This question was really pissing me off when taking the preptest and especially when listening to the explanation. That is until JY ended the video with the cat whispering in his ear about going to college and the much-needed laughter came about. I'm now ready to get smacked in the face again by the LSAT writers!

It just depends what your goals are and where you're at. If you're truly shooting for top scores, you need to learn the fundamental basics of logic before you can consistently begin scoring highly. If you're just going for around a 160 most people can just get bye thru doing the basic curriculum and then drilling/pting a lot. But this is all dependent on where you're at and know that some ppl will have different results with the same modes of studying. The best advice I can give is don't half ass it. If you feel like you aren't doing whatever drill you're on or whatever it is at 110%, then re-evaluate and try to lock in or take a break/rest for the day.

Above comment is correct. A deep understanding is the best thing you can do for your score before jumping into practice tests. If trying to be a high scorer, you need to understand on your own why you got a question wrong (ie the flaws and everything else--just letting JY explain it to where you think you understand isn't enough). Personally, I finished the 7sage curriculum and jumped immediately into practice tests but while I learned the question types and stuff, I didn't feel like I fully had the basics down. Thus, I bought the loophole and it built on my 7sage knowledge perfectly. Also, I did everything the book said (such as making probably 500 flashcards to learn every question stem, their keywords, back up plans, etc and reviewed them constantly for weeks) and by the time I finished, I was still around -5 to -6, but felt like I understood the questions much better on review and within a month or two of practicing got down to -3 LR avg with -2 to -0 being in my wheelhouse (and rarely ever worse than -4). While I'm still working to improve (especially on my RC), it was all about getting the basics down, and then only after doing so, practicing a ton that I really saw the improvement I wanted to see. If your goals are top scores, embrace the grind and do the extra stuff they say to do that you don't really want to. I truly think hard work is the differentiator on this test. Now if you're on the other side of the spectrum of wanting to basically get an average or slightly above average score, I'd also agree with the above comment. You can mix both practice and curriculum. The lower your score is rn, the faster it'll improve initially. I jumped ten points in a few months from my diagnostic with not very intense studying. If that's your goal I'd look to get a baseline understanding of the question types and flaws and continually drill and do a preptest or two a week with strong reviewing. But know that once you hit the 160s, there's a very strong plateau that is hard to overcome because the curve breakers begin to come into play and mastery is required to jump into the high 160s-170s. Anyways, the best thing I can say is to keep at it even when discouraged and review, review, review! Best of luck fellow LSAT friend!

Hello, Mr. Allen. I'm only a recent grad but I appreciate your encouraging statement for us younger folks. If I may offer any advice for understanding the questions/test, it would be to buy the loophole by erin cassidy and do everything it says. I made a ton of flashcards with each component of the question/flaws she gave (which i think was mostly assigned as part of the homework, although I may have gone a bit more in depth than what was stated), but this led me to understand that each question has a certain ac it's looking for, keywords for identifying their type, backup plans, common flaws on questions etc. It's a completely different outlook for me from when I started. It minimizes any thinking process of what I need to do for each question because I can recognize the type of question from a couple of words in the question stem and can then know exactly what type of answer to hunt for. I would say learning these patterns really sped up my processes and in turn I average -3 LR with a lot of content left to study. I do believe that if you do everything the loophole says and then drill, then you will be able to obtain a good score. RC Hero is also probably the closest equivalent I have found for RC. Keep on keeping on and good luck with your test. Your obituary already sounds quite impressive but this will definitely be a boost lol

I did straight thru and I now am going back to revisit strengths and weaknesses using not only drills and preptests, but also the individual curriculum section for whatever question type I'm focused on when needed. I'm still early on into it, but it seems to be somewhat working. I also had a 9 point increase from my diagnostic to finishing the full curriculum. On top of this, I do have The Loophole in my backpack ready to go for when I inevitably plateau.