Hi @ Just wanted to confirm that the other upcoming review dates (specifically this Saturday and next Wednesday) are accurate - I'm taking in December so I don't want to burn any of the really recent tests yet, but I'll absolutely join in if you're reviewing 40's/50's.

Yeah, I'm just worried because I've used up all the 50's now, my error rate hasn't decreased and I want to save 60 and up for full-timed tests. I just feel like BR, which I've relied on so heavily in the past, isn't working anymore and I don't know what to do.

Sure, I'll eventually discover whatever subtlety I missed, and I'll be able to avoid it in the future, but they'll always just create new subtleties. The majority of the time, I can narrow it down to 2 answer choices, but beyond that, I'm at a complete loss.

I think to answer that correctly, I'd have to ask you to clarify what you mean by inference rules/tricks/notations. I'm only a free subscriber so I gained my foundation from the Powerscore books, but I rely mainly on the techniques J.Y. teaches.

If I'm understanding you correctly:

As far as I know there aren't really "rules" per say that relate to inferences. For example, you're not going to find a rule that says, "When you have two if-->then statements you can make such and such inference." Inferences result from pushing rules up against each other. It's something that you just get better at with practice and drills.

Tricks are not something you should be concerned with. This is one of those "silver bullet" concepts that a lot of prep companies propagate. You're not going to find tricks. And if you do, they will be very rare. Relying on tricking...isn't reliable. Instead you should focus on building solid formal logic skills, learning the different game types and practice making inferences.

I will say that seeing how J.Y makes his notations is very helpful. Many of the books like the bibles have very "stiff" notation styles. When you get to games that twist it up a bit, this can cause you to panic. I remember before coming to 7sage seeing weird games and thinking, "OMG how do I notate that?" One thing I learned from J.Y. is that some rules just don't notate well so you just have to write down what you think best describes the rule.

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What I am trying to get at is there doesn't seem to be much up front info other than going through the actual game. So are we supposed do develop our own methodology as we do LG's and review the explanations?

One thing you'll realize after going through a bunch of games is that the most important thing is that:

1.) You realize what type of game you are playing

2.) Once you realize that game you are playing you can setup the game board (different types of

games have different types of setups)

3.) You can push rules together to make inferences.

IMO these are the 3 most important things. Other than that, there's actually not much to a logic game. J.Y's videos are helpful because they help you get better at each of these 3 steps. A lot of prep books make it seem like you have to have a terribly complicated methodology for each game type. When I read the bibles that was probably the most intimidating part. But there's actually not much to the different game types. You don't have to develop much of a methodology.

I found someplace on the internet that classified logic games by type for games 29+ and I've been using that to drill. It's helped immensely. Rather than just doing random games, you can focus on one type specifically. I wish I could remember where I found it, but it was just a free list someone had put together for the benefit of others.

@.rizeq Yeah, I'm finding that the higher numbered tests have about 3-4 LR questions each section with different logical structures than those in the 40's. Not drastically different mind you, but enough to eat up some time and add an extra couple wrong answers. For example, yesterday I did a LR section from PrepTest 56 and got to question 23 with 8 minutes left. I was pretty psyched because timing has been an issue, but it seems like something I'm gradually overcoming. Mind you, the last couple questions were crazy difficult and ate that time up.

I'll also mention that the main reason I asked this question is that due to the way most prep companies structure their courses, there seems to be this widely held conception that 3-4 months is the standard amount of time you need. The more I read, the more this seems to be false.

@ Yeah, I mean I still might take the September test, I'll just have to see how the next month goes. But I strongly suspect I will hold off until December. I had qualms about doing so, but I've read several of your posts about postponing and they've solidified how I'm going to make my decision, so thanks for that! I'm not going to rush anything.

And I have found that my gains have slowed. I didn't realize how much harder it is to gain points in the later stages of prep. It really is all about making sure you can answer EVERY possible question the LSAT can throw at you. That's why I said my score varies. I'm sure on some PrepTests I'd score 165 but on others I'd score below 160.

@.rizeq I use 7sage for logic games and for forum help. When I first started I bought all the Powerscore Bibles and went through them religiously. They gave me a good foundation, however I all but abandoned the LG advice given in Powerscore as J.Y's methods are far more intuitive. The bibles did however give me a good understanding of the LR question types. I decided to start my prep with LG simply because formal reasoning underlies absolutely every aspect of the LSAT. I've become very good at Logic Games and this has helped my LR immensely. I built my LR skills by BRing and frequenting the Manhattan forums which can be very helpful. I went from about 10 wrong each section to about 2 or 3 wrong each section, although since I've reached the Preptest 50 range, that has changed. It seems the higher numbered tests have much more difficult LR sections. I had started RC but pulled back after my LR scores went down. Right now I'm focusing on perfecting LR and LG and I'm very close. After that, I intent to incorporate RC back into the mix.

