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Podcast Summary:

They believe every variant (with one exception) will be a curve of -8

The one exception is the combo of Orwell/Maple Trees LR + Newspaper LG which they believe will be -9

Curve is the # of Qs you can miss and hit 170. May 2020 curve was -9.

If I would like to know the curve for a test , how can I find it ? For instance I would like to know the curve for the November 2018 test

Here: https://classic.7sage.com/lsat-score-percentile-conversion/

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They’re talking about the concerns raised above lol 10/10 recommend listening to this.

what podcast?

I am assuming this:

" rel="nofollow">https://www.powerscore.com/lsat/podcast/

Not sure how creditable or accurate the source is, but perhaps someone else knows more about them. Also would prefer if they just wrote an article.

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I am going to be a bit of a Karen, spurred by posts I've seen across the internet.

I’m not saying “RC was hard!” would help me. I’m saying “game 2 grouping wasn’t bad, but game 4 was a new set up and I only had 8 minutes left so I had to guess 3 Qs” is not useless information.

That is a lot more specific that the majority of the posts that circulate. Unless I missed it, haven't seen any on here or Reddit that point at a specific problem type. Most posts seem to concern about subject matter rather than the actual problem structure or tested skill. A question about newspaper, apples, oranges, teachers, doctors, etc. can all potentially produce a grouping, mixed, or Misc. type problem. Without knowing what the problem was actually testing, or the problem type, knowing that a question is about newspapers or apples isn't going to directly result in a better score. Unless you argue that it gives you comfort - in that case LSAC can decide if they're concerned about how people feel.

A given person struggling on a certain problem type(s) does not imply another will necessarily struggle either. Someone who strategically decides to spend less time on X question others claim to be hard, might actually find that question to be easy.

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out from that? What about if someone said the Physics vs. Chemistry was the most dense? What would that give you? What if they added that it is also the longest story? Would you be able to accurately answer any single question?

Funny you mention that, if I did not actually read online posts about the exam, I would had actually spent more time on that one as opposed to other RC questions. I found it the easiest RC passage to digest, and knowing that the "Physics vs. Chemistry" was the most dense, even if true, wouldn't had likely helped me get more questions right.

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I am going to be a bit of a Karen, spurred by posts I've seen across the internet.

Is anyone else rather concerned at the level of leaked information out there regarding these exams? This forum, reddit, elsewhere, are all getting into which passages are the most difficult, which games are the most difficult, and so on. Indeed, I've seen several posts now of people happy they took the exam later since they knew what to expect.

Most of the information isn't going to help one achieve a better score, though. For example, someone mentions a question about newspapers in LG. But it can be anything from ordering newspapers, whether certain newspapers are included or not, certain people writing in newspaper in a certain order, newspapers being shredded in no particular order, the order of articles within a newspaper, etc. (None of these which were actually on the LSAT). The "Newspaper" subject can theoretically produce any variant of LG problem we know of. On a similar vein, you can replace the subject of Newspapers with fruits and produce a structurally similar problem.

This is obviously not true. I wrote on Sat and have seen very helpful RC commentary that I would agree with and would give me an advantage going in. Also just knowing that the "4th newspaper game is unconventional" is at the very least a strategy & mindset advantage.

Sounds like more of a psychological advantage than an actual one of what the LSAT is designed to test. In that case, doubt LSAC is that concerned about people feeling better or having a more adapted mindset prior to the exam. If LSAC is actually concerned, then it could randomize more of the exams they issue, especially in response to what it learns from internet forums... which judging from the posts on here and elsewhere, is what they sometimes do, as opposed to issuing many identical exams.

What helps one person may not help the next though, even when concerning mindset. For example, I found many of the online posts regarding exam content more misleading than anything. The science passage many people claim to be difficult, was actually the one I found the simplest. If I knew I would had jumped to it sooner and wasted less time on the other passages, and not have been caused to make guesses. Knowing that a LG question had to do with newspapers was not helpful in preparing for it. Will it make someone else sleep better at night and thus lead to a higher LSAT score? Maybe.

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I am going to be a bit of a Karen, spurred by posts I've seen across the internet.

Is anyone else rather concerned at the level of leaked information out there regarding these exams? This forum, reddit, elsewhere, are all getting into which passages are the most difficult, which games are the most difficult, and so on. Indeed, I've seen several posts now of people happy they took the exam later since they knew what to expect.

