I know what you mean, I have the same issue. One thing that helped me, was this: pick a test that you're not going to do fully timed (I'd recommend an earlier test) and go through each LR question with a timer on your phone set to 1:25 seconds (you're supposed to have 1:25 seconds per question on LR).

The first couple of times I did it, I found myself reading answer E as the timer was going off which was a sign that I was reading way too slow. I found that doing this helped me gauge or build the internal timer you're talking about, because you actually have a specific time frame in which its expected that you should be able to finish the question, and the alarm as a reminder of when time is supposed to be up. Another bonus of doing this was that it helped me understand how to skip questions better; e.g. if 45 seconds into reading stimulus I'm lost, I stop the timer and circle the question making a note that this type of question would be worth skipping during a full timed run, in order to follow JY's low hanging fruit strategy.

Dunno if this helps but it helped me! Good luck with your studying :smile:

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Does anyone know if there is a specific time frame as to when JY/7sage's explanations for the most recent LSAT will be out? I feel like that would be very helpful before the Feb.2018 exam.

Post any questions you have. December test takers, we can all work together.

I will be closer to the actual exam day. Right now I'm re-working through mid 70's PT's and at my current pace Dec 2017 will be the last PT that I do prior to Feb. But I agree with you. Looks like its going to be a collaborative teaching thing going on for that test :smile:

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They won't be out until after the Feb. LSAT, sorry.

Okay well thank you for the heads up anyway.

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First off this was unbelievably helpful, thanks so much! :smiley:

Yaaay!!! I am glad (3(/p)

As for the second part of your post that I bolded, that entire thing is the internal conversation I need to be comfortable having with myself right after reading a stimulus. It would help improve my score greatly, or at least make the scores more reflective of my actual knowledge of the questions.

You are pretty much on point. Having that internal conversation and being aware and in control of the process can mean the difference between scoring your potential or below it. :)

One issue I have that's specific to me is that I have a great memory. So even when I re-do a LR section with the proctor timing, I find that the ones that I got the first time I remember the answer so I can pick it after reading a few lines of stimulus,

You can't cheat here. : ) You still want to ask yourself, do you get the argument itself? Can you identify what's wrong with it? etc

I see what you mean for sure. But I guess I should have clarified it. The ones I get the first time, I got em because I did understand them (even if i made mistakes with the timing) so what ends up happening is I read a few lines and remember the issue. For the ones I didn't get, I remember the JY explanation, in terms of what the flaw was, where this specific question throws people off, trap answer choices etc. and because I've spent deliberate time reviewing the question I remember the answer.

Prior to my Dec write I used to do this method of timed LR sections with tests in the 60's, to practice that ability to grab the lowest hanging coconut. I found I was finishing with 10 minutes left just because I had done the tests recently. Regardless though I'll give it another shot, I might just be picking PT's that are way too recent in my memory. It seems like too good of a strategy/method of practicing that dialogue, without burning through my limited number of PT's and not having that skill honed.

Thanks again for your response! :smile:

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@

I think you have two different issues you need to work on. One of the things you need to work on is question type related and the other one is that you have a hard time moving on from questions. These two cannot be addressed in the same drill effectively.

For addressing question type I would take the questions from an older PT like 30-35 and first revisit the core-curriculum for that question type, write down the strategy for that question type, and go through those questions in that packet one by one. I would keep a timer. If the question was a 1 star question, you want to get it in 25-45 seconds. Anything longer and you want to watch the video for that question and figure out what stopped you from getting it in that time. For a 3 star question a minute is a good marker. For a 4 star, a minute and a half and 5 star maybe 2 minutes max.

To address your issue of not moving on in time and not being able to score other points you have to do section drills. Because you cannot see the time for each question in a section you have to rely on how hard it feels to you. The rule of thumb is to read a stimulus and ask yourself do you get the argument? If not, do another quick read and that's it. If the stimulus is still hard and you have no idea what's wrong with the argument either you take a quick look at the answers and see if something jumps out quickly or you move on. The worse thing you can do is spend time here. If after first read you felt like you understood the argument, you want to read the answer choices, if you are down to 50-50 see you have an idea how to differentiate the two answer choices, if you do not, you need to circle this question and move on. If you thought the stimulus was easy and you spot the right answer choices before reading the rest of the answer choices and you feel 75% confident you need to pick this answer and move on and the time you save on this question you can use it for a hard question that you need more time for. You want to practice relying on a good form when you drill sections. For this drill, my suggestion is to use sections you have taken before preferably older ones. For any drill, you want to use older materials.

I hope this was helpful. Let me know if you have any more questions.

First off this was unbelievably helpful, thanks so much! :smiley:

I never thought of keeping a timer for questions based on type, that's definitely something I should do. I'll take a look at the sections I'm weak at and drill those LR types from older PT's after labeling the difficulty level of each question in the packet.

As for the second part of your post that I bolded, that entire thing is the internal conversation I need to be comfortable having with myself right after reading a stimulus. It would help improve my score greatly, or at least make the scores more reflective of my actual knowledge of the questions. One issue I have that's specific to me is that I have a great memory. So even when I re-do a LR section with the proctor timing, I find that the ones that I got the first time I remember the answer so I can pick it after reading a few lines of stimulus, and the ones that I got wrong I remember the JY video on it, so I can curb my urge to pick the wrong answer and pick the right one (I usually always get the wrong answer by bringing it down to 2 choices, and then zigging when I should have zagged). I don't find it particularly helpful to do this kind of test based on memory. Luckily I still have 5 PT's that are clean that I can use before Feb, so I will emphasize practicing the question types I'm weak on for the next week or so and then hopefully translate those skills, and practice the "LR awareness" (haha) onto the PT's.

Overall thanks to everybody who gave their 2 cents. 7sage community is the best!

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I would usually skip a question if I couldn't get a firm grasp on what it's asking me to do in approximately a minute. If it was a really long/tricky/wordy question, sometimes I would skip after reading a line or two because I know the question is a curve-breaker. If I skip a question that I had the opportunity to read/attempt, I would usually return to it after attempting the next 2 or 3 questions. I also sometimes work through sections out of order towards the middle/end due the difficulty curve.

I would usually finish my best sections with 2-5 minutes to go over questions I was less certain of. My best sections were definitely the sections on which I was confident enough to skip a lot of questions and work out of order. Working strictly linearly on the LSAT can be tough for some reason. (I think this is part of what the test-makers are testing us on?)

My two cents. :)

That's for timed LR work. Maybe you meant for untimed work??

That thought process is what I'm trying to practice. Knowing my limits and trying to really maximize what I'm capable of per section, instead of getting sucked in by a curve breaker. And I 100% agree I think not working linearly, and being able to weigh costs and benefits are both definitely a major aspect to success on this test (whether or not the makers are testing it directly).

With some solid practice on the question types I mentioned in my first post I'll be able to get to where you are in terms of how you go through the LR

Thanks for your advice, I appreciate it! :smiley:

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Each term in a biconditional relationship has a necessary and sufficient condition, so they trigger no matter what. K(-------)/M breaks down to:

K--------->/M and /M-------->K, with contrapositives M------->/K and /K---------->M

So it doesn't matter if you have K or /K, M or /M, each one is sufficient to trigger it's necessary condition.

This makes a lot of sense. I can see why if you get an always apart never together rule why you would split an in/out game board into 2 (one where K is in M is out, and the other where K is out and M is in). It's because of the relationships that a bi-conditional entails/contains that you detailed above. Thanks a lot!

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K(----)M is a biconditional. It is read both ways and we can also read the contrapositives. This is designed to cover every possible world in the in and out game. So unpacking the biconditional reading the arrow forward we have:

K(-(strong)-->M

If K is in then M is out

Contrapositive of that statement is

If M is in then K is out

Now we read the statement backwards:

K(----(/strong)>M

If M is out then K is in

Contrapositive of that is:

If K is out then M is in

The purpose of mastery over this concept for in and out games is that we have every single base covered via a sufficient condition:

What happens when M is in?

What happens when M is out?

What happens when K is in?

What happens when K is out?

By "what happens" I mean what is triggered/what is necessary

This works out so neatly for in and out games because we only have (for the most part) two categories.

The Not both rule you have written above as number 2 is often far more restrictive in what we can draw from it. I think of this rule as it relates to grouping games: if you have Three groups and K and M cannot be together, but if K is in group 1, the only thing we can draw from that is that M must be in group 2 or 3 (assuming we have to use all the piece.) A way I have of looking at a not both rule for grouping games is I tell myself "If I see a K, I better not see an M in that group" For in and out games, because we are playing such a restrictive in/out game board, this simple not both iteration might cause some confusion, because as you point out: we might fail the sufficient condition and (wrongly) assume that the rule falls apart on an in and out game.

Now, there is a small exception in my estimation on in and out games where the rule you have listed as number 2 might provide us with a greater ability to manipulate the game pieces: that in which we have an in and out game with sub categories. Meaning from a group of 7, we are choosing two groups of 3 with 1 out for instance. In this case, the biconditional does not hold the same way it does for traditional in and out games.

I hope the above helps

David

The above helps greatly, thank you so much for your detailed explanation. I really appreciate it, and (as a Canadian lol) sorry I didn't take a look back this thread until now, I got busy wtih things. Nonetheless again thanks for such a detailed explanation. cheers!

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@ Hey!

I think the LR drill by type packs are great to use. I would start using some earlier tests and save the 62+ for full length PTs (at least for now)

Otherwise, I recommend doing question type drilling untimed. Here's why: when you're drilling by question type, you're presumably trying to get better at a particular skill or question type, maybe both. Speed, however, should not be a main concern. Learning and improving is the concern with question type drilling. If you learn a new skill or improve on a question type, practice it repeatedly, then speed will take care of itself.

If you're mostly getting them all right even untimed, then you should focus on your strategy. You may not be approaching them with the best technique or strategy.

Yes definitely, my strategy is no good. I need to be more cognizant of what I'm doing during the entire exam (E.g. looking to knock out the "hunt mode questions" on my first pass through). I've re-read JY's coconut analogy a few times since the Dec exam. I have a few clean PT's left that I'm saving to actually utilize the strategy of knowing when to move on and see how that affects my scores.

As usual thanks for your insight man I really appreciate it. And you're right the speed will take care of itself, I should focus on improving my overall approach to questions mentioned above since they are the ones that kill my momentum in the first place.

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This is a paragraph I got from the tips on the logic games section under the syllabus section of "Resources for Taking LSAT"

"If you encounter a question that you cannot solve quickly, skip. Come back on round 2 if you have time. Clearly, something faulty is happening in your reasoning and it's blinding you to the right answer. You want give yourself some time and space away from that reasoning. Let it "go to bed" so to speak. Come back on round 2 with a fresh perspective."

The part I'm confused about is the last bit that I bolded. Lets say you're on game 1 of a LG section and you get to question #3 and you can't get it. In this scenario you would skip the question but does the "skip" referred to above mean that, you skip #3 and go do #4 and #5 and then go on to the next game, (coming back after going through all the other games, similar to a LR type of skip) OR does the "skip and come back on round 2" mean that you skip #3 go do #4 and #5 then come back to #3 before moving to Game 2?

If someone could clear this up for me that would be great. I wrote the Dec. LSAT and I'm confident I tanked the games because of panic, not because of a lack of understanding. So I'm reviewing for Feb and I just want make sure that my overall testing technique is much more improved (as in getting the lowest hanging coconut on all the sections). I feel that if my technique for taking the test is better, the knowledge I have of in/out games, sequencing games, all the different LR type questions, etc. will be implemented better on test day, and make me feel as confident as I did doing PT's in a library lol.

Thank you in advance

Hi, could you post a link to the lesson you are talking about?

I think Round 2 would be the first scenario where "you would skip the question but does the "skip" referred to above mean that, you skip #3 and go do #4 and #5 and then go on to the next game, (coming back after going through all the other games, similar to a LR type of skip)".

Sure. Here's the link

https://classic.7sage.com/lesson/logic-games-habits-for-speed-and-accuracy/

It's the third paragraph under "When doing the questions"

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"Round 2" usually refers to the second pass through a section after you've already attempted/seen all the questions.

If I'm confident in my understanding of the game (meaning no rule translation errors or mistakes setting up the game board) and I'm struggling with a question, then there is likely something I'm not seeing. This situation came up during my last PT; Q6 was a CBT for which I was able to eliminate A and E, but would need to brute force the remaining ACs. I chose to move on completely. Finishing Game 4 with 5 minutes left. I returned to Q6 at which point I "saw" what I had been missing and in fact didn't need to brute force at all.

Speaking more generally, whenever I make a skipping decision, it always comes down to the cost of my options. In my first example above, I didn't want to risk stepping into a time-sink on the 6th question of a set since I had no idea about the difficulty that lay ahead. Plus, I find that I'm more likely to "see" what I was missing and spend less time in total if I move on to the next game and return in the 2nd round. Maybe it's because not enough time has passed. Or maybe it's because I feel more confident on round 2 since I just answer 20-22 questions confidently and now I'm returning to the few which gave me trouble.

Side note. In that same section, I reached game 4 with 15 minutes left but when I reached the 3rd question of that set, I knew I had made a big mistake somewhere because none of the AC were possible based on my game board. In this case, it would have been very stupid to keep answering questions based on a bad set up. I returned to the rules and painstakingly reviewed each piece of my game board eventually finding the error and answering the remaining questions in that set. At that point, I returned to Q6 as I already described. In this case, the cost of moving on was too great.

That's something I need to work on. Sometimes my ego gets into it and I tell myself "common this is game 2 you should get it no problem" or something stupid like that. Then I end missing the last game completely because of my decision not to simply move to the next question or next game.

Thanks for your insight, I appreciate it!

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Stim: without trust there cannot be meaningful emotional connection to another human being

H: Happiness, MEC: meaningful emotional connection, I: isolated

Premise 1: Because there is a group 3 and a group 4 indicator I would have to treat one as a negation. I'm going for the group 3 translation (without) and using the group 4 indicator (no) as the negation: T --> MEC

"Without" signifies necessary condition and negates the sufficient condition. So Premise 1 should be translated as "MEC -> T" ("without trust there cannot be meaningful emotional connection to another human being").

With the corrected premise, the argument would look something like this:

P1: MEC -> T

P2: ~I -> MEC

C: H -> T

The missing premise would be "H -> ~I," whose contrapositive is answer choice (A).

There's a forum rule against posting direct quotes from PTs, by the way.

Thank you for clearing it up for me, and my mistake on the post.

Aiming for Dec LSAT too :smile: I'd like to be part of a study group if that happens. My schedule is flexible!

@ 1.Sometimes in and out games are "disguised." Meaning they don't actually tell you that they are in and out games, but rather lend their set up to an in and out set up

This right here. Your number 1 rule is what screws me up on the in-out games. I find that the games that I bomb (as in get 1 right or everything wrong) boils down to not recognizing the non-obvious in-out/grouping games. I'm not really sure how to improve on this, other than looking for potential key words that indicate some sort of split or something. But thanks again, I will definitely use rule 2 that you mentioned on those standard acceptable situation questions. That seems like a very useful application of the knowledge of what a not-both rule means.

@ Last thing, are you going back a few days or maybe even a week or so later to try the same LG again? This will also help you determine if you truly grasp that game. I kinda started rambling but hope it helps a little.

This is something I have to do. What I do after a PT is watch all the videos and draw out the inferences along with JY's explanation in a booklet. I have quite a few pages of logic game boards now, but I haven't really gone back and tried to re-do the sections under timed conditions which is probably hindering my fluency with the games.

