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berkelaa243

Joined: Apr 2025
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General · 17 point improvement - thank you JY and 7Sage!

berkelaa243

Saturday, Jun 30 2018

@ said:

What were the RC calls?

Leading up to the June 2018 test JY held some live reading comp. review sessions open to all students where we would essentially go through passages from various RC sections together, make low resolution summaries, discuss the passages and their structure, and then tackle the questions.

General · 17 point improvement - thank you JY and 7Sage!

berkelaa243

Saturday, Jun 30 2018

Thank you for the kind words everyone, it is much appreciated :)

General

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Saturday, Jun 30 2018

berkelaa243

17 point improvement - thank you JY and 7Sage!

So I originally sent a thank you directly to 7Sage, and Akiko encouraged me to post about it here in the hopes of helping/encouraging others.

I will try to keep this short, but I want to start by just saying a huge thank you again to the entire 7Sage team for all their work on this site, and especially to JY for all of his videos as well as the recent month-long RC review he held leading up to the exam. Those RC calls were strangely a lot of fun and I know they definitely helped me and others a lot. I would also like to thank people like @"Cant Get Right" and @Daniel.Sieradzki for their LR and RC sessions last year, and @Sami and @"Leah M B" for helping me out with mindset-related issues leading up to the test.

I started out with a somewhat inflated diagnostic score of 153 (I didn't use a bubbling sheet and had some questionable timekeeping practices). After that diagnostic, I stopped studying for about a year to finish up college. In 2017 I started studying again more seriously and after about 9 months with 7Sage, while working full-time, I scored a 170 on the June 2018 exam.

I feel like I made some definite mistakes in my prep, but also did a few things well, so if anyone is interested I could potentially offer some help. I am by no means an LSAT expert, but if possible I would love to help anyone I can to tackle this crazy test. Along those lines, please feel free to PM me or leave a comment if there is anything I may be able to answer or help out with.

Thanks again!

General · Answers in Question Bank

berkelaa243

Saturday, Oct 28 2017

@ Looks like it just got fixed!

General · Answers in Question Bank

berkelaa243

Saturday, Oct 28 2017

@ said:

@ Thanks for letting us know about that! It was the rare omitted questions that was throwing things off. It should be fixed now!

Great!

General · Answers in Question Bank

berkelaa243

Saturday, Oct 28 2017

@ said:

How can we say no to puppies? Answers on the far right column for LR now, with spoiler protection.

Thanks for the update! However, now when I go to the LR question bank I get this error message after a few seconds of having the page load:

"DataTables warning: table id=ss-user-questions-59f3f81cb4d41 - Requested unknown parameter '7' for row 775. For more information about this error, please see http://datatables.net/tn/4"

After getting this error message the last column ("Answer") becomes cut off. Not sure if it's just me. I'm using Chrome.

LSAT · PT33.S3.Q14 - Increasing the number of police officers to reduce crime

berkelaa243

Wednesday, Oct 25 2017

@ lol no problem, honestly I'm always baffled (and frustrated) by how I can get fooled by seemingly obvious/trivial tricks by the LSAT. It just goes to show how incredibly subtle the traps can be, and how much practice and understanding is required to beat these traps under time pressure.

LSAT · PT33.S3.Q14 - Increasing the number of police officers to reduce crime

berkelaa243

Tuesday, Oct 24 2017

This is a tricky question. Although (A) and (B) aren’t as tough, the differences between (C), (D), and (E) are extremely subtle. I think the key is to recognize just how limited the statistic given actually is. The statistic cited only refers to “many” major cities, not most cities or even all cities. It could very well be possible that there is a strong correlation between officers and crime rate in general for most cities, but that there are still many (read: only some) cities that are outliers. The statistic, properly used, only shows that there is at least one example of two cities that have the same number of officers but have different crime stats, and that consequently number of officers can’t absolutely be the only factor affecting crime.

With that in mind here’s my take on the latter three answer choices:

(C): The statistics cited are too narrow for this. If only some cities show no correlation it is still possible that the majority of cities do have a strong correlation. For that reason the limited statistics don’t show anything about the relative general importance between factors affecting crime, and probably aren’t being used for that purpose.

(D): Again, the statistic given, that only applies to some non-zero number of cities, probably isn’t being used to show absolutely that there is “no relation” between number of officers and crime rate. The statistic just isn’t expansive enough for that purpose because it only applies to certain cities without making any comment on the general trend for all or most cities.

