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eugenechong479
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Study Groups · [Old/Weds] TONIGHT! PT65 BR | 7pm ET
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eugenechong479
Thursday, Aug 27 2015

Hey all, I know I'm late to the party, but is this session still going?

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General · TONIGHT! PT61 BR | 8pm ET (yes, 8pm ET!)
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eugenechong479
Thursday, Aug 13 2015

Just realized Skype routes calls to my phone. I was very confused when I picked up the phone earlier.

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General · Skippity Skip Skip
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eugenechong479
Wednesday, Aug 12 2015

I always skip the "substitute this rule for the same effect" questions on LG. I generally do not skip questions on LR or RC mostly because I'm paranoid about leaving something blank by accident. If I feel really iffy on something, I'll star it and make sure it's the first one I return to when I finish the rest of the questions.

I have two tiers of circled questions. The first is the plain circle, which is more like "eh, not 100%. Worth a blind review." The second is the circle and star, which is "you basically flipped a coin between two answers, you nüb." I'm sure the longer I study, the more levels of circling I'll have. I eventually hope to have 26 tiers of circling for each question on each section.

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General · MBTI Type
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eugenechong479
Wednesday, Aug 12 2015

INTJ

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General · Your regiment if you so please.
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eugenechong479
Monday, Aug 10 2015

7:00- wakeup, eat, go to work

5:00- head to the gym, rec sports, errands, eat

8:00ish- drills or PT

11:00- drills if PT'd. Otherwise, catch up on some TV.

Usually do this 2 or 3 weekdays a week plus both weekend days and take the other days off. I'll ramp up when I get closer to my test date.

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General · What are your career goals?
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eugenechong479
Friday, Aug 07 2015

Taking a step back, can I ask how most of you became interested in these fields?

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General · Get (or got?) a hobby!
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eugenechong479
Friday, Aug 07 2015

I play a lot of ultimate frisbee. Off to a tournament this weekend, actually!

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General · Is this burn-out?
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eugenechong479
Friday, Aug 07 2015

All the advice here is good for dealing with mental exhaustion. I cannot fathom studying for 8 hours a day for two weeks, let alone a whole summer, so I can only guess what you're feeling.

Get lots of sleep, eat well (cook if you like that), get some exercise, go get drunk with friends, watch TV. Just live your life for a couple days and treat it like vacation, and your motivation and focus levels will be back up.

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General · What are your career goals?
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eugenechong479
Friday, Aug 07 2015

Honestly, pretty vague at the moment. I am shooting to take the LSAT in December with an eye towards applying for admittance during the fall of 2017. I spend a couple hours most days prepping for the test, but law school isn't a path I've committed to yet. At this point, taking the LSAT is a matter of expanding my options down the road while I have the free time afforded by an undemanding, though full-time, job.

Pursuant to that, I haven't put very much thought into what area of law specifically I would be interested in. I studied history with a focus on constitutional law, so I have some comfort and interest in the field. Undergrad liberal arts legal studies are vastly different from law school, though, so it's a bit of a false analogy. I suppose I am most interested in constitutional law at the moment, because that's what I know.

I probably won't do much research into it until after I sit for the exam.

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General · A question for those who consistently PT at 165+
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eugenechong479
Tuesday, Aug 04 2015

Gotcha. Yeah, those questions just naturally take more time. My only advice here is that the speed for me comes more from eliminating wrong answers quickly than finding the right one quickly (although the right answer does sort of pop out on some). Since I don't have very concrete advice for improving speed on LR and LG, I'll leave that to others.

My advice on the RC is that you always read the passages to understand the sentences and paragraphs rather than each word. It's tempting to read super slowly and try to cover every base, but you'll always fail to anticipate something, and you'll lose sight of what the passage is saying if you focus on the granular details. "What is the main point" questions should be quick, but they can end up taking a long time if you failed to see the big picture while reading. Same thing with "what might the author agree with" questions; you could end up re-reading the whole passage answering those. Circle some key terms and underline claims, but otherwise, just focus on absorbing the tone and point of the passage. I think the answers will come more easily that way.

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General · A question for those who consistently PT at 165+
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eugenechong479
Tuesday, Aug 04 2015

I usually finish LR and RC with 5-7 minutes to spare. This gives me time to really dive into at least two circled questions, which is very helpful.

I usually finish LG with around 3 minutes, which I usually end up spending on any rule substitution question. I'm still learning to diagram well; I brute force more questions than I would like.

Speed is helpful. There are undoubtedly going to be questions that will benefit from deeper review, and you need time for that. What do you find to be your biggest time sink?

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General · Exact Timing of Initial Diagnostic
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eugenechong479
Tuesday, Aug 04 2015

I'm sure it's fine to take the test at another time of day.

On the plus side, you have a very convenient way to practice taking tests while stressed and distracted!

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General · In a slump =(
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eugenechong479
Monday, Aug 03 2015

@ It seems like you should take a deep breath. You're in the high 150's and you want ~165, around 8 more questions per test. As with anything in life, your goals should be big but your vision of progress should be incremental. Aim for the best score you can possibly get every time with the understanding that you'll only be able to chip away slowly at that deficit.

Follow everyone's advice here with BR. It's tempting to gloss over it because you may feel better off taking another test, but that's not the case.

Specifically for LR, one thing I've been doing that I find immensely helpful is to look at the wrong answers for questions (both easy and difficult) and think about what would need to change about that answer to make it correct. If an answer to a parallel method of reasoning question is incorrect, consider what it is about the wording or relationship between conditions you could change to "fix" it. This is another angle to mastering the questions; if process of elimination allowed you to disqualify a question, think about what it would take to un-eliminate it.

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Study Groups · TONIGHT! PT67 BR | 7pm ET
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eugenechong479
Wednesday, Sep 02 2015

I'll be there, but late as I usually am.

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General · How many hours do your study per day?
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eugenechong479
Sunday, Aug 02 2015

Average about 2-3 hours per day since I started. PT Saturday and/or Sunday mornings (PTs after nights out suck). Days with PTs I do maybe an hour more reading/drilling later on. I usually take Wednesday and Friday off.

It's tough enough to be up for it after work, so I have only the utmost respect for those who manage to do it with kids and other things going on.

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General · How do you guys use the analytics on the site?
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eugenechong479
Sunday, Aug 02 2015

Cool cool. Where do you get the drill sets for each question type after you've burned through the ones in whichever book you may be using? Or do you make them yourself from previous tests?

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Sunday, Aug 02 2015

eugenechong479

How do you guys use the analytics on the site?

I'm starting to build a large enough sample of PTs (just took my 7th today) that using the analytics to inform my prep seems like a sensible option. There's a lot of information, though, and I'm not too sure how to translate it into a study strategy. I understand the basic idea; it tells me that I'm bad at pseudo-sufficient assumption, so I should work on that. I'm curious, though, what else you guys get from it and how you apply it. For instance, do the question/section difficulty ratings tell you anything during your review?

What information on there do you guys most value, and how do you use it specifically to guide your next week of studying?

Thanks, all.

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General · Goal LSAT and Goal School
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eugenechong479
Sunday, Aug 02 2015

176, NYU or Columbia.

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