@ I'm using the second way which is the way J.Y. uses in his Logic Games Videos.

@ ahh that's right. Acceptable Situation questions! Yeah, I think I'm going to take the extra couple seconds. In the off chance that something actually does occur twice, it ends up taking more time. It was just something that I caught myself doing and I wanted to be sure to eliminate any bad habits!

@ I'm not sure I entirely understand. I didn't peg that line in the stimulus that uses the word "generally" as a principle affecting sentence. It's just saying what would happen if people generally didn't buy the advertising. The principle seems to be in the last sentence of the paragraph, and it uses the word "any."

And I'm not sure I agree that (A) is only focusing on what 1 person would do. It's a general principle meant to apply to everyone, not just a single person. It's just describing what "one" (used in the general sense) should do given circumstances.

Not trying to be difficult here. It just really doesn't make sense to me. I thought the only real difference between the answer choices was the use of "many" in (B). No?

@ Right, thanks for the heads up.

To be clear about Rule #3 regarding copyrighted content. What exactly does this mean? Obviously, not posting full questions, but are we allowed to post word for word excerpts of answer choices?

@ Thanks so much for this explanation. I usually frequent the Manhattan LR forums to see explanations and none of the 11 replies were as remotely helpful as yours. In fact, they made what is really a simple problem, incredibly more complex. This makes so much more sense.

I suppose my confusion came from wanting (A) to be worded as, "The meteorologists station forecast rain correctly more often than did..."

I should have realized that since I'm supposed to take what's in the stimulus as true, any increase in the number of forecasts from the meteorologist's station would necessitate an increase in correct forecasts, proportional to greater than 50% of the forecasts.

@ The whole problem is confusing me. There's absolutely nothing about it that I understand.

@ Thank you for breaking down the stimulus into it's components. I got that far, but I'm having trouble seeing how they relate to each other and then to the answer choices.

(A) I understand the first part "it is always laudable to do something helpful to someone." The second part however, I do not understand. How can we tell that not doing something laudable (forwarding the number) would be wrong if one has led the person to believe one would forward the number.

The second half of this answer choice basically contains the principle, "If you tell someone you'll do something and then don't, that is wrong." When on Gods green earth were we told that? As far as I can tell, nothing in the stimulus shows conditional reasoning.

(B) Wouldn't this be correct? I don't understand the explanations for why this is wrong.

C D and E I eliminated easily. However, I just don't understand A and B.

I'm also finding that process of elimination is a much lengthier process to use for RC. Even in questions that don't ask using most/least strongly supported terminology, there will be answer choices that seem like they could go both ways until you rule out EVERY OTHER answer choice.

I mean normally in LR I think I use a combination of elimination and inductive reasoning. I'll eliminate 2 to 3 answer choices via process of elimination and then between the remaining answer choices, 1 will stand out.

Thanks for all the answers guys. Very helpful. But I think I may have misstated my question a bit.

I take a time RC section, then BR, but is BR even helpful for RC? Because my difficulty is not getting the question correct. It's getting the question correct within the time frame. Once I go back to BR my answers, I'm going to get ALL of them correct. No question there. Because of this, I don't think my issue is understanding why the right answer is right and the wrong answer wrong, it's doing it in the time frame required.

So how should I tackle this? Should I even BR? Because I feel like I'm wasting time BRing since I'm going to get them all right if I BR anyways! BR is supposed to help you understand why right answers are right and wrong answers are wrong. If I'm able to do that, but just not in the time frame....then what?

I don't know if I'm explaining myself properly here...

@ I feel the same way, however, I don't use many forms of annotation. I've been restricting my annotations to underlining, boxing and identifying viewpoints. I feel like when I add more than that, I become too concerned with what to underline, what to box, etc. Whereas when I have just 3 types of annotation, I find it actually helps me to read the passage faster as I'm drawing my attention to what I'm reading. I probably underline way too much, but even if I underline a lot, I find it helps me cut down on information on the passage that is just filler.

But I did just bomb my last RC, so....

Yeah, I wish I was -7. I just took PrepTest 54 and got -14 wrong :(

I hate posting stupid questions, so I was hesitant to post this, but RC is so stressful for me. I'm O.K. going -7 because my LR and LG scores are so good. But I can't go -14. That's ridiculous

I feel like studying for RC is really, really, really hard.

I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree. I'm not advocating you HAVE to check your scores before you retake the test, although personally after taking a 3.5 hr test I'd like to know what I scored.

I'm not going -1 per section so

@ If you know you only missed one question, for example, that is going to significantly skew your mentality.

