I've been grinding every single day BRing, drilling old tests, going back to the CC and I still am stuck a whole month later at a 161.

I just finished PT 68 and I got -12LR (-6 & -6) -0LG -13RC

I don't even know where to begin with RC so I have neglected it a bit. But for LR, it is my main focus and always has been. I am so inconsistent with questions and it drives me nuts. For example, in section 2, there were seven level 3 difficulty questions, five level 4, and two level 5. Out of the statistically 'hardest' 14 questions in the section I missed one level 3 and one level 4 question. The other four I missed were all one and two level difficulty questions. I even constantly have a good 5-6 minutes left in the section to go back and answer a few skipped questions.

Does anyone else have this problem? I may be over analyzing the easier questions, but I really don't know how to fix this problem. In hindsight, for every LR section I would say all but one or two are very simple, easy mistakes (read QS wrong, lost my brain, didn't identify the conclusion, didn't find the tension in a RRE question). It's fine if that was once in a blue moon, but these little mistakes are very consistent from section to section. Each time they are something small but different. I started to create an excel sheet where I go in detail trying to reenforce what I am doing right and dispel the wrong tendencies I have. If score is a tell of that success then I am not sure that is working out too well.

I feel like I am right at the tipping point of everything just clicking but my scores say otherwise. It's confusing and hard to figure out exactly how to push myself over the top right now. Any suggestions would be wonderful!!

As always, thanks!

So, I've been studying for the LSAT on and off since January. Two months ago my best friend and I linked up to study and it has been incredibly beneficial to us both. We are each hitting about 60 to 70 solid hours of studying every week for the past 2 months. Over this time period, my scores have plateaued in LR. I am averaging -6 on a section of LR and it is driving me bonkers.

We have printed out and completed pretty much all 20-29 question type drills, we BR thoroughly, and I even went back to refresh with flashcards on the all the type of flaws. I'm at PT 59 and I have seen almost all LR questions from 10 up until this PT. Our method of attack seems to be working at least for my buddy--he got -0 on 4 LR passages in a row under 29 mins. Unlike me, my friend is a gifted thinker, but I can't say all this studying is clicking for me. Side note: it was actually quite amazing to see this happen. He went from -8/-10 per section LR average to -0 overnight.

I feel as if I am going backwards a bit. And with December approaching, I'm stressing out because of how far away I am from a 173. Is this a normal stage of studying? or should I change things up? Time is a little bit of an issue for me and I have identified where that time is going to, but I just make silly mistakes. I told myself to slow down on reading the stimulus in my last LR timed section (4/5 difficulty). Once again, I missed seven. Four of these questions came down to either subtle words in the stimulus or the ACs that I glossed over. I even correctly spotted the only major flaw on a 4/5 difficulty question in 15 seconds, but yet I picked the wrong answer choice. One of the missed questions was a 1/5 difficulty NA.

I keep making minor mistakes like these on every section test I take. Even though I want to say they are minor, they are actually huge. These 'minor' errors are holding me back and I cannot see how else to drill or study to get rid of them. Should I just spend 30 mins on a question I got wrong creating analogous arguments, playing around weakening/strengthening ect. them? I'm just venting at this point but if anyone has any advice at all, I would really appreciate it. Thank you!

I postponed the September exam and I am planning on taking the December test. I'm averaging 157 on timed and 170 in BR. Each day I am working my ass off doing timed LR sections with very diligent BRing. For LG, I'm at PT 28---slowly grinding out fool proofing.

After BR, when I see the right answers, it kills me because I see how perfect the right answer choices are. On the answers I get wrong on BR, most of the time I am down to two answer choices. I feel like I have a solid grasp at overall LG and LR understanding. As for RC,I have set it aside for right now as I am not horrible at it.

Despite what I think my understanding is, my scores say otherwise. My question is in regard to how realistic a 173 would be by December? My best and most recent PT was 49: 157 timed, 172 BR.

I am stressing because I want this score more then anything, but it does not seem like I am getting anywhere.

It would be a bit much to type out my entire method of studying, but I do BR very seriously and I BR every single question over again on a clean sheet.

Any advice would be very kind, thank you!

