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artemkha326
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artemkha326
Friday, Nov 28 2014

post the question, it is hard to follow what you are talking about.

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artemkha326
Thursday, Nov 27 2014

You have really backed yourself into a corner here unfortunately. The question, realistically, is not whether to take the December LSAT or postpone to February. Its whether you will be ready for February if you made studying # 1 priority.

I made the mistake of taking the LSAT unprepared, and it was literally a waste of time. If you are not testing even close to your desired range at home, you are not going to pull off a miracle on test day. It is not worth it for you to throw away 2 tries this application cycle, to then spend months preparing and only have one crack for the next cycle. I hope you do not have to skip this cycle, because thats tough, but the last thing you want to do is come out of the test with a 155 in February and not get in anywhere (having spent the time and money on applications)

You can be ready for February if you do everything right. My advice to you is to continue practicing, but do so methodically. Everyone can do this test with an hour per section. Your goal is to develop skills that will let you solve the test with a high degree of accuracy and then to become proficient enough with those skills (through repeated practice) to start scoring in the high 150s/low 160s on properly timed tests. Work on accuracy, then timing. The good news is that you seem to have accuracy down. So the question is, are you skills scaleable so that you can get to the right answers quicker, or are you just brute forcing everything. There is very little room for mental brute forcing for a score in the high 160s.

Now some more specific advice. Before you take any more timed exams, you need to make sure that you are very comfortable with conditional logic, causal reasoning, and any other knowledge based skill (i.e. questions types, what they entail, types of logic games). It is a huge short cut to read about this stuff from courses like 7-sage or any others, as opposed to figuring it out on your own. I assume you know some kind of a curriculum that broke the test down for you.

Then, I suggest you start taking timed sections of the LSAT, not the full test, which you blind review. Blind review is key, youtube 7 sage blind review method. For example, focus on LR for 2 weeks. Taking sections only can make it easier to process data (which is what timed tests really are). Take 2-4 of the older PTs, take the LR sections timed over the 2 weeks, blind review each section after you take it. This will familiarize you with the LR section. Then do something similar with RC and LG. Blind review and reflect on where your weakneses are.

You should start scoring in the 150s once you do that. Once you get that far go back to taking timed PTs and reviewing them, start by taking 1-2 full tests per week at most. Be smart and methodical with your review. For example, if you lose 10 points on a LG section, do not just fold that test away and never come back to it. It really helps to retake logic games. You will have to develop a personlized system based on your own weakneses. That is really the hardest and most abstract part of the studying process.

Once you get to about 3-4 weeks away from the actual February exam. Perhaps start taking a few more exams per week and still reviewing them. Dont burn too many in case you will need them for the long haul prep down the road. Also dont hesitate to take 1-2 days off per week to rest.

Anyways, thats my advice. I would normally recommend a few more steps for each of the 3 sections types specifically. But thats a lot of info.

FYI, after struggling for a while in the 150, i have been scoring in the high 160 for the past 3 weeks. My goal is mid 160s on test day.

PrepTests ·
PT139.S4.Q9
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artemkha326
Monday, Sep 22 2014

It came down to D or B for me. I went with be because in the rush I erred in assuming that if they were first to discover agriculture they did not eat the widest variety of wild plants, therefore, via contrapositive - they did not find wild plants on the site. Therefore, they found cultivated plants. This to me seemed more plausable than eating wild plants than no one else ate equaling "using" a wild plant like no one else did - which is what B does. Upon review of course B is correct.

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PT111.S2.P3.Q15
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artemkha326
Monday, Jul 21 2014

Any comments on whether this is too long to take on passages like this one considering its a harder passage but with only 6 questions.

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Wednesday, Sep 17 2014

artemkha326

LR sections in Older VS Newest LSATs

I have been prep testing with the newer LSATs (66-72) for the past few weeks. I have used up 66, 71, and 72 so far. I saved the newer ones for the tail end of my prep and was excited to tackle them since I started scoring from 160-163 on prior preptests, which is my target range. Unfortunately, I have scored a 156/157 on all the newer ones.

The difference in the score can be accounted for by my LR section performance alone. On each newer exam I have lost 18 points on both LR sections combined. Where on the older ones I lost anywhere from 8 to 12 points combined.

Any thoughts on how the newer LR sections are different and what is a good last minute approach to take toward improvement?

P.S. both my speed an accuracy seem to have suffered, however, it is more my accuracy.

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artemkha326
Tuesday, Sep 16 2014

I also typically have about 15-20 minutes for the last 10 questions. There is never enough time on this exam so micromanaging time creates nonconstructive pressure for me. What I found to be more helpful with LR is not actively keeping track of minutes spent on each question but rather having an efficient process where you sense that you have spent too much time on a given question and move on.

PrepTests ·
PT101.S2.Q24
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artemkha326
Sunday, Jun 15 2014

JY, what frustrated me about answer A being wrong is that it is stronger than answer E because if something cant be proven true (/PT) then it cannot be proven true by observation (/PTO). Does that make sense? In other words if something cant be proven true at all, then this includes that it cannot be proven true by observation. This is not an extra assumption in my opinion, this is a logical rule. Answer E is more precise with its wording and is all wr need, but I think this is a faulty question because it has 2 right answers. Answer A is broader but it encompasses cannot be proven true by observation under cannot be proven true. Any thoughts?

PrepTests ·
PT149.S4.Q24
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artemkha326
Monday, Sep 15 2014

JY,

Can you further explain how I can draw the distinction between translating this as EA (employed artist) and /EA (unemployed artist) VS UA (unemployed artist) and /UA (employed artist) during the exam?

I did this question following the latter approach and this approach renders E as correct rather than A. I assumed that one can be only an employed artist or an unemployed artist. Therefore, if one is not unemployed then one is employed. So I did not think that symbolizing this the way I did would lead to the wrong answer. I came up with

/SSJ --> /UA --> I which equals to (E) /SSJ -->I. But when I translated the way you did I got A as correct answer.

P.S. I think a lesson based specifically on the finer distinctions when translating would be a helpful part of the core curriculum.

PrepTests ·
PT148.S3.Q12
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artemkha326
Monday, Sep 15 2014

Answer D is really tempting because it seems like a correct answer had this been a PSA question. Because if humans "choose on the basis of emotions alone" and emotional tendencies remain unchanged, then it can be argued that humans cant choose more wisely. D is too strong for a NA question that is why E is a better answer. D is too strong because it is not necessary for humans to make ALL choices on the basis of emotion alone, only that they dont choose more wisely.

PrepTests ·
PT103.S2.Q21
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artemkha326
Thursday, Sep 11 2014

After reading the stimulus I was looking for an answer that would point out: the lack of evidence for sanity during the shooting in no way supports that the accused was insane at the time of the shooting. Instead, the correct answer seems to advance the idea that the evidence that the client was sane after the shooting can be evidence that the client was sane during the shooting. This seems like a stretch but is it consistent with the argument and does address a flaw. This seems to be one of the questions where you are better off focusing on eliminating the wrong answers as opposed to looking for the right one.

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