@ said:

Kay yall can stay assuming that someone having an accent and looking a certain way means that they are fresh off the boat and unaware of the customs of the country they're currently in. That girl could have been from the U.K. for all you know. None of you read a word I wrote. Having an accent does not mean you are fresh off the boat nor does it mean you even recently lived in the place your accent appears to be from.

OP didn't say that the person in question was "fresh off the boat," or that they were completely unaware from U.S. customs. Of course the person could have been from somewhere else. Maybe they were, maybe they weren't, what is the big deal? Did OP say something inherently negative about people of the other nationality? No. You are blowing the entire thing wayyyyy out of proportion.

I am an immigrant as well, and readily acknowledge the different cultural standards and the resulting life styles in my country of birth. I also acknowledge the impact my upbringing had on me, even after living the the States for several years.

Your being from a certain place doesnt mean you know with 100% certainty from overhearing a few words the amount of time a person has/has not lived in the U.S/the place you're from and assuming they're from.

Where did you see OP claim a 100% certainty? OP said that it was one "possible explanation." Please make sure to read carefully before accusing others of not reading your posts.

I would first use all your older 35-50 PTs first, then do all the fresh ones in the chronological order, saving the newest ones toward the end. The LSAT is great in that the underlying logic has remained the same from the 1990s, so older PTs are still fantastic learning tools.

There have been some major (comparative passages, rule substitution LG questions) and minor (question stem wording changes, disappearance of LR question pairs that utilize a single stim...). This is why, I think it's valuable to do fresher PTs closer to the real thing — to be more in tune with the contemporary patterns. But other than that, old PTs are fantastic, and especially for LG, as some of the most useful and difficult LGs of all time are scattered in the 35-50 range.

Good luck with the rest of your prep!

@ said:

This time around I quit my job completely, and decided to focus on my studies completely even though my budget will be tight. I feel like this is my last year to do so.

I know a lot of people on here can do their jobs and also take the LSAT at the same time, but I personally could not handle it. My job was 12-14 hour work days 5-6 times a week physical labor. It was just really rough on me mentally and physically, and often found my self going home and just going to sleep, which is why I didn't study as much as I should have even though I knew I needed to bust my ass for 160s this round.

I know you were asking for LSAT advice, not about personal money management, but if your budget becomes really tight, you could always consider finding a part-time employment elsewhere. That could potentially be a big difference for you in making ends meet, without putting as much stress on your LSAT prep.

Good luck with the rest of your prep!

@ said:

Do you feel like during PTs you were normally good at predicting your scores? If you were it could make sense to cancel if you know you did worse.

I was never great at it. On my first actual LSAT I didn't finish the games section and considered cancelling, but ended up scoring only one point lower than my average. I retook anyway, but it was reassuring during my retake to have a fairly solid take already on the books.

So if you are as bad at predicting how you would do on a PT as me, it might be best to just take the score. Almost all schools look at the highest score since that is what they have to report to US News. This means that an unexpectedly high score helps more than a low score hurts.

LSAT sending your average isn't new. They always did that and claimed it was the better predictor of law school success. Schools use the higher score anyway.

This!

@ , I vote against* cancelling. Fwiw, in December I ended up scoring 6-8 than I initially thought I did. All the question and games discussions don't help with this either, as you begin to doubt yourself more and more.

*Another point to consider would be your goal score. If your target is in the 175 range, and you've never scored near that on a PT, and don't feel absolutely confident about the Saturday's test, then I suppose there can be a solid argument for cancelling.

Lol, you know this speaks to the strength and quality of the community when someone apologizes for not posting as much as they usually do for a week. @ Based on your posts before, about the size of the potential difference this might make in your GPA, this battle is totally worth it. Good luck and keep us updated on how it goes down!

@ said:

@.Y. Ping. But D says in "Ancient Greece" and the stimulus says in an ancient Greek play. Does the fact that the play is Greek mean that its being performed in Greece? What if its an Ancient Greece play that is being performed in London? I totally see the reasoning for why its right but I crossed it out because I thought it being in Ancient Greece was out of scope, as they never tell us where the play is being performed. Am I just overthinking this?

Thanks for your help anyone!

