Community Profile

jhaldy10325

Friday, Apr 11 2025

Yeah, negation doesn't work for me either. I mean, it works--I can do it--it just tends to be way more of a headache and way more time consuming than just using the MBT test. The MBT test is WAY easier, WAY faster, and equally reliable. So I just don't ever see any occasion to use the negation test unless it's for a fundamentals exercise or a proof or something. But under timed conditions? No thanks.

0

General · Breaking into 170s?

jhaldy10325

Wednesday, Apr 09 2025

I use an instant replay rule standard for changing my answer on review. In sports, a referee's call can be overruled, but only after careful scrutiny. The footage review must affirmatively prove the call was wrong in order to change it. Revealing uncertainty or ambiguity is not enough. So defer to your original choice unless you can affirmatively overturn it. This is an important rule to check a major bias: We feel much more productive in review when it results in a changed answer. As your situation reveals, this is not necessarily the case.

Caveat on all this: You have to balance this with looking at questions where you did change your answer to a right one. It is all too easy to overlook the questions where you correctly changed your answer. You could be losing some points from switching your answer while netting a total gain.

2

LSAT · Reading Comprehension

jhaldy10325

Tuesday, Mar 25 2025

@yhtkim985 said:

When studying RC, I think it's important to be honing a specific strategy. For me, this consisted of two things:

I trained myself to invest a lot of time into the passage (70% passage, 30% questions, give or take). Taking the time to digest the passage made the harder questions so much easier, and I also saw a net increase in speed -- I was able to blow past most of the easier questions in 10 something seconds, sometimes even less.

I know this doesn't jibe with everyone, but I always wrote low-res summaries. They made it heaps easier to digest each paragraph. Synthesizing the information forced my brain to get a better handle on the trickier, more subtle details.

These tricks -- and a whole lot of practice -- helped me achieve a consistent -2 on RC. On test day, I'm fairly sure I hit a perfect score. (I got a 172, and I struggled HARD with the last logic game and a couple LR questions.) I owe a great deal of it to this AMA. It's a great read all around, but what it says about RC was the most helpful for me. https://classic.7sage.com/1-ama-w-7sager-cant-get-right-152-to-176/

There's so much to be said about taking the time to comprehend the reading. You'll see tons of tips and hacks that try to bypass comprehension, but it's literally a test of how well you understood the thing you just read. If you didn't understand the passage, you won't--and shouldn't--perform well on a test of how well you understood the passage. Investing in the read and taking the time to work things out is the most important thing. If you don't do it the first time, you'll just have to do it later--less efficiently--in response to a question you don't know how to answer. Invest the time to prioritize comprehension. I average about 4 minutes per passage, and I know I went -0 on test day because back then they told us. If you do the math on the remaining time, that gives me an average of about 42 seconds per question. Not a ton of time, but enough if you have strong comprehension. I'd much rather have 42 seconds with a strong 4:00 read compared to 51 seconds with a compromised 3:00 read.

2

General · Bombing an experimental section?

jhaldy10325

Tuesday, Mar 04 2025

@cindykim10061 said:

They're experimentals in name only, they were originally scored sections."

This is correct. Every experimental section on the PT’s is a real section. It does not affect your PT score, but it is not experimental in the sense that the test makers have any uncertainty about its validity or relative difficulty. These sections were each meticulously tested and analyzed before being administered, as a scored section, on a real test.

1

LSAT · "Is essential"

jhaldy10325

Wednesday, Feb 26 2025

You got it.

A good way to workshop these is to come up with simple, commonsense examples to check against. So with "is essential" we might say: "Water is essential for farming." This is a commonsense statement, and the meaning should resonate as intuitively true. So now try out the two options to translate that to an "if . . . then . . ." statement and see which one seems to mean what we know "Water is essential for farming" means.

If there's water then there must be farming?

or

If there's farming then there must be water.

With water as the sufficient there is all kinds of problems. I see water without farming every day of my life and it has never challenged the notion that water is essential for farming. There's water on Mars. There's water at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. There's water deep below the Earth's surface. No farming in any of those places. We just don't get farming everywhere there's water. But everywhere there is a farm? Yeah, there's going to be water. Water as the necessary makes sense in the same way that "Water is essential for farming does." If you see a farm, you know there's water involved.

So that is how "is essential" works. And that is how you can workshop these sorts of problems.

2

LSAT · Skip Parallel or Analogy Questions?

jhaldy10325

Saturday, Feb 22 2025

If these are time sinks, you should absolutely skip them. You are right that these take an incredible amount of time to solve. