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bjbeach93959

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General · How's this study method?

bjbeach93959

Wednesday, Jul 19 2017

@ I've never considered that strategy but it makes perfect sense! My justification for doing strictly untimed is that timing myself at this stage would only confirm that my fundamental skills were lacking, which I already knew. So by doing them untimed until I felt confident in my skills, I figured I would build a strong foundation and all I would have to worry about after that point was speed. But know I'm beginning to realize this approach is a bit too crude, and I could use a more structured strategy that focuses on improving my weaknesses and simulates actual test conditions. As of now all I'm doing is using overall test scores as indicators of progress.

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General · How's this study method?

bjbeach93959

Wednesday, Jul 19 2017

Thanks @! That was a great response with a lot of useful info.

Yeah now that you mention it I don't really have any structure or plan for preparing other than taking as many tests as possible and interpreting upward trends in scores as meaning that my skills are improving and I'm more prepared for the actual test. I like the X-Games with training wheels comparison, it makes a lot of sense that the time constraints are what makes the exam so difficult. Exams at my university are 40 minutes each so I definitely agree that time constraints can be the hardest part of an exam, even more than the material itself.

As for learning fundamentals, I'm using some old Powerscore bibles and Nova's "Master the LSAT" as supplements. Admittedly I don't use them much, I occasionally read through a section and scribble some notes down then practice some drills in the book. I'm currently on the second chapter of the logic games book, and it actually helped a lot to learn about "not rules" and diagramming advice. I had no idea about any of that prior to reading the book. I also have a logic textbook to refer to, but I'm not sure how useful that is for studying the lsat as it's pretty basic.

I'm not familiar with the phrase "blind review" or any of the resources that people usually incorporate into their study, I kind of just assumed studying past exams in itself was sufficient. But I'll be competing with everyone else taking the lsat and if they're all taking courses and making structured study plans then that tells me I need to step my game up! Thanks again for the advice!

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Wednesday, Jul 19 2017

bjbeach93959

How's this study method?

I'm in my fourth week of study for the lsat and my approach has been to go through as many tests I need to untimed until I'm consistently within the 175-180 range. I've heard that you shouldn't waste any tests by not adding time constraints but I have a really big pool of past exams to study from so it's not really an issue in my opinion, and I've started at the oldest (1993) tests I have access to and am working up until I feel comfortable enough to ramp up the pace. I'm guessing I'll be able to add time limits around the end of July as my scores have been slowly improving from the mid-to-high 160 range to around the mid 170s, but again this is untimed so I'm not sure if that's really any good. Does anybody else have experience with this approach and would you recommend it? For the now the plan is to study consistently and take the test in December, but part of me thinks I can be ready in time for the one in September.

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