(E): This seems to be correct because, unlike (C) and (D), it is actually a proper application of the limited statistic given. This shows that number of officers isn’t the only factor that influences crime. If number of officers really was the only factor then there wouldn’t be any cities which had similar officer numbers but divergent crime rates. This answer also makes sense in context because the other people’s argument is that only way to remedy crime is by increasing the number of officers. The statistic rebuts that claim by saying that actually there are some number of cities that have managed to have a lower crime rate than others (wildly divergent crime rates) even with the same number of officers. The result is that police officers can’t be the only factor as long as there is at least a single example of two cities with same number of officers but different crime stats, and that therefore in some cases there are other relevant factors.

LSAT · OR statements diagramming

berkelaa243

Sunday, Oct 22 2017

@ said:

A --> B

B --> A

do not comprehend how this allows for the possibility that both are out

These conditionals leave the possibility for both to be out because if you fail the sufficient condition by placing A out, then the rule becomes irrelevant allowing B to be placed out (or in).

A --> B is the correct way to diagram "or", because no matter what if you place one letter out, the other must be in (or both could be in).

General · Just feeling stuck

berkelaa243

Saturday, Jul 21 2018

If you're still in the 140s after completing the CC the first thing I think you must do is seriously reflect on how much you actually learned anything from it. I don't say this to sound harsh, but I would suggest that you ask yourself whether you retained the concepts in the CC and are actually implementing its strategies.

For example, do you know how to attack NA questions as JY does? Do you feel comfortable translating English into conditional logic using arrows/symbols? If I give you an average length stimulus right now can you quickly identify the premises, conclusion, support structure, and argument type? For RC, are you comfortable identifying passage structure and forming low res paragraph-level summaries in your mind as you read? For LG did you do any foolproofing?

When you went through the CC how much time did you spend on it? Did you attempt some of the questions in the videos yourself before watching the explanation all the way through? In the 140s you're probably missing a substantial amount of questions in all sections and probably of virtually all question types, so you should go back over your most recent PT and compare each question you missed to the content in the CC that covers that kind of question. Ask yourself what gave you difficulty on that question and then compare that to what the CC has to say about it. You might find that there are concepts in the CC you weren't implementing and you should start by addressing these.

Hope this helps a bit, feel free to write back if there's anything else! :)

LSAT · PT5.S3.Q01

berkelaa243

Thursday, Oct 19 2017

@ said:

That makes a lot more sense! Is there anyway to describe it mechanistically? (like how i negated the terry's statement into a Some Statement - or something along those lines?) Because, though it makes sense, all the other answer choices seem SO similar that if i were to do it again, I'd be in the same spot and not sure how to distinguish between them.

I'd honestly avoid using conditional logic here. I don't think either of two people's statements really lend themselves to it. Also for so early on in the section it wouldn't be good to get bogged down trying to translate this when it isn't all that helpful in answering the question.

LSAT · How much space is on the physical page during the real LSAT?

berkelaa243

Thursday, Jul 19 2018

The PTs you print from 7Sage will reflect how much space you will actually have on test day. Sometime around 2012 they switched to giving you more space.

LSAT · PT5.S3.Q01

berkelaa243

Thursday, Oct 19 2017

I think the trick for this one is to focus on Mark's response. Mark's conclusion is that whatever Terry said is wrong, based on the premise that there are in fact other reasons to go to college apart from wanting a decent job. So what would Mark's interpretation of Terry's remarks have to have been for Mark's argument to make sense?

Well, for Mark's response to make any sense at all, Terry would've had to have said something along the lines of "there is only one reason to go to college" or in this case "wanting a decent job is the only reason to go to college".

This is why answer choice (C) is correct. Although Terry certainly didn't say that wanting to get a decent job is the only reason to go to college, this is the interpretation of his statements that Mark must have had for Mark's argument to make sense.

LSAT · PT5.S3.Q23

berkelaa243

Thursday, Oct 19 2017

Hi. So based on the stimulus we know the following relevant facts about microwave popcorn:

It accounts for more than 50% of the total money from sales of microwave food products.

It takes only 3 minutes to cook (pop).

Therefore we can conclude that more money is spent on microwave food products that take 3 minutes or less to cook, than on products that take longer. Even assuming the "worst" case scenario, that every other microwave food product apart from microwave popcorn takes longer than 3 minutes to cook, this conclusion must still be true because microwave popcorn, which takes 3 minutes to cook, alone accounts for over half of all money from sales of microwave food products.

Hope this helps!

General · Reason for using 4 instead of 5 sections for PTs

berkelaa243

Saturday, Aug 11 2018

I never added a 5th section to my PTs and didn't feel any more fatigued on the 5th section on the real thing than I did on the other sections. I guess this can vary from person to person and maybe it would be worth it to try practicing with 5, but I don't think it's totally necessary.

The most important things when taking PTs are to use a bubbling sheet and keep time correctly. If you are doing those things I believe you shouldn't stress too much about whether to use a 5th section.

General · Bubble Trouble

berkelaa243

Tuesday, Aug 07 2018

Personally, bubbling one page at a time for LR worked pretty well for me. Since each page only contains a handful of questions, I found it easy to subvocalize the letter ACs and then bubble them in order quickly and with no mistakes. Even if I had to skip a question I would just choose some AC and bubble it just in case I couldn't return to it. For LG and RC I would bubble after every game/passage to keep my momentum going during it.

LSAT · Tips on getting faster on logic games?

berkelaa243

Saturday, Oct 06 2018

Sadly there is no quick and easy way to just suddenly get faster. LG is a skill that you have to develop through relentless practice and just grinding out game after game. If you haven't already, you need to foolproof, at minimum, all the LG in PT1-35.

As you are foolproofing and watching the videos, also make sure you are picking up on certain best practices such as circling "floaters", ticking off rules, etc. Eventually, with just tons of practice and staying mindful of building good habits, you should naturally improve both in speed and accuracy.

Believe me, I feel your pain though. I once had a timed PT where I went -15 on LG and was so baffled as to why because when I was blind reviewing it the games seemed so easy. On my real test, and after having foolproofed hundreds of games, I only missed 1 point on LG.

General · 17 point improvement - thank you JY and 7Sage!

berkelaa243

Tuesday, Jul 03 2018

@ said:

Incredible!!! I do have a question for you:

I am taking my test in July, and I work full-time as well, often 50-55 hours/week. What did you do for your last few weeks of prep directly before your test?

My last couple weeks I took things really easy/light, and focused on more mental prep to make sure I was in the right mindset for the test. I would talk to friends more, play video games, watch a movie here and there, go for walks, get plenty of sleep, and then do just very light review (just barely enough to keep the LSAT fresh in my mind but not trying to do "real" studying). I ended up feeling less nervous on test day than for certain of my PTs, which I think helped more than any intense studying would have for me personally during those final weeks.

@ said:

@ What were some of the things you did well? I also started off with an inflated 158 diagnostic score and have only been able to score 160 as my highest since then. In my diagnostic test, I got -0 on the logic games section and had time leftover on the RC section. Now, I haven't been able to complete either section on any follow-up PTs. I really want at least a 168, so I'm wondering what some of your specific tips are?

One thing I feel I did well was striking the right balance between quantity and quality when it came to studying. You can't brute force the LSAT, but at the same time you need to expose yourself to as many questions as possible to build familiarity and confidence. I did relatively few full length PTs, but I did a very high number of timed sections and question drills followed by, in my opinion, pretty solid BR and analysis. This helped me build knowledge and familiarity, which eventually translated into faster speed too. Basically, I am recommending that you focus on striking this balance for yourself, but please feel free to write back if you have any more specific questions about this.

If you are going -0 on games and have time left over on RC then I assume that LR is your weakness. What helped me was doing tons of timed sections, and untimed drills by question type followed by lengthy and detailed review. The other thing that helped was adopting a 15-in-15 timing strategy. This is where you try to answer the first 15 questions within 15 minutes. This helped me spend my time more efficiently by not wasting it on the part of the section that tends to have easier questions. This also helped me decrease the amount of time I would waste early in the section due to underconfidence errors on easy questions.

@ said:

Congrats, any advice on conquering MBT questions?

For MBT questions you have to work really hard on becoming fluent with conditional logic (including logic indicator words like "unless"), existential quantifiers, and also the basic math principles of percentages vs. absolute amounts. You also have to be able to apply a high standard of rigor when hitting the ACs, because often on difficult MBT questions trap wrong answer choices will be statements that seem intuitively true or convincing based on your common sense, but will not in the strictest sense be mandated by the facts in the stimulus. I hope this helps, but please write back if there is anything else I can answer or help with.

General · Pratice Tests

berkelaa243

Friday, Aug 03 2018

Yeah I would probably also say to place an emphasis on the more recent tests, although if you want to expose yourself to a wider breadth of material it would be good to do a couple PTs from each series (50s,60s, etc.). I wouldn't agonize over it too much though because in most regards the LSAT is highly repetitive so you would be practicing relevant material almost no matter what.

Study Groups · June'18 Study Group

berkelaa243

Wednesday, Nov 01 2017

@ Hey! I'm planning to write in June 2018 and would be really interested in joining the study group. Any chance you could add me? I saw you mentioned we'll be starting with PT36 and then do one a week, do you know when we'll be starting?