I really don't think it is. First, I'm not going -1 so I don't have to worry about recognizing the one answer I got wrong. Sure it's going to tell me I got the majority of them right, in which case great. I don't see the issue with that. If I go -1 on a PT it's not going to be chance it's going to be because I know what I'm doing. So when I retake the test, even with that knowledge that I scored -1, I'm still going to pick according to what I think is proper logic.

@ On your second time through though, you will recognize your original answers, and until you get in the neighborhood of your miss, you will act as though you've confirmed those answers because you have.

I've course I'll recognize what I picked last time. I don't see what's wrong with that. I'm not just picking answer because I picked them before. I'm picking them because I follow a logical procedure that leads to those answers.

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But apparently, every so often, I do in fact miss a quantifier. I wouldn't have recognized I have a tendency to make this error if I hadn't taken the test twice and graded it both times. Sure upon BR I would have noticed I missed the quantifier, but I wouldn't have noticed I have a tendency to make this mistake.

I just don’t see why you wouldn’t have this realization in BR. If you notice you missed a quantifier in BR how is that any different than noticing you missed a quantifier on a second take? Are you saying that you only consider it a tendency if you miss it twice? I know for me that’s an excellent way to overlook and avoid acknowledging a lot of bad tendencies.

Right. I'm saying that if I hadn't taken the test twice, I probably wouldn't have realized I have a tendency to misread quantifiers. Sure I would have BRd it and thought, "Oops missed a quantifier," but I don't think I would have recognized it's a pattern. Especially if it's only happening 1 out of every 2 LR sections I take. I don't think you're going to notice tendencies like that unless you're keeping EXTREMELY detailed notes on every wrong answer you make and then cross referencing those notes against other test notes - which is a LOT of work. Now whenever I come across a question that stumps me, as a last resort I can question whether I read all the quantifiers correctly.

@ If you've seen the answers you are no longer blind reviewing.

But that's not necessary true is it! By saying that you're assuming you're going to actually remember the answer you saw. I don't remember ANY of the answer I see. And that's because I'm not look at the questions and saying, "Oh right, yup, I remember that question and I chose B and B is wrong." I'm just ticking them right or wrong on my bubble sheet. So when I retake the test a second time, I don't really know whether I got a particular question right or wrong.

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And I think the ability to see that you get a question wrong twice is invaluable.

Again, I just really don’t see how this does anything that BR doesn’t. I’ve missed tons of questions in BR that I missed under time. For that matter, I’ve missed tons of questions in BR that I got right under time.

Because if I BR something, sure I'll recognize I got it wrong. But there's a difference between getting a question wrong because you were in the wrong head-space or because of a careless error and getting a question wrong because you fundamentally don't understand the logic behind the stimulus or the answer choices. By retaking a second time, you can determine not only which errors you made due to the latter, but which errors are pervasive in you reasoning. And that is what I think is invaluable - the ability to determine what logical structures my mind tends to have trouble processing.

Because I find that I'm getting 2 to 3 problems wrong each LR section and they're not question type related. They usually share a logical structure that my mind isn't comfortable with. Sure you could just BR and recognize this, but who knows whether you got those questions wrong just because you were stressed due to time, in the wrong head-space,etc. This really eliminates those possibilities and lays bare what's causing you to get a few questions wrong.

But hey, like I said, I don't expect everyone will be comfortable with this. I've just been finding that over the past couple days my LR scores have gone by doing this.

@ I'm in the same situation as you. Aiming for the September LSAT and studying anywhere from 5-8 hrs a day. It's my full time job right now. Personally, I'm finding that as my studying progresses, the amount of time per day that I can study is decreasing. When you first start out it's all about learning core concepts and it's not as mentally stressful. But when you're in the later stages of LSAT studying and carefully BRing each answer, tearing apart the stimulus..it's a lot more mentally stressful. My studying per day has decreased from about 8 hrs a day when starting out to probably 5-6 hrs per day now.

Needless to say, when you're studying for periods that long you risk burnout. I personally find there are several things that help prevent burnout and also recover from it:

1.) Do you enjoy one part of the LSAT more than another? Personally, although they can be incredibly frustrating, I actually enjoy LG. They're like fun little Sudoku puzzles. So, on a day that I lack motivation, I'll start out by doing lots of LG. Maybe even some easy ones, because that's a confidence booster and who doesn't love feeling like they can kick the LSAT in the groin?

2.) I also think it's very important to be able to stop thinking about this damn test. When I clock out at 5 P.M. each day... I CLOCK OUT! I don't think about the LSAT, I don't ponder LR questions. Nothing. And I don't start thinking about the LSAT until I wake up the next morning. For some people this can be very difficult. But as others have mentioned, your mind is a muscle and it needs time to recover, so you need to take time off.