I dont think it matters where the play is performed. The fact that the play itself is ancient Greek, is what allows us to make the inference about the ancient Greece that we need to choose D.

Damn bro, huge congratulations!!! Remember us when you're in the SCOTUS.

You should consider the alternative. I do think that a single score of 168 might look better than the same score on the 4th try, but C-160-162-168 would definitely look better than C-160-162.

When I withdrew from September I never got one.

Absolutely no reason to feel ashamed or discouraged.

In the last three years of college where I actually cared about school and tried, I was able to maintain a steady 3.95+ GPA in a double major stem degree (sorry if this qualifies as a humblebrag).I thought I was going to just crush this thing after a couple months. Yeah, no... Seeing those 140s in the beginning was absolutely dishartening. LSAT prep ended up being closer to a year, and even forced me into a retake. I think that similar time scales are the common denominator for the majority of the 170 group. There is a saying among bodybuilders when they are asked about their results: "Blood, Sweat, and Years." It resonates with me in terms of LSAT.

At the end of the day, you're really only fighting against yourself. You roughly know your target schools, and, by extension, the goal LSAT score. The rest is up to you.

Good luck on your studies!

Blind review - A LOT of it. Obviously there are people who have gotten there much faster, but for me it took about 55 PTs until my LF comfortably settled at -0/-1.

You could always go through the CC again for LR, if you think you may have some fundamental inconsistencies in you methods.

I have found writing out my reasoning during review to be quite effective, albeit painstaking. Another thing that I would try, is to have you question-type strategy page (I'm sure 7Sage has a page or lesson for each question, I've just never done it so dont know what it's called exactly), and follow threir procedure mechanically, until your strategy application is rock-solid.

I know it's frustrating, but you can get there. Good luck!

> @ said:

> can anybody comment on using highlighter during actual LSAT did it bleed through or is that just hog wash?

I used highlighter on my first take last year, and it didn't bleed through. Unfortunately I didn't find it useful though.

In December, my preferred testing center was kinda far from my house so I got a hotel to stay there. I love watching Friends to the point where I binge on the entire show, about once in 3 years. So in trying to take my mind of the test and relax, I just kind of binged on the fifth season while eating some bomb take-out. Somehow managed to put myself in bed by 11 (what a difference that made compared to zero sleep on my first take).

Good luck tomorrow, you got this!

I'm applying next Fall, so mine's still a (reallly)rough draft, but the topic is fairly serious: related to some political and legal issues in my country of birth. I settled on my topic because: it is something that relates well to my overall application but is pretty different from everything I have in ps and ds; I am able to argue make an interesting and meaningful point (as far it's possible to do in under 250 words); and finally because I figured it that this specific issue/angle I'm taking will be pretty different from other's essays.

You might have seen this already, but in case you didn't, there is a nice thread on TLS that compiles many successful Y250s from other applicants. It's an informative read.

http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=68738

Are you able to maybe study in the morning before work? That worked pretty well for me, though I am lucky in that I don't have to leave for work till 9, so I could put in solid 3.5-4 hours each morning.

Not a movie, but the Friday before my test, I binged-watched the fifth season of Friends. Nothing to do with the test, but definitely helped me take the mind off

I'm done with the LSAT, but just wanted to wish good luck to all you work-LSAT people. For me it was the sleep, lack of it. Work, commute, and LSAT pushed me to about 4.5-5 hours of sleep a day. It got rough there for a while... But that score was damn worth it. Y'all got this!

> @ said:

> Thanks for your response. Fair point about the word "people's". However, suppose 75% of the people of neighborhood "A" are making 50k and 25% of the populace is making 60k. If those same 75% increase to 80k and the 25% group increase to 65k, you now have a large group of people getting a large increase in relation to a quarter of the population. Their income is favorable amongst themselves and it is definitely favorable comparable to the 25% group.

I somewhat disagree with your reasoning here. Where did you take a point of the 75% group's income being favorable among themselves? According to the stim, the only thing that matters is how one's income compares to the rest of the neighborhood. If you take your scenario, you again get 75% of the population making the same amount, which means that their relative levels of satisfaction will remain. Therefore nothing has effectively changed.

But regardless, you've hit the nail on the head saying that the tcr wordings is extreme, and actually not completely provable based on the given info. But it is an supportable inference to which the given info points, and that is what we are typically looking for in MSS questions.

