@conraddnoronha90 said:

@connorradlo44 said:

I'm in favor of abolishing standardized test taking and going more for what English schools do: heavily weighting reputation of school in conjunction with GPA, recommendation letters, and statement of purpose.

Ok back to studying....

Which would leave people who have graduated from average schools with below par GPA's but have showed post-undergrad turnarounds (solid work experience, stellar self-study habits) rather disadvantaged. The LSAT (or GRE) can provide an excellent and sometimes more up-to-date reflection of a student in the present tense...

For some, myself included, it's one of the few assets left that they/I feel can bank on.

I edited my post after first submitting it to include: "or at least giving the option to apply without"

"I'm in favor of abolishing standardized test taking (or at least giving the option to apply without) and going more for what English schools do:"

Just saying.... some people do absolutely terrible on standardized tests no matter how much time and effort they put into studying and still do phenomenally well in college / grad programs. This over emphasis on test scores benefits certain types of learning and harms those who make up for deficiencies, when in the respective programs, with other attributes that aren't tested in standardized tests. Making one test nearly 50% of your application is short sighted and not truly meritocratic, which should be the goal of admissions.

I'm in favor of abolishing standardized test taking (or at least giving the option to apply without) and going more for what English schools do: heavily weighting reputation of school in conjunction with GPA, recommendation letters, and statement of purpose. Granted, the flaw in this is rampant grade inflation at some of the best schools in the country.

This is a step in the right direction, but they should take it further and acknowledge the flaws in standardized tests that preclude many otherwise qualified students from assuming their potential positions in school and in society.

Ok back to studying....

@combsni116 as active conservative/ libertarian/ republican at UC Berkeley (needless to say thats a left leaning school) myself, I chose to go there to challenge my beliefs and I am glad I did.

It is tough when some people won't even engage with your ideas and just call you names like a racist and what not. Although my blood boiled pretty consistently, it was worth it. There were times when I was not allowed to pass a human chain of students blocking our main quad and was forced to hop over a creek to get to my class (which I had an important quiz in) all because I am not a marginalized group (at least a group they deemed marginalized). Listening to students bash liberty and the constitution and what not does get annoying. Last week I went to hear a controversial speaker I don't even like, and radicals were bashing the school, burnt generators, shot fireworks at the police, and went around with sticks/ poles attacking people.

There are times when its hard being an open conservative on (probably) any campus. You do have to worry about your safety especially given the climate today. But, I found being in such different environments makes you stronger if you can learn to put up with it. I learned to communicate with people who hold radically different ideas and am much better for it. In some areas I've adapted my thinking. In others, I've become better at making the case for my beliefs (so I think). Some of my best friends in the world are hardcore progressives and we have "tremendous" and "big league" conversations all of the time.

My two cents, for whatever its worth (probably not much), go to the most left leaning and top school you can and join the federalist society and take the fight to the left. Don't go to an environment where people are more prone to agree with you.

Since you were active in YAF, I'm sure you've dealt with similar stuff to this. I partly wrote all that out above in case other people who are concerned about this as well and haven't seen how hard it can be on campus having non leftist views. I also don't know your situation and I'm just fighting through the LSAT right now myself. Keep your head up though and good luck with wherever you end up!

I'd like to join as well thanks

Thanks for the advice so far everyone!

I just got to keep on the grind. 6 more months (hopefully) !

I've played guitar almost my entire life and I see some of the similarities to learning guitar as to learning the LSAT. I see similarities in the learning of guitar that apply to blind review...

In guitar, a common mistake for people who stick with it for a while is to jump to fast. Its more fun, exciting, and gives you skills to show off to people (girls) to learn a dazzling solo or the latest song everyone knows. Often times, people will dig into the most common scales for soloing but they don't learn all of the boring details of those scales, like the different placements (you can play the same scale up and down the neck in many different places) and they don't learn the scales in all of the keys even the most obscure ones. This in the long run puts you at a disadvantage because you miss out on the nuances like approaching scales string by string, attacking solos diagonally, up and down, half in one position half in another, etc, and the different nuances that only sound good in different keys, tones, different guitars, etc You basically develop holes in your playing that sometimes aren't noticeable but at times your all messed up because you've never encountered that type of a situation to play in. Its like if you always play in the same position in the key of Em and you need to play in F#m in one of the 10-14 different positions, playing in that same position might not work. You just kind of sit there like, what am I doing. It's hard to describe in writing but its a feeling of being stuck and you don't know what notes / chords will sound good in any given moment and anything you try will sound bad.

Although, they aren't perfectly analogous, my point is that with the LSAT I've found that its not about how much you get through really, its about building up the fundamentals and not creating holes that can or cannot hurt you in the long run. In the long run are spending a year (plus/ minus) and making sacrifices for a short test that we don't know what is going to be on it. We want to be ready for whatever the LSAT throws at us that day. So we don't want holes. We don't want to be stuck at something come test day we want to be ready for every challenge even challenges that won't come up on the test (thats due to the unpredictability of the test).

To me, blind review does this. I actually don't think we should only focus on just the hard questions or the easy questions. We also shouldn't think about doing it for 1 hour or 5 days, just whatever it takes to understand every detail from every question easy or hard. IMO, its more important to go through fewer and slower than more and with less time.

My process though takes a really long time. I BR the proper way (like circling), but I also go over every single question, whether I thought it was easy or not) and write out on the sheet why each answer is correct or not for LR. For, LG I full proof just about every game (that's because I'm still awful at games), and RC, I BR, then review every question, then I watch JY go over the video for the passage, then I check the answers again (seeing if I've changed again), then I watch the video explanations and reveal the answers. Some of the harder RC passages, I've gone back and reviewed them again weeks later just to refresh myself. Some of them I mentally can't though because spending a couple hours on one passage makes me hate the passage forever. Like I despise some topics when I see references to them in real life.

The most helpful thing for BR for me has been taking the hard questions, cookie cutter questions, or questions I found interesting (yes I admit some of them are interesting), giving my Mom a bottle of wine and then I teach her the RC passage or the LR question. I aim to synthesize JY's explanation, Account Playables if available, and my own thoughts when I explain each aspect of it. Needless to say, she can't wait for me to take the LSAT and go to law school. But this teaching process has been what led me to dramatically break my initial plateau for LR and RC (though I still have tonnnns more work to do).

So for me, after that long winded story, BR takes 3-4 days without the teaching all RC's and the harder LRs. If thats included, I will have never stopped blind reviewing the test because I constantly go back to the ones I've saved on my comp and either re teach them or go over them myself.

Take that all with a grain of salt, I keep pushing the LSAT back and have been studying for over a year (not that long with 7 sage) and will be taking it in June. I've taken a break and gone back to certain parts of the CC I wanted to brush up on (SA, Games, and RC), but I plan on getting back into the swing of PT in December.

Are these webinars saved anywhere? 4 pm (pt) is hard for me to make it and I want to hear what hear what he has to say.

How important is it to update your LOR / see if they need to be? What is the benefit of doing this? I had my LORs written my last semester while I was fresh in their minds, but I will apply two years after that point. Is this something that should be done?

Couldn't you make up for it with having someone from work write a letter?