@ said:

@

I think either way, you're gonna have to rely on outside resources, like our course or commercial outlines that you can purchase via Amazon. For many students that happens during the summer before 1L and for others, it happens during 1L year.

For me, I was strongly of the opinion that I should enjoy my summer before 1L and not prepare. But during my 1L year, I purchased a lot of commercial outlines (since nothing like our courses existed back then).

Retrospectively, I see that the timing of it matters less. Either way, I would have had to rely on outside resources to help explain what the law is.

@

I would also be interested in any specific commercial outline recommendations and other reading, or maybe it would also be helpful to have a brief lesson on that in the 7Sage Law School course!

Timing is definitely a huge component of the test, and @ 's comment above is really good. For me, I feel like I found my timing for all three sections through lots of individual sections and retaking them (1-2 in the morning and 1-2 in the evening as a drill). Think of it like training wheels --- if you can't even finish a section you've seen before in time, you don't really have much business taking fresh sections and expecting the timing to magically work itself out.

I don't have access to the Webinars anymore (7sage alum lol) but there's one called "Timing and Levels of Uncertainty" for LR. One thing that also helps for all sections is not looking at the clock so much but setting checkmarks for yourself (i.e. check the clock between every passage but don't think about the time when you're doing the passage, or check the clock after ~15 questions on LR or at each page turn but do NOT rush). You also have to accept that timing must be flexible. Some passages are difficult and some are easy; sometimes you'll have 10 minutes at the end of LR to go back for round 2 and sometimes you'll have 5. It's not about the objective number of minutes you have left when you finish, but that you used the time you have an in an effective manner. If it ends up that you ran out of time because a section was really hard, that's just what it is as long as you know you applied your best techniques.

Hope this helps! And on the topic of anxiety, the putting your pencil down and breathing thing is very helpful even if it seems excessive.

Out of curiosity, what is the 7sage wisdom on preparing for 1L? I've heard many conflicting reports -- read "Getting to Maybe," skim the E&Es, do nothing -- and the most popular response seems to be that you can't prepare because classes are more like studying professors rather than a generic set of materials. Definitely plan on chilling out, but I trust the advice here and wanted to know!

(Maybe @ @ @ @ @ @ )

Take my money! Just enrolled and looking forward to more!

Hey! I've recently been trying to make up my mind before deposit deadlines, and definitely agree that through all of my time on 7Sage studying for the exam to now, I never really thought so much about the debt (it was such a remote bridge I'd cross when I got there). Though you may have already thought through it thoroughly, it becomes a lot more complicated when you realize there's more to it than the 300k (various loans with different interest rates, the money you could apply from your 2L summer job, gradual tuition increases, refinancing down the line, etc.).

Thankfully NYU is more recession-proof than other schools, but you also have to ask yourself if you'd want to work in big law for X number of years (depending on how quickly you want to pay it back). This post (among other resources on Reddit) was pretty sobering: https://www.reddit.com/r/lawschooladmissions/comments/fkquc1/big_law_associate_who_paid_off_sticker_debt_in_3/

But in any case, congratulations on your acceptance, and feel free to PM if you'd like to discuss further!

"I thought "D doesn't need to be true, there could be an alternate explanation." However, this explanation, despite the existence of other explanations, does connect the dots between the premises and the conclusion. Now we could say we have more detectors overall, but the proportion of inoperable detectors increased a lot so now the early detection rate is the exact same."

I think you're exactly right here -- this is a sufficient assumption question where all you're trying to do is build the bridge (whether it's an exact fit to the conclusion or more than enough to make it true) to the claim. Sure there can be many other ways to make the conclusion work, and you give a good one in your explanation (all of the newly installed ones don't work) but we just need one of them as an answer choice.

@ I wrote out my tips for RC here a long time ago: https://classic.7sage.com/discussion/#/discussion/20999/thank-you-7sage-all-my-advice

But from what I remember off the top of my head, recording myself taking RC sections helped me see what I was doing with my timing, and also learning to let passages take more time if they required more time was very helpful. That is, I originally started to get really stressed if I was on passage two and I had already passed my quota of ~18 minutes or whatever. Some passages are designed to take longer than others, and you have to believe that the section will balance itself out. That being said, I think skipping comes with experience and knowing whether you'll be able to answer a question, but I usually gave myself two dips back into the passage and after that it was a circle and move on.

I hesitate to make generalizations because a huge part of LG is learning to think on your feet and not go into robot mode (and also because it's been almost a year since I studied for the LSAT), but I think I remember on my exam (July 2019) there was a mostly straightforward in/out game that benefitted a lot from creating multiple boards. In general, it makes sense to split the boards when you see biconditionals because it represents visually what is actually a pretty annoying symbol (a biconditional requires you to keep track of both directions, whereas two boards are two obviously different worlds). Splitting takes away the margin of error of misreading the biconditional.