I definitely think that the Multiverse passage from PT 83 is my favorite. I loved the subject matter and the writing style. I definitely consider myself lucky for seeing it on the actual test date.

Tbh I wouldn't even call 170 ---> 168 a true drop. LSAT has a standard error of measurement of approximately 2.7 points, so 168 and 170 are within one error band.

For better or worse, the majority of your prep has already happened and there is not a lot of room to make any significant gains. Try to focus on how much you've accomplished in your prep, and how far you came. At the end of the day you are the person who have already scored 170, so focus on that result and believe in yourself on the test day. Good luck!

> @ said:

> I do not understand why E is correct. Although no other answer seems right in this question, E also seems to have a problem because the answer choice never said the increase was an absolute increase for every person in the neighborhood. Perhaps those making the lowest income got the biggest percentage increase and surpassed the income of the higher groups and those making the highest income got the smallest increase. Assuming there are more lower income people, now their income stacks favorably against the other groups.

> C does seem incorrect but I feel the word "neighborhood" can be spun easier than making E correct!

> Thanks for any input!

C is wrong because if the income satisfaction was correlated to which neighborhood they live, then everyone within a given neighborhood would be expected to have the same level of satisfaction, despite differences in earnings. But according to the second portion of the stimulus, that is wrong.

A, B, and D are garbage too. So now onto E...

First of all, remember that this is Most Supported and not an MBT type question. So for many of the correct answers it will be possible to come up with potential flaws. E is definitely not a must be true thing, and you have definitely found a potential flaw, but I think we can agree that a given info supports the statement that if everyone's incomes go up, most people will not be more satisfied. There is an additional wording detail in this answer. I believe that when the answer choice says "greatly increase **people's** incomes," it means the majority of the people in the neighborhood. Now say you scenario happens and a small number of people get to see much larger income compared to others. Then their level of satisfaction will increase, but the level of satisfaction for the rest — majority of neighborhood's residents — will not increase similarly, so in effect your situation will still not produce a significant increase in happiness for neighborhood population as a whole.

I hope this helps, but please let me know if some of it doesn't make sense, and you want me to clarify/expand on anything.

By this point you are probably the one most familiar with how much rest you might need. I wouldn't take that PT just to boost your confidence, but there might other good reasons to do it. For me, I knew 1 full day of doing nothing would be enough rest, so I studied through mid day on Thursday (thankfully my work allowed me to take a last couple days before the lsat off). On Thursday morning I took a 4-section PT 82, just to remain in the timing rhythm on fresh material, but I never graded it for the risk of bringing my confidence down. This worked nicely for me. Imo, doing a couple of hours of study on Thursday, which is about how long it takes to do 4 sections, shouldn't really fatigue you if that's where you stop (also as long as you aren't already burnt down). But again, you have to judge for yourself based on how you are feeling throughout the week and what you know about your rest needs based on prep so far. Good luck on the upcoming test!

@ said:

@ Yeah, having to read 8 whole passages in one sitting is definitely unlucky.

Can the luck gods heareth mine own caterwauling???

I had two of my LR sections in a row in each of my takes, which I wasn't a fan of, but 2 RC's would definitely be the most nightmare scenario I can imagine. Good luck this time, karma should be on your side now haha

Although my two takes were also similar in that I had 3 LRs each time, I'm positive that this was by random chance! I mean, the forms are just stacked inside the box the LSAC sends them, and are then passed out in the order of seating. So yeah, the orders/distributions are random, and it was an unlucky coincidence for you to get two RCs each time.

I've gone through ~75 PTs in my prep, and voted for Barely Noticeably here.

I believe that RC has definitely changed over the 80-something tests, but I don't think it has necessarily become much harder. To me, there has been some focus change in questions from concrete details, to big-picture type stuff, and of-course some changes in wording of the questions. I don't think this actually makes RC much more difficult, and if you jumped from tests in teens and twenties, straight to 70s, then given a bit of time to adjust, I don't believe you would be scoring any lower.

Fwiw, I don't agree about LG getting easier either. There has been some remarkably easy sections in 40s and 50s, but personally I thought that overall LG from 60s has been on par in difficulty with the early tests.