@ I appreciate the BJJ reference as a muay thai practitioner my self haha. Thank you for your detailed response. From what you said, one thing I can improve on is being more active in my approach to the games. I find that I have tendency to consider far to much information and end up getting flustered (e.g. trying to figure out how 3 rules operate at once). I think one thing I'm going to do from now on is try to approach these things more calmly, and like you said really try to understand what is a particular question asking me, or what the implications of a specific rule are on a game board.

To be specific my weakness tends to only be the grouping/in-out games. I feel very comfortable with sequencing games and understanding leaders/followers, where certain things can go or don't go. However, whenever I get an in-out/grouping game I sort of go into it with little confidence because I don't have a good history with them, despite understanding what the difference between not-both and or rules are.

Thanks so much again for the responses. When I posted this discussion I did it out of a defeated state, because I just did a prep-test and scored so low compared to where I normally score. But now I realize that I need to figure out what specifically about the games am I screwing up on. I'm rewriting the exam in Feb, and I plan on doing really well, since now I have a gameplan of what I need to improve on.

@ You've got a classic quantity versus quality delimna and quality is always the correct call.

Thank you @. I'm in the same boat @. I feel as though I jumped into practice testing late, spending more time on curriculum. I learned that you need the tests to show you where you're weak in curriculum, so that you can improve. Going to focus my time on 60's-70's to get a real idea of how prepared I am for the December exam.

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cried in the corner after I got home just to vent and let all the stress out. Then went out to get dinner, drink and then went bowling. It seems like throwing something and it being out of your control and being okay with the result whether it be a strike or in the gutter is really helping me get a grip that I messed up my Dec test. My friend put it simply "There's always another ball coming out of that thing, the pins will always get arrange, and you will always have another chance to get a strike!"

How I'm thinking about the February exam. Thanks a lot. And you're right, its out of my hands now, so no point in wasting energy on it. :smile:

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Finished the Dec LSAT. Regardless of the outcome, how do you deal with the anxiety of waiting? Does anyone have any strategy? That's something I'm seriously struggling with, and I am really sure I will continue to struggle with it in the coming days :(

In the words of my mother, no point in thinking about an exam that's done and you can't control anymore. Maybe it went well, maybe not. The question is what to do from here on now. I am taking four days off, then back to LSAT for Feb -just in case or to raise my score, and to work on my applications!. So even if I had a high or low score, I know I would be doing the same thing. :)

That seems like a great plan. My dad gave me similar advice too when he saw me sulking lol. Thanks for the advice I appreciate it!

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I got an entire cake, a bottle of champagne, and am having a small gathering at my house tonight to socialize with the friends I've ignored for the past month or so because I've been studying. The results are no longer in your hands - no matter what you do, you can't change them. There's no use in worrying, you might as well try to forget about it and be pleasantly surprised when you get your scores back and find out you did great.

I needed to hear that, thank you. Unecessary stress is something that I can't bring on myself, and you're 100% right, freaking out over it now ain't gonna change a thing. I took it really hard the first couple hours after the test just because I want to be a lawyer so bad, so the fact that this one exam is almost like a gatekeeper for me made it seem like it was a sort of a be all/end all situation...which it isn't :smiley:

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Finished the Dec LSAT. Regardless of the outcome, how do you deal with the anxiety of waiting? Does anyone have any strategy? That's something I'm seriously struggling with, and I am really sure I will continue to struggle with it in the coming days :(

Get out of your head, it's a bad neighborhood. Go out, spend time with loved ones, do something not LSAT related. Get the hell off law school/LSAT forums. Study for your actual college finals, immerse yourself in something you haven't had the time to do while you've been studying...

But most of all, chill... For now, it's over and your score is your score. Accept it. Realize you can always retake if need be, and enjoy your life :star:

Thanks man, that really helps. Ugh sometimes its just really rough, because you just wanna get this thing done and never to have to f**kin think about a logic game ever again. I just felt very disheartened when I left the exam knowing I didn't do well on a section (like I did for the Dec one). Especially considering it wasn't an issue in practice...oh well.