3.) Plan to do things you enjoy in your off time. Nothing is worse than thinking, "Wow. I just studied for 6 Hrs, my mind is fried, and I don't really have anything fun to do." This can be especially painful if you have a bad day and end up getting 6 questions wrong in a row and feel like the past 2 months were a complete waste (Hey, it happens). Whether this means getting a lil tipsy or watching your fav TV show, you need to have a way to de-stress each day. For me, I play some PS4. I can let my mind go blank and just focus on poning some n00bs.

4.) Stay Motivated! One of the biggest symptoms of burnout IMO is lack of motivation. When you just aren't inspired anymore. I agree with what people above have said about motivation being fleeting and discipline being reliable, and to be clear, you absolutely have to be disciplined, but I think it's also important to remember that motivation doesn't just have to come and go, ebb and flow. You can actively keep yourself motivated! Sure you can watch Suits and that will do the trick, but there are only so many episodes and Mike is in the clink right now. Whenever I lack motivation, I think of all the great things that scoring well is going to bring me and I "anchor" myself in that feeling. It's going to bring me a good law school, the prestige associated with a high score, success, etc. I mean can you imagine what it must feel like on the day the scores are released to look at yours and see....you got a 178? Anchor yourself in those feelings. That can really help drive you. And if you ever begin to feel apathetic, like you just don't care (worse than unmotivated), contrast that feeling with what it would feel like to fail.

5.) Stay Interested! One thing about the LSAT I find really enjoyable is that I have yet to reach a point where I feel like, "I know everything." I'm always finding some youtube video or forum post teaching something I didn't know before or presenting some different way to approach a question, or learning something new from 7sage forum members.

Anyways, those are my thoughts based off my personal experience so far. Might not work for everyone, but it's helped me.

I dunno guys. I've been finding this HAS been improving my error rate with LR. I do find that I make careless errors and I don't find that I have a tendency to just write things of as "careless." In fact, I think they are very easy to differentiate.

If I take a test twice and get the same questions wrong BOTH times, it's almost always because I don't understand the logic, but if I retake the test and get a question wrong because I fail to see a quantifier...I'd call that a careless error. It's not something that I usually do.

But apparently, every so often, I do in fact miss a quantifier. I wouldn't have recognized I have a tendency to make this error if I hadn't taken the test twice and graded it both times. Sure upon BR I would have noticed I missed the quantifier, but I wouldn't have noticed I have a tendency to make this mistake.

And I think the ability to see that you get a question wrong twice is invaluable. I've seen a lot of people talk about how you should try to recognize what question types you are getting wrong. But what if there isn't a pattern? Or what if your error rates for question types are very close together? Because I know that in my case, I don't get certain question types wrong more than other types. There just isn't a pattern.

It's usually that there are certain logical patterns that my mind just isn't comfortable with or doesn't fully understand. And by seeing that I got a question wrong twice, this allows me to identify that there is some logical pattern I'm not comfortable with and tear it apart.

Moreover, if I get the same question RIGHT during each test, that reinforces that I'm getting these questions right because I'm thinking right, not just because I stumbled across the correct answer.

I do still BR my answers after the second test. And I'm not advocating that you shouldn't BR. I just feel like there is this dogmatic belief that there's one way and one way only to study for the LSAT and it's BR and I think that's a little misguided. BR definitely is invaluable and is necessary in order to succeed at the LSAT, but why not a combination of different approaches based off your particular needs?

Personally, although I intend to continue BRing, I feel like a combination approach is warranted because I'm starting to plateau and BR isn't helping that.

Of course personal preference due to specific tendencies will play a role here, but I'm less concerned about the score and more concerned about minimizing my error rate. Personally, seeing a slightly higher score is a confidence booster, although I don't take it to heart.

Although I do OCCASIONALLY (rarely) remember a question, the answer I chose and that I got it wrong, I now have a second chance to say, "Ok. What about this answer choice is wrong?" This usually doesn't take much time and allows me to reinforce correct patterns of reasoning and discourage incorrect patterns.

If I take a test twice and get 3 of the exact same questions wrong, that's an indicator to me that SOMETHING about those 3 questions is fooling me. It's a clear sign that I have to hone in on those particular three problems and figure out what's causing me to get them wrong. Is there an inference I'm failing to make? Is there some pattern of logic common to all 3 that I'm just not understanding?

I actually just re-took a PrepTest and on one LR section I got 2 of the same questions wrong on both tests. On the second test, I also got an addition 2 questions wrong.

The value I see here is that now I can hone in on the first 2 questions to see what it is about them that I find difficult and for the other 2 questions I got right the first time, I can look at my thought process and determine how it was different (wrongly so) from the first time I took the test.

If I had known the LSAT would let me move waffles with my mind, I would have started studying in high-school. That puts the vast majority of super powers to shame. So practical and tasty.