I just was going over RRE questions in BR and a strategy came to mind on how to eliminate or pick answer confidently. I would say most, if not all, RRE questions are asking one to explain why something is different or despite them seeming different, why they are similar.

In the process of BR, I found this approach to be helpful: step one, depending on if one is looking for a difference or a similarity, make sure the correct aspect is present in the AC; step two, ask WHY this difference/similarity is important.

I write this because I've seen a trend where I get stuck between two or three ACs on hard RRE questions. I know exactly what I am looking for in the realm of differences or similarities, which usually leaves two or three left, but then I get stuck because LSAC writes the diff/simi cleverly. Taking a second and asking "why is it important" has made me totally and confidently eliminate answer choices that looked correct to me before I asked it. Asking "why?" seems to focus my thinking on how the AC's proposition is relevant in its attempts to fix the problem more clearly then just reading it and seeing how it "sounds" when pushed back to the stimulus.

I'm not sure if everyone else already does it this way, but I thought I would share what helped me.

Thanks and study hard!

I just finished a PT that made use twice of "it is," in english to convey logic, in one SA question. This indicator is not in the CC and honestly, thinking about if the word following "it is" was necessary or sufficient slowed me down drastically.

"it is" is a group TWO indicator. This might be intuitive for most people but it definitely was not for me. My uncertainty was compounded when the context of the statement was "It is imprudent to appear prudent." Of course, finding the conditionality is a lot easier when the statement is "it is good to go outside," but I wanted to share what I have learned in hopes that others will not be thrown off if you happen to come across this indicator in the future!

Just finished my first year of attorney life (I'm licensed in CA). Open for any burning questions!

I previously posted my imperfect LSAT journey on my profile, so I'll spare you the background info again here. (See https://classic.7sage.com/discussion/#/discussion/21896/my-lsat-journey-is-over-144-166-rough-road-inspiration-top-3-tips)

I graduated from USC Gould.

I will quickly note that, regardless what you intend to use your law school degree to achieve, the doors a Juris Doctor will open for you will be incredible.

AMA!

I just came across this explanation and I realized how much J.Y.'s humor has had a positive impact on keeping me upbeat while studying over this past year. Here's a post to appreciate the Yoda of the LSAT study.

Hopefully other 7sagers can share their favorite explanations too. :)

I have recently spent a ton of time perfecting flaw questions and I have improved immensely on them. For most questions, I can adequately predict, articulate, and attract out the flaw into an AC. For some odd reason though, all of this work on flaw questions has drastically made my NA accuracy and also my understanding of them, decease. This is a bit alarming, as I have done a tremendous amount of them already.

At the moment, I just feel lost when I am answering a NA question type. I went back through the CC and refreshed my knowledge on blocking and bridging types. But even after this, I almost never can guess the nessesary assumption, regardless of the difficulty.

I can very much see how NA and flaw are related. Because of this, I was wondering if anyone who does well on NAs treats them like a flaw question when it comes to identifying the gap. But then the difference between the two would happen in the answer choices. I.E.- flaw (describe the flaw) and NA (go a bit more concrete and bridge the flaw into the argument or block the cantropositive of it).

I made this post specifically because, although NA questions aren't necessarily new to me, I feel as if there is a tiny wall that is preventing me from this "ah ha" moment and I just don't see it yet.

Any advice on how to view a NA question type would be great. Thanks!

English is my first and only language I know.

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-57-section-4-passage-2-questions/

PT57 S4 P2 Q8

Passage summary:

If you don't want to read the passage, the author thinks science and humanities can benefit by a synthesis of the two, the result being the coined phrase of "scientific humanism." The author is neutral in regards to favoring either discipline and blames the two areas having a misunderstanding of one another that is preventing them from coming together.

Question 8. Inference: Author Agree

Answer A: Scientific Humanism is characterized by the extension of description and explanation from science to the humanities.

When I first read this, I thought it was stating "from science to the humanities" in the form of a spectrum. In other words, my first reasoning was analogous to the song America the Beautiful, where it states, "from sea to shining sea." The song is not stating "crowd brotherhood from one sea and put it into the other." But the AC here should be understood as "take description and explanation from science and put it into the humanities." English is strange and I am wondering if anyone else thought this way. I understand my first reasoning is not the correct way of viewing the English for this question. So, how can I not make this mistake again?