Sorry for the vagueness haha just trying to post a comment while I'm revisiting the forums due to the recent spam LOL There are logic games about a white/purple/yellow shirt and one about park rangers in the newer tests (probably 70s) that I remember drilling a lot. The best thing to do is keep a google doc or something with games that have biconditionals and examine their similarities and differences!

7sage is life (3 will def be using this the summer before 1L!(/p)

I'm not sure if this will be that helpful but for me one big thing I had to get over for RC was second-guessing myself. I was really daunted by the time constraints and material that even though I was a good reader, I found myself freaking out. Take your time with the passage, and let the time bleed a little on harder passages -- you have to trust that the section as a whole will be doable as long as you go fast on the easier passages and take a bit more time on the harder passages. I think I tried to limit myself to 8ish minutes per passage, and the inflexibility made me rush or freak out, leading to a lot of mistakes. For practice, it might help to just set a watch but not look at it until the end of a section, and focus on the material rather than the time. You might be surprised to find that even when you think you're behind, you finish within the limit!

Congrats!!

Great comment above!

For MP questions, I think in your BR it helps to think about what is descriptively true or false. The easy answers to knock out are the ones that are just patently wrong, which leaves you with one that is descriptively accurate and gets the right emphasis, and one that does describe the passage accurately but just isn't the "main" point. I think it also helps to really focus on the thrust of the argument as a whole when reading/doing your low resolution summary. You should already have the answer to this question pre-phrased before going into the answer choices.

For analogy questions, these ones I generally sacrificed if I didn't get it because they're kind of time-sinks if you don't have a super clear grasp of the passage. You have to really understand the part they're asking you about and then think about what is analogous to what in the answer choice. Obviously if you didn't understand that part of the passage and you're running out of time, it's probably in your best interest to eliminate a few and just guess.

I think you have three options:

Take the trip ahead of time to not only familiarize yourself with the test-day schedule, but also write down directions on a piece of paper that you can toss

Call the center ahead of time and ask if they might be able to hold your belongings somewhere (I know for my test center there was a coatrack outside where people were allowed to leave stuff, but there's no way of knowing unless you call ahead).

Get a hotel room near your test center, sleep there and leave your stuff in the room while you take the test.

One more is find a friend who can hold onto your stuff for you?

My local public library had a quiet study room that was rather big and had a lot of people in it. That helped create the kind of random ambient noise to simulate test day conditions, and also I guess taking a PT around strangers was something that helped too. I felt like test day was just another PT because of this, if not even quieter.

If you're taking PTs at home, filming yourself keeps you from cheating yourself on time (unless you're doing digital on the ipad lol) and also always play the ambient noise on 7sage's proctor app to simulate distractions.

Burnout is def a real phenomenon and though it may be terrifying to not study at all the day before, I would advise you to do so! Your brain needs time to relax and regain its strength, as hard as it may be to believe, and I would say that at this point there's nothing you can do to increase your knowledge -- the only thing you can do is practice mindfulness and come in confident as all hell ready to take down the exam haha

Good luck!

I'm not sure if @ is taking students, but I can thoroughly recommend him from firsthand experience. Other than him, there's a list of tutors here: http://classic.7sage.com/forums/discussion/4760/7sages-approved-tutors/p1

I think @ is also currently taking students, and he's great too!

You're basically following the timeline I did last year, and I would definitely say that though reps are important (just doing section after section / PT after PT), critically reviewing is even more important. That is, we already blind review, but you need to go as deep as possible into blind review, and sometimes get a little more abstract. You have to think about the relationships across questions for LR traps/stimuli and LG. I kept a google doc "LSAT Journal" to keep track of the discoveries I was making and also wrote out explanations for every LR question and kept a spreadsheet to revisit them periodically.

Also, eventually you may want to think about recording yourself and creating timing sheets once you have the fundamentals and knowledge down. There's a whole strategy element to pacing yourself on the sections, and thinking about that is another "phase" in your LSAT journey (unless it comes naturally to you, which it definitely didn't for me haha). One more thing is just that the podcasts and webinars on 7sage are probably one of the best study resources aside from the CC on this site!

I also had Shamala and can confirm she was amazing as well!

@ -- For the first question regarding starting the PS before LSAT, I think it is good to start the PS ahead of time if you're planning to apply this cycle, but I'm not sure if you'll be able to truly focus on it while gearing up for the LSAT (I know I sure couldn't lol). I think if you start in late November, you'll still be able to get apps in by Christmas if you really devote yourself to the PS and other essays.

Writing my PS took about a month, and a lot of that was before I used 7sage's editing service. So when you ask how many rounds it took, it's hard to say because by the time I started working with Shamala I had already done the bulk of the work by finding a topic -- it was more refining the draft than coming up with a new one.

Best of luck, and feel free to DM me any questions!

I think a lot of it is true and verifiable, but I also recall seeing a reddit post by Graeme Blake (the LSATHacks guy) who made a post about how not everything was true. I tried looking for it but couldn't find it, but I remember it was interesting! It was something about the dowsing article and how parts of it were just made up?