Most of the information isn't going to help one achieve a better score, though. For example, someone mentions a question about newspapers in LG. But it can be anything from ordering newspapers, whether certain newspapers are included or not, certain people writing in newspaper in a certain order, newspapers being shredded in no particular order, the order of articles within a newspaper, etc. (None of these which were actually on the LSAT). The "Newspaper" subject can theoretically produce any variant of LG problem we know of. On a similar vein, you can replace the subject of Newspapers with fruits and produce a structurally similar problem.

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I was interrupted by Proctor U stating the video went down. They barely ever paused the test so I lost valuable time. Also the constant distractions f*cked up my LG mojo. It was terrible. It was my first LSAT too. I was so scared that my test had been lost. They had trouble reconnecting me to the test. I think it took over an hour just to conduct my 2nd section. I pushed thru and finally got to RC. I was interrupted again during my first passage, and again during my last, and perhaps somewhere in the middle too. It was a nightmare.

Yeah I had similar issues, but during RC. So I was disconnected after I read a passage. By the time I was re-connected, I had to re-read it. Sigh

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Totally fine to use @ !

Did you have the option to highlight and underline while taking it?

Yes.

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I'm seeing a lot of people wondering which of their RC sections were real and these were the RC questions I got (I only had one RC section):

Nigerian novel

Cacao virus

EMF litigation

Privatization

I got same - and only one RC section.

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Does anyone know when Powerscore will release their predictions on this test?

They have: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cDovL3Bvd2Vyc2NvcmVsc2F0cG9kY2FzdC5saWJzeW4uY29tL3Bvd2Vyc2NvcmVsc2F0cG9kY2FzdA/episode/YjM2YzQyYzAtYjEwYy00MmQ2LWExZTYtMTY5ZmNmZTkwYmU2?hl=en-CA&ved=2ahUKEwiimsrR57_yAhWOIDQIHarQC-gQjrkEegQIBhAF&ep=6

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Hey everyone,

Seems like some of the RC themes were different than the one I took. I had Cloth Weave, Medieval Instrument, Physics vs Chem, and Law Tech.

Also my order was different than some of you!

Mine were identical. My Proctor disconnected me at the Physics vs. Chem question right after I read the passages. Lost some memory by the time I could resume the exam.

Sorry to hear about that. Physics vs chem was pretty easy too... why were you disconnected?

I found the cloth weaving and medieval one the hardest of the four.

But overall nothing was out of the ordinary.

Also, when people are saying diplomats are you guys referring to the cloth weaving one? I don't think the main point there was about diplomats lol...

I found the medieval instrument one the most painful one to digest. It was dry and utterly boring, so it was hard to retain the details.

The Proctor claimed HE could not see me, though my webcam had no issues on my end. So my exam was paused and closed on me, until we were actually transferred to tech support. It was not quickly resolved (15-20 minutes minimum), so by the time the exam was re-opened, I already had forgotten many details of what I read.

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Hey everyone,

Seems like some of the RC themes were different than the one I took. I had Cloth Weave, Medieval Instrument, Physics vs Chem, and Law Tech.

Also my order was different than some of you!

Mine were identical. My Proctor disconnected me at the Physics vs. Chem question right after I read the passages. Lost some memory by the time I could resume the exam.

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I had LG-LR-RC and the first three games of LG were straight forward but I realized that with my nerves I had miswritten a rule in the first game which had seven!7! questions. So with 8 min left to start my last game, which was very weird, I answered the first three of five questions, guessed on the last two and redid the first game. I usually go -1 for lg so this was a big hit but im hopping I made up for it with the other two sections. For anyone who hasn't taken the exam yet re-read your rules for the love of whatever you believe in. As for the other sections, LR felt very comfortable I only didn't have time for one question, and RC was dense with a lot of questions but doable. I was rushing for time but still had 8 min to do the last passage which had 7 questions. So make sure you pace yourself. Good luck!

Yeah sounds like we had a similar issue. I just wrote the one today, with the same order. I missed 1 rule for one game too, which caused me to take excessive time on one question, as more than one answer seemed very possible as result.

Just wrote the one today. LG-LR-RC.

My Proctor claimed that he couldn't see me, so he paused the whole exam to transfer me to tech support, right after I read one of the RC passages. By the time that was all sorted, I already had forgotten some of what I read. Had to guess 3-5 of the questions as a result... and they were for the passage I had the easiest time understanding. Sigh

As for the content of the exam itself:

LG: 1st game was easy; 2nd and 3rd were easy to understand, but each question time-consuming to do. The last one with the papers and pages was very odd, and took some time to understand. There was no previous question anywhere like it you could had practiced on.