Thanks in advance!

10/26/2021 Update: I am currently a 2L at USC Gould. Feel free to DM me questions about the LSAT, the application process or law school. My journey was far from ideal, but I hope I can provide some insight.

Overview of my journey:

I'm writing this for a bit of inspiration for anyone that is in need of it because my journey was not easy, but it sure paid off because I stuck to it.

I studied on/off for nearly two years total. My diagnostic was a 144 back in Jan 2017. After finishing the 7Sage CC, I was sitting at a 152 in May of 2017. I made sure to really take my time with the lessons and I hope everyone does the same as well--it was time well spent and I would definitely do it this way again.

Post CC was really where the grind began. I was dead set on a 170 score.

My first take: 161 in December 2017.

Second take: 161 in December 2018.

After studying for 10 months 5.5 days a week for 8 hours a day, I received the SAME EXACT SCORE.

I was actually depressed after this test. I was emotionally numb for about a month, it was rough. The following weeks post-results felt like a nightmare I would eventually wake up from. In particular, LSAT was my life at this point, and to have zero improvement on the only thing I was focused on was one of the toughest feelings out there. Most of all, I had nobody to blame but myself.

I took a two month break and got back to hitting the test hard again for 4 months.

Third take: 166 in June 2019.

Same study plan, but I used the BEST tutor, @"Cant Get Right." I'm not sure how the rules are for plugging people, but he was just phenomenal with picking out my weaknesses and helping me combat them in an understandable way. I cannot say enough great things about Josh. Here is his website. https://www.nevermorelsat.com/

Top 3 tips:

DO NOT USE ALL THE PT MATERIAL. I cannot stress this enough. I would feel so confident after blind reviewing a PT from learning an immense amount from it that I would take another right away WITHOUT drilling weaknesses. Not surprisingly, I would receive similar scores, on average, because I failed to address weaknesses. Sure I spent days on BR ripping apart questions, but what's that worth if I never addressed the underlying problem by drilling it away? Make sure to save PT material and use it wisely. Personally, I ran out and that created a ton of unnecessary problems. Without drilling in-between PTs, I would waste limited PTs on full tests to receive very little benefit from using all that material. Please don't make this mistake.

Good, bad, or otherwise, DO NOT let the overall score get to you, ever. When practicing for this test for an extended amount of time, the most important thing to know for keeping one's mental in the right place is that an overall score is simply a really poor gauge for your improvement. Seems a bit counterintuitive, right? Of course, to combat this, 7sage takes the last 5 PTs and averages them for your improvement score. Although this is more accurate, it's still a poor indicator of IMPROVEMENT. Allow me to explain why. LSAC has thousands of tricks that they use. Some happen more than others. It takes time to learn these tricks and just because you learned a few new tricks or new ways of thinking on your most recent PT BR, that doesn't mean those aspects are going to be tested again in the next PT you do. It actually would make sense that ideas being testing on in, let's say, PT61, are going to be testing totally different tricks than those used in PT60, since the previous test may have been released for people to study it. For example, LSAC is NOT likely to put two 5 star questions with a very similar small trick in them, in sequential PTs. But some people take PTs in sequential order. So while you are actually improving, you are likely being tested on the areas you have yet to ever see. So please don't look at the final score and think THAT is the measure of your improvement.

Here is an optimistic way of thinking that helped me keep my drive, despite the scores: The more missed questions, the more opportunities I had to fix problems. The more problems fixed, the less problems I could potentially run into on test day if I ran into a similar question/topic.

The only aspect that should be celebrated or frowned upon are similar questions that you've studied before/have seen and now on this second time: 1) you recognized the similarity or not, 2) you got it right or not, 3) you skipped it or not (strategically) 4) you got it correct again, but faster or not. Situations like this are a direct measure of improvement and they are key to watch out for.

This community has helped me so much. So if anyone wants to chat about anything LSAT related, has any questions, or simply wants to vent, please feel free to DM me :D

What a journey this one was and I would not be in this position without 7Sage and the community.

Thank. You.

I am trying to keep a positive hardworking attitude towards the LSAT, but this has been increasingly more difficult when my recent 4 PT scores after the CC slowly dropped to horrific all time lows.