Thanks again.

It's normal to feel this way after the test man. Don't sweat it too hard. I feel you though, I really do. Just make sure you do something fun or nice for yourself, because after everything you deserve it.

Will do! And you're right I need to just relax for a couple days. Sliver lining in the clouds is that, in hindsight the games didn't feel objectively hard for me, but I panicked on a few questions and that cost me big time. I find the LSAT is like a sprint; each stride counts, and if you mess up on a few strides you fall over and don't perform well in the race. Regardless after thinking about it and reading everyone's posts on this thread I'm feeling a lot better, and getting my confidence back. :)

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Finished the Dec LSAT. Regardless of the outcome, how do you deal with the anxiety of waiting? Does anyone have any strategy? That's something I'm seriously struggling with, and I am really sure I will continue to struggle with it in the coming days :(

Get out of your head, it's a bad neighborhood. Go out, spend time with loved ones, do something not LSAT related. Get the hell off law school/LSAT forums. Study for your actual college finals, immerse yourself in something you haven't had the time to do while you've been studying...

But most of all, chill... For now, it's over and your score is your score. Accept it. Realize you can always retake if need be, and enjoy your life :star:

Thanks man, that really helps. Ugh sometimes its just really rough, because you just wanna get this thing done and never to have to f**kin think about a logic game ever again. I just felt very disheartened when I left the exam knowing I didn't do well on a section (like I did for the Dec one). Especially considering it wasn't an issue in practice...oh well.

Thanks again.

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Wine!

haha, noted! Thx for the tip

The above situation you described is almost exactly the same situation I'm in. I really feel like I bombed the LG on the Dec test even though leading up to it, I was doing as well as I needed on LG to get the scores I needed.

As for how badly they look at it, it totally depends on the school. As a Canadian I'm lucky that the vast majority of schools look at the highest score so it doesn't really matter for me. Figure out if the number of times you write is important for the school(s) that you want to attend in terms of their admissions.

And regardless don't give up on anything. It's easy to start letting the negativity creep in (it comes with the nature of standardized tests, and being unsure of scores etc.), but remember if this is the career that you're striving for then go for it. At least that's what I'm telling myself post-Dec 2017.

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The best advice is just to remain calm and begin writing down rules. These games aren't actually harder than regular games. I actually gave my friend an odd ball game and a regular sequencing game. He missed -3 on each game and did them each in like 15 minutes untimed.

Don't get paralyzed.

Here is a partial list of some older misc game you can try out:

PT1-S2-G1

PT6-S4-G3

PT20-S3-G4

PT21-S1-G3

PT30-S1-G1

PT9-S3-G4

PT4-S3-G4

PT8-S2-G2

PT18-S1-G3

PT18-S1-G4

PT12-S2-G4

PT10-S2-G3

PT16-S1-G4

PT2-S3-G3

PT13-S1-G4

PT6-S4-G4

PT15-S4-G2

PT11-S1-G4

You have no idea how much I appreciate this list. Usually I do about 3 tests per week and take 2 days to just do re-do certain LR sections that were difficult or particular games that I struggled with. I can use this list for those practice days to work through, so thank you so much. :smiley:

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I'm not really sure if there is a way to study for misc. games besides just doing them tbh. They, as you know, differ a lot from normal games and from one another. This makes it hard to study for them and come up with a set way of doing them.

What I recommend is to do all of the misc games from 1-39 and just get used to making non-normal game boards. There are some misc games, however, that you can make a game board similar to a grouping game or sequencing game but the game is still a weird one. for example, (spoiler if you haven't done PT 79 yet) the viruses game on this PT is a very tough game, especially at first glance, but if you accommodate it to be like a sequencing game (aka something you already know) then you are golden because that is what it basically is, just in a weird way.

That helps a lot, thanks a ton! I think you're right the key to these sort of games is to become comfortable being uncomfortable and not to panic just because a game doesn't immediately fit the mold of something that I saw in the curriculum.