LR: Worded oddly, but not extremely difficult. Had to re-read a few passages to actually understand them.

RC: I found the question about medieval instruments the most painful one to digest - it was simply content I did not have any interest in and had difficulty understanding. The Physics vs. Chemistry one the most interesting one, but the technical issues ruined it for me.

I had LR-LG-RC-LG

LG #1 had 2 easy games; 2 rough ones. The political party question goofed me a bit as I couldn't draw many easy inferences.

LG #2 had 2 easy games; 2 somewhat rough ones. The fencing question was odd, and the one with movie theatres.

LG is typically my strongest section (-2 on PTs) but I suspect I did more like -5 or a bit worse, because of spending way too much time on the odd questions.

LR was very dense. Most of the passages were very long.

RC was OK - I had the one about a novel writer, leaves, corrective justice vs. benefit to society (EMFs?), and the theory about how the universe supposedly started.

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Did anyone find the LR (conspiracy theories, Sisyphus, Norway/Sweden, dark bird feathers) really really really hard? Or was it just me because I'm terrible at LR?

Damn you, LR...

Found it very dense. A lot of material to absorb for each question. I ended up having to guess all the parallel reasoning questions because of running out of time.

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Over studying can do more harm than good. It sounds like you may be approaching burnout. If your scores are decreasing, you are likely taking too many PTs, and with so little time, I'd focus on skipping strategy and calming nerves. Good luck!

Yeah I figured doing primarily more PTs in the near term isn't going to help. I have been averaging 6 hrs per day (36 hours/week) dedicated to just the LSAT. I applied to a law school (the one most feasible to me, as it's 10 minutes away) that happens to take the average LSAT scores, not the best...

I'm not sure why, but my PT scores are actually going lower the more of them I do. The last several I've done have been 154-156. RC has been hurting me more than previously - somehow I actually got -14 for that on PT 48.

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If it's your first time taking the test, I would recommend you buy the score preview option. Sometimes having the pressure that you need to do well on the test off your shoulder really helps.

LR section seems promising for you to improve. Can you let us know what question types you usually got wrong?

Weaken, Sufficient Assumption, and Parallel Method of Reasoning. The other types I typically get correct.

For Parallel Method, I understand them well, but I just take way too long to do them, causing me to guess the ones I can't otherwise complete.

I only have some last minute tips since it's hard to incorporate new strategies without sufficient training.

Sufficient Assumption is conditional heavy, and it is somewhat similar to the MBT question type except for having the conclusion and missing an unstated premise. One strategy for this question type is to scan what is new in the conclusion but is never stated in the premise and vice versa, you can eliminate wrong ACs by doing so.

Parallel Method can be skipped to do later because just as you said, this one takes a long time. One strategy that you can do is to scan for the conclusion and if it doesn't match the structure of the stimulus that means the question is wrong. Be careful if the conclusion is the conditional statement, the contrapositive of that statement in the AC is still right. A more advanced method is to keep only the skeleton of the stimulus, like P: (1) -> (2) C: ~(2) -> ~(1) and find the correct AC that matches the skeleton. But doing so requires you to be fluent in conditional logic first.

Strategies to spot weaken is the same as spotting the sufficient assumption or flawed reasoning. More often than not, you need to identify a gap in reasoning before looking at the ACs. Weaken is also the evil twin of the necessary assumption, so weaken question type will usually wreck an argument.

For Parallel Reasoning, what I have to do is to sketch out the structure of the argument, and compare the structure to that in the available answers.

e.g. Bob likes oranges or apples. Someone who likes neither oranges or apples, likes carrots. Thus, Bob must not like carrots. ... ... The flawed pattern of reasoning in this argument is most similar to which of the following choices...?

/O, /A -> C; /C -> O/A or OA

B -> O/A

B -> /C ...

Then, I'd have to do the same sketch for all the available options, as well as reverse some of the statements so make them more obvious. This whole process is causing me to take too much time.

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If it's your first time taking the test, I would recommend you buy the score preview option. Sometimes having the pressure that you need to do well on the test off your shoulder really helps.

LR section seems promising for you to improve. Can you let us know what question types you usually got wrong?

Weaken, Sufficient Assumption, and Parallel Method of Reasoning. The other types I typically get correct.