Before starting the CC, my initial practice test was a 141 (ouch). I took the CC very seriously. I paused every video to do the question before hand, never skipped anything, and I have been working even harder during the current PT phase.

My scores for the PTs 36, 37, 38 and 39 are: 157, 153, 157, 150; BR: 167, 162, 161, TBD.

36: LR -11, LR -9, RC - 7, LG -5.

37: LR -11, LR -6, RC -12, LG -8.

38: LR - 7, LR -6, RC -12, LG -5.

39: LR -15, LR -8, RC -12, LG -6.

For my blind review, I go over every single question again, on a freshly printed PT and I look at the analytics thereafter. I dive deep into the questions myself first, then watch the videos for those questions that 1) I chose the wrong AC twice, 2) I chose the right AC initially and changed to an incorrect AC in BR and 3) the questions I successfully changed to the right AC.

For the last remaining questions (right both times), I will check to see if I was at all swayed by any of the other answer choices. i.e. did not eliminate an AC, or I possibly circled and erased an incorrect one. Ultimately, I am trying my best to not only learn why I chose the incorrect AC, but also why I did not choose the correct AC. I then strive to couple this mentality with solidifying the correct thinking I made when I picked the right AC twice.

I really spelled out exactly how I blind review so I could possibly get feedback from the community if I am maybe doing something wrong. It is a bit disheartening to see these scores after the hundreds of hours I have spent studying. Nevertheless, I am determined to do well and will not let this stop me.

Any suggestions on how I can improve my BR mechanism? What more could I add into this process?

Thank you all and sorry about the long post.

I studied using ONLY 7Sage from April 2017--scoring at 141--to December 2017 where I got a 161 on the Dec test (-9 RC -11LR -5LG), but I used every single PT to study with the exception of PTs 71-84. My goal is a 170+.

Background

I have recently finished the Bible Trilogy and thought they were a fantastic addition onto the 7sage course, specifically for learning little tips and tricks. My game plan at the moment is to take PTs 50-84 before the November test. I am not sure how good of a method this is, since my material will be pretty limited. Of course, I will be reviewing and BRing each test.

There were two good things that came from getting the score I actually was not happy about. One was that my highest PT score, that was also my last three PT scores before the real test, was a 161. So I performed just as well on the real deal as I did my PTs, even down to questions missed per section. The other good thing is that I now have had experience with test day in general. Both of these factors have affected the way I PT this time around.

Yesterday, I took PT 50 and got a 167 on it (-8RC -2LR -3LG). I am excited at this score but it might be inflated as I did remember some LR questions and a whole passage from RC that was just used as a drill in the RC Bible. Nevertheless, even retaking sections when I had no break the first go around, I never once went -0 on a LR section and I have done so on this PT.

Question regarding prep

My overall question feeds off this inflation dilemma and my previous run; how can I adequately prep when I have instances where I remember questions/passages/games and I also don't have a ton of "new" material to work with over the next 4 months?

Any help would be wonderful, thanks a lot.

Starting back in January 2017 I began 7sage with a 144 diagnostic. The thousands of hours studying lead up to today, November 17th, 2018. The journey has been a roller coaster of emotions to say the least, but the feeling of walking into test day confident as ever made EVERYTHING worth it. 7sage continues to be the best course out there and the community is even better. Thanks to everyone in the webinars, to those who indirectly helped me by leaving comments/posts, to those who that gave me a good laugh after being stumped by a question, and, most of all, J.Y. Ping. I never thought this day would come so fast, but almost two years later and here it is!! I think I hit somewhere in the mid 160's today and I couldn't be happier.

Time to get those applications ready. I wish my very best for those of you studying, cheers!

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-72-section-3-question-06/

I am having such a tough time on this question. I have written out my thinking, watched the explanation a few times and I am still stumped by this question. Answer C is giving me trouble.

The goal here is to support the author's conclusion that the duration being long and everything else being short is not enough to classify the unusual GRB dichotomously. Two assumptions are being made here: 1) that the long duration is not enough to classify it as long, and 2) having almost everything short is not enough to classify it as short.

With B, I can clearly see now that this answer denies assumption #1. The duration being long would sometimes allow one to classify it as such. This would weaken the argument.

