of the argument maker: Jim says the earth is flat but Jim runs a flat-earth film festival every year so Jim has an interest in getting more flat-earthers to show up to his event. Therefore, Jim must be incorrect.

Attacking the past actions of the argument maker: Jim says smoking is harmful for your health but Jim smokes 2 packs of cigarettes per day therefore there is reason to question Jim's beliefs.

Hypocrisy: Jim believes that reality is only an illusion yet Jim has worked strenuous a 9-5 job for 30 years to provide for his family. Clearly Jim's beliefs to not match his actions therefore those beliefs are questionable.

Apologies if this is pedantic but almost got a question wrong because of this and I thought I'd flush this out on a post.

Are there any other types of ad-hominem that you are aware of? Trying to make a list.

So I'm at the point in my studies where my BR score for LR (both sections) is consistently very low (-1, -1, -4, -2, -2) on my last 5 PTs but my timed score has lagged significantly (-6, -5, -7, -4, -7).

Part of what has been frustrating me is that I typically finish an LR section with plenty of time to spare (10-5 minutes left) but it just seems that I am never able to allocate those last minute effectively - I will confirm a wrong AC or two (that I'll then get right in BR w/o the time pressure) I'll go back to questions that I got correct that I probably shouldn't be double-checking, etc.

I'm aiming for low-mid 170s so I don't expect my BR to become my timed score and I'm not shooting for perfect either but I'ld like to get a better grasp on how to allocate the remaining time that I have bought with being so efficient on the 1st round.

I'm spending this week on drilling full LR sections in the 70s (already done these so I'm not burning fresh PTs in case any one is wondering). I'm trying to track 1) how much time I have left at the end of the section 2) how many wrong ACs I end up switching to right (and vice-versa). Should I also be tracking how many questions I unnecessarily go back to? What else should I be tracking?

In addition, I'm continuing to drill weaknesses that I found and really 'full-proof' out questions that I missed the day before to cover any gaps and familiarize myself with the feel of the newer questions.

Any thoughts? How have other people improved this?

I've heard conflicting advice on including those 'extra' sections (Academic Interests / Travel / Random Facts) intro your law school resume. Does anyone have some thoughts on this?

Right now I have my resume drafted as to include all three (because I have space and because I just wanted to put everything on the page and then remove as necessary).

How ought we interpret 'often' in lawgic?

Colloquially, 'often' might be invoked to 'a majority of the times' but it seems to me more analogous to "many" in that it can but does not necessarily imply most.

Instead it seems to me that 'often' implies that there is a some intersection in the same way that 'many' does. Just like 'many', often is subjective to the expected frequency of a particular event and not indicative of a particular objective standard (more likely than not aka 50% + 1).

But of course, my opinion is irrelevant... what have the LSAT gods thus decreed on this?

I noticed that in some of the newer PT's there is a small 'citation' at the top of some (but not all) of the passages.

E.g. Passage 1 of PT 81 - "This passage was adapted from an article published in 2003". Just curious if this is something that is EVER relevant to answering the questions?

I could see LSAT using an excerpt from a "scientific journal" and there being a curve-Breaker question that hinged on the knowledge that this was geared towards non-popular audience, for example. Has anyone seen anything like this?

If not, why are they including this piece of information on some (but not all) of the passages?

This has tripped me up on one or two questions in the past because I think I'm carrying my own sense of what a generalization is. How would you say that LSAT defines this term?

Just going out on a limb here... I presume that "strongly suggested" in the context of the application instructions means that you definitely should do it. The ask is to explain test history if submitting more than one LSAT administration (I have 3 - 166, 166, 171).

No marching bands (or anything of the sort) were practicing outside while I was taking the test. Nerves definitely played a factor though. Is this something that I should still write given that I don't have a ton to say? Or do I just write what I can about nerves being a factor?

Has anyone noticed the "Some...." as a cookie-cutter trap answer choice for tougher strengthening/weakening questions?

(Disclaimer - I don't think this would work all of the time; and would actually love to look at counterexamples if anyone has any). But I think it might merit some additional attention/scrutiny if you are going to select an AC to strengthen or weaken an argument and all you have in your pocket is a some statement - kind of like going into battle with a BB Gun.

I think the reason for this is that some statements are inherently weak (or NOT powerful, in Loophole terminology). Some could be 1 out of 100 or 4 out of 2 trillion and unless the conclusion is conditional claiming that all As are Bs then its probably won't do much to claim that some As are /Bs. I could see this being particularly the case for causal arguments when there are potentially multiple and countervailing factors at play (as there almost always are).

For example, prolonged exposure to sun without sunscreen is known to cause skin cancer. If we wanted to weaken this argument for example, "some people who go to the beach everyday and never wear sunscreen will NEVER develop skin cancer". Well of course! There are always going to be a couple outliers but that doesn't wreck the fact that one thing (prolonged exposure to the sun without sunscreen) causally contributes to another thing (skin cancer).

I also think that the same reason that some statements make them incorrect (they are indefinite, vague and inherently weak) also make them appealing. After all, some could mean 99.99% but that requires the additional (and unwarranted) assumption.

Can anyone else validate this reasoning or rip it apart with an accompanying explanation? :)