For Parallel Method, I understand them well, but I just take way too long to do them, causing me to guess the ones I can't otherwise complete.

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you aren't alone in your issue - under timed conditions I almost always have about 5 questions left ... I am struggling to get any faster.

What I'm going to try next is to use the Analytics feature, and to grind problems of the specific question types I'm getting errors on for LR and RC, or for the question types I spend the most time on per question anyway.

Update: finally back into the high 150s again. Got out of the habit of just doing the questions (mostly) in sequential order and skipping the very long paragraphed LR questions until the shorter ones are done first. Also been making more concrete diagrams in LG before jumping at the questions.

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Hi, I am in the same boat (if not a worse boat) then you, as in, I am even slower on the LG. So take my advice with a grain of salt. However, I will tell you what is helping me drastically speed up over the last few problem sets.

That would be, the concept of "recognizing the action." As you are writing out the rules, the "action" would be the place where rules are chained together, where rules trigger outcomes, basically the flex points or swivel points, if you will, around which the pieces are swung around.

Recognizing the place in the game with the most action has helped me speed up a lot because usually the majority (if not all) of the questions will hone in on that one focus zone. If you really mentally understand the "action," a lot of the answers can be visualized, instead of drawn out, saving precious time.

The "Which one of the following is an acceptable arrangement..." should typically be your fastest question, not your slowest. You just run down the rules one at a time, and each rule usually knocks out one answer choice.

Sometimes they throw you curveballs on this one, as in, you need inferences to figure it out, but it's designed for the most part to be very straightforward.

Usually if I notice that if a given condition is linked with a bunch of others - and fills up a substantial part of the board - I quickly draw out a board with that scenario. Very often the additional premise question will refer to that scenario, or a scenario where that scenario is NOT true.

What really hits me hard is if I do NOT draw additional boards at the beginning, and then this causes me to take substantially longer on the additional premise questions. I have this problem the worst with grouping games with repeating items. I did tried PT89 for example, and the last game caused me to make 3 question guesses. By coincidence my score for the LG section was -3.

My LSAT write is next Tuesday, and I suffer immensely at LR and LC (averaging -10 in each), so it's imperative I perfect my performance in LG.

I've had a similar issue. I am taking a 100% courseload, along with being self-employed and having to do so to pay the bills. I started studying for the LSAT in the beginning of October 2020; wrote the first one in November 2020. In October my diagnostic scores were in the low 140s. On the November LSAT, I scored 150 - though this before using 7Sage. I relied on Khan Academy, which proved to be inadequate for significant improvement beyond basics. Now my PTs are in the high 150s, though I am having much more difficulty breaking out of this range.

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In general, does this strategy work? Just looked at the PT41 and this game seems unsual.

I've had mixed results. Success seems to depend on the nature of the games. Not having sub boards drawn out, even if not very detailed or conclusive, has often caused me to take longer to solve the additional inference questions.

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What are LG looking like for you? That's your best bet at fast improvement.

-3 Best; -10 worst.

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The Logic game section is designed in a way that more often than not, if you do the additional premises first for the games that have 5-6 or fewer questions, you can use the gameboards set up for such questions to answer other questions. Also, your right and wrong answers of the additional premise question type can give you clues to quickly eliminate wrong answer choices in other questions. I think in recent tests the questions are more interdependent than the old ones.

Questions with additional premises I am referring to are the questions that say If you place a game piece in a slot, what must/could be true?

Setting up all possible sub gameboards gives us peace of mind, and the people who created the test know it, so they try to trick you to set up gameboards before diving into the questions when doing so is not necessary. If you fall for the trick, you will lose valuable time.

To see if setting up all sub gameboards is necessary, quickly scan the question stems after writing down all the rules. Out of the 5/6 questions, if the first question is asking possible complete setup and at least 2 of the questions are additional premise types, you most likely do just fine without setting all sub gameboards.

I just tried this, but results have been mixed. For example, on PT41, I had to guess 6 questions. Though it may have to do with PT41 having the last LG puzzle where very few inferences could be made.

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Hey there. Same here. I was PTing around a 163/162 leading up to the exam. I scored a 155. I'm so frustrated. Hang in there, keep your head up. It's hard even being on the chat some times because there are so many high performers... trying to resist the constant need to compare. Bad days happen indeed. Best of luck to you!

I got the exact same score as you, and my PT scores were also higher than what I actually got. Really chocked.