However, C states that ONE instance of a "long" property is less important than other "short" properties.. Wouldn't this deny the assumption #2? If one out of all the number of properties is a long duration and this duration is not as important as those short ones, then why would this answer help the conclusion? By explaining that duration is lower in importance along with the fact that it's severely outnumbered by short properties, the answer seems like it's implying that a "short" classification would be more fitting for this GRB. I do see the words "more important," but a short property that is important surly is more important than a long property that is low/not important.

Any thoughts on this question would be extremely helpful, thank you.

For those of us 7sagers that have done countless PT's and drilling packets, I think it would be safe to say that we all can round about guess what difficulty a question would be---from 1-5 (how it is shown in the analytics). Because of this, I recently started guessing, on each blind review question I did, what the question difficulty might be. I have really found this to be a valuable tool to see what exactly my confidence is in a particular question compared to the community's results in the analytics. At least for myself, I found that my own perception and biases of how difficult the question was tends to skew the 1-5 difficulty guess. Where the questions I got right and I am confident in are usually lower then the actual analytic difficulty. On the other hand, on the questions I got wrong, my guess tends to be even or of a higher difficulty then the actual analytic difficulty. The most helpful part of this process is finding out the questions I got right both in timed and in BR, but I still rated the question higher then the analytics. These questions are ones that would slip though the cracks as the analytics are unable to capture this.

Using the 1-5 metric difficulty guess has started exposing question types that, although I got it right both times, I need to work on more to drop my perceived difficulty. It shows were I am quick and confident, but it also shows where I am lacking this.

I am not sure if this would be useful at all for anyone, but I wanted to share a little something to the community that I learn a lot from. Thank you!

P.S. - I do know there is a 'circle the question' confidence method, but I redo every question in blind review over again so this didn't work for me.

Hello 7Sage (:

I have been studying on and off since January, with school making studying a bit difficult. Regardless, it is now 72 days until the September test and I am stressing out. I need a 173.

Baseline scores: 141, BR-152

Average for the past 3 PT's (42,43,45)

154 (LR: -20, RC: -10, LG: -7)

159 was my most recent PT score.

BR-167.5 (LR: -9, RC: -4, LG: -1)

169 was my most recent BR score.

Since the test I took last week, I have made a goal to fool proof all LG from1-35. Is this a proper way to go about LG prepping?

School chilled out a bit now so I can devote 8 hours towards LSAT each day. I am also using analytics to work on my problem areas in LR- (Flaw, SA, MSS and REE) as well. I feel so stressed that I won't reach my goal and it is just eating me up inside!! Any advise would help.

I would say I am at the point where indicators and making diagrams has become second nature for me. But, this particular problem has my mind going in a loop. Logic makes more sense to me when I understand why certain negations are valid--i.e. DeMorgan’s Law and proofs. So any explanation for this example would be helpful.

"G cannot be cleaned until F is cleaned, unless F is cleaned second."

I will explain my reasoning so that one is able to point to my error.

To me, I view this problem in two parts, before the comma and after. Before the comma, using until as a group three indicator would cancel out the cannot, thus making the conditional G --- F. As for after the comma, I choose to use the unless portion (group three) to negate the previously stated relationship (G --- F). The negation of the sufficient condition of G before F would make it F before G -----> F2

My diagram would look like this. (F ---- G) ----> F2

Somehow this is wrong and I think it has to do with using three indicators instead of two, specifically hinging on the "until" term.

So my question is 1) is it wrong to use until as an indicator here and 2) when and how can I know to use an indicator or not.

Thank you so much!

A will go to B except when C happens.

Maybe it can be done conditionally, I'm not sure. I've been thinking about writing C as a sufficient (either positive or negated), but I realized that except is saying something totally different then our typical conditional "lawgic." Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's saying that when it's satisfied, the rule is irrelevant and when it's negated, nothing happens----the rule still stands while also not triggering anything. This is polar opposite of the way our conditionals are understood. So I was thinking it ought be represented in a special way.

J.Y. used the diagram method, but it doesn't really sit well with my style of understanding. I was wondering what others do.

Thanks!

I just scored a 161 timed and a 174 BR on PT 69 (shooting for 170 by dec). I watched the recording of myself taking the PT and wrote down the time I spent on each question, but how can I effectively find some common/frequent problems I am making by analyzing the film? I don't have a particular reason why I scored a -13 on LR timed when I got -2 in BR other then the fact some questions took 2-3 mins.