Everything @ says is on point -- 1) foolproof, foolproof, foolproof and 2) do work upfront (or realize when doing work upfront isn't required -- what JY calls a "rule-driven" game).

What helped me a lot when my score didn't go up despite foolproofing was stepping back and figuring out the commonalities between games. For example, there are grouping games, but there are grouping games where the number of pieces in each category is given to you and some where they aren't. Sometimes you have grouping games where the pieces can repeat, and sometimes they can't repeat, etc. Figuring these similarities out and then cross-applying strategies will really help you gain a deeper understanding of the games beyond simply going on autopilot!

How should I proceed for each section? I'll assume that I need to wrap up LG foolproofing. Will LR CC repeat yield much? If so, should it be analytics-driven? Is RC CC going to yield anything more than BRing RC sections would?

Sacrifice older PTs below 50 for timed sections?

I agree with those above that you should focus on LG. Just in terms of time required to prepare, it's LG, LR, then RC. There's very little you can do for RC I think, and though you should definitely keep BRing and doing practice sections, I would focus on LG and LR given your score range in order to maximize gains. Definitely foolproof LG as much as possible, and for LR, you want to keep doing full sections but also really drill or figure out what's going wrong on your weakest question types. Also make sure to also foolproof entire LG sections, not just games! Managing a section is different from managing a single game, and you don't want that to throw you off.

In terms of overall last month prep, I really didn't study during the last week. I just did maybe one section a day, or half an LR section, one RC passage, and one or two games. In the last week there's very little you can do, and it's better to get your mental game strong:

https://classic.7sage.com/discussion/#/discussion/18450/7sage-podcast-episode-8-the-week-before-the-lsat-how-to-manage-nerves

Good luck!

The 7sage syllabus and problem sets are all online (which is amazing because then you don't have to lug books around everywhere). But otherwise, many pair 7sage with Mike Kim's LSAT Trainer, and I've also seen some good stuff in Ellen Cassidy's Loophole for LR. I think aside from those two books and 7sage, the practice test exam books are good if you don't already have Ultimate+ (or access to enough on 7sage).

Came back to 7Sage to just post about this -- I was lucky enough to get a good enough score on the July exam, but as I prepared for alternate scenarios of taking the Oct/Nov exams, I was already stressed out because LSAC had basically no test centers near me (or they were all enrolled). And now they've decided to take away resources that have allowed so many to learn about the LSAT before committing to a particular course, which is unbelievably frustrating.

There's so much about this process that is unbearably stupid and at times pretty outrageous, but without a community like 7Sage there would be little to offset the ills of the system. Regardless of what happens, 7Sage is the best option out there for LSAT studying, and even though LSAC may have raised the bar for accessibility, 7Sage still allows way more people to think about law school. Thank you for everything!

I can rip through a lot of LR questions, and I know that JY likes to call MBTs "freebies," but for the longer, more complicated ones, I just write it out while I'm reading. It's just not worth keeping it all in my head, and it's more accurate and faster to just write it out and see what I'm dealing with. I also draw out circles and overlapping groups of items to see "most" and "some" relationships if the question is difficult. I think if it's anything beyond like 3 relationships, it's just worth writing out! And also, as @ says above, this might mess with your momentum, so definitely skip on round one if that's the case and come back to it later (but prioritize it because it's going to be a pretty straightforward question to get unless you diagrammed wrong).

To add onto what people have said above, I actually don't look at the clock except for at certain checkpoints. So for the paper exam, I just flipped my watch over and would check in when I hit the end of the second page of LR, to see if I was on track, and I would also check between passages and games for LG and RC. Your attention should be on the task at hand, not the time, as that's kind of wasted focus (unless you're falling behind). You can hide the clock on the digital but it'll be unhidable in the last 5 minutes.

As for test anxiety, I haven't had extreme immobilizing test anxiety, but there was a part of my July exam where I had messed up on game 1 and was freaking out, and could not focus on game 2. I had to just put my pencil down and close my eyes and breath and get it together before moving forward. So doing that really helps calm you down, and doing everything you can to not think about the score or the weight of the exam but just the material itself. Meditation helps train you to push out thoughts, but I think just practicing the mental aspect of the test in PTs and sections is a key part of prep.

For more general advice, I was never a competitive athlete or anything, but I would suggest thinking about ways to channel that nervous energy and anxiety into excitement and confidence. I don't know how best to explain it, but I just tried to get myself really pumped up and on my game the entire day of the exam. I really screwed up on the last LR section before the break, and had to pick myself and come back to play for the last two sections.

Also, if you just do lots and lots and lots of sections repeatedly, you'll eventually come to fear the test a little less, because you know you've seen everything and you've seen it so many times. At least that for me helped get over the mental barrier of "Oh my god I'm gonna get something that's gonna totally screw me and there's nothing I'll be able to do about it."