I just sent a message to a few 7sage tutors for some help (thank you @akistotle for the advice).

Does anyone have particular things to look for when watching a video of PTing?

If cars drive faster, there will typically be a higher accident/fatality rate.

PT 57 Spoiler below

I'm writing out an explanation for https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-57-section-2-question-20/ and I got to AC C where it's wrong for different reason, but I do see another assumption that I stated above. I wanted to know if this is alright for the LSAT.

I just finished going over a warm up piece from LG PT46 and had a bit of a realization during BR. I commented at the link below and I would absolutely love to know what other 7Sagers think about this added step going onto each LG game.

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-46-section-4-game-2/

It's sorry it's so long. Thank you!!

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-77-section-3-game-4/

In this game, I struggled so hard during time because I didn't know if the volunteers could show up twice in one group. For instance, on my timed go, one of my boards had H(S/T), N (L), H(T/S) in group Z.

My question is where was the rule stated that they can't show up twice in a single group? I never assume this is the case unless told otherwise. So maybe I am missing something?

In blind review, I just went with the assumption that they could not stack and it was incredibly easy. I don't ever want to run into this problem again in the future. Any thoughts?

EDIT: The only line I can see here where that might explain it is with the statement, "each committee will have three volunteers assigned to it."

But wouldn't 3 Haddad's mean there are 3 volunteers. Maybe I am taking too much of a "game piece" approach. Where in my mind they are saying three game pieces are being assigned to each.

I have had some major struggles with weakening questions lately. After drilling this question type, I realized that weakening questions simply state the flaw in the argument. Because of this, would it be a bad approach to find the flaw in the argument and, rather then descriptively describing it, anticipate this flaw as an answer choice that exposes it?

Thank you for reading!

https://classic.7sage.com/lesson/preptest-69/

I am retaking this PT and I really struggled with this passage. In particular, I have trouble understanding the difference between studies being debunked vs. studies giving two opposing facts.

I have come to understand that two ideas being opposite of one another does not lend credence to one theory at the dispense of another. This is reasoning was distilled in me by certain flaw questions that do precisely this. In this passage, we are told that person #1 states there are only 13 plants. Person #2 states there are hundreds of these plants (or only 13). Now, what else is there in this passage that would make the reader assume that #2 person is right, #1 is wrong and not the other way around? The author picking one side over the other is where I disagree incredibly.

The passage is difficult if one doesn't understand that the author thinks the dodo theory is BS. If one doesn't understand this, then they come out of this passage with the wrong idea that there are two opposing views and one shouldn't commit a flaw and pick one to be more right than another. This is exactly the way I was thinking. Questions #22, 24, 26 and 27 all rely on the subtle tone/view the author has---dodo theory is not the cause of the nonexistent phenomena.

Maybe LSAC got around this flawed territory by describing the author committing the flaw, then simply asking us questions about what the author thinks rather then what actually is the case.

My question is when are we logically right to choose one fact over another given the small amount of information in the passage? Yes, the author might have chosen a side, but is it right to throw logic out the window and go along with what the author thinks? Is it even possible that that an author can commit a flaw in an RC passage?

Thank you for reading.

Edit: I can see now where the author includes "the foremost expert on the plant ecology of Mauritius." So, the author's reason would be credibility I suppose. While it does help a bit when picking between two, it surly doesn't support the notion of the idea now being a "fact" as the author concludes.

Admin note: edited title

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-69-section-3-passage-4-passage/

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-69-section-3-passage-4-questions/

I just finished my first pretest after completing the CC and I have jumped up 18 points in my LSAT score. Needless to say, I am super stoked to see that these past few months have paid off.

Regarding the question posed in this topic post, I missed a flaw question by picking the same cookie cutter answer choice under timed conditions as well as during a freshly printed BR. This was an AC that J.Y. always says will reappear as the correct AC in the future (I did PT 35). I realized, ironically I guess, I have a flawed sense of understanding about this particular flaw. So, I was wondering if there is a function to find where this cookie cutter answer choice would have actually had been the right AC, so that I am able to fix this mistake for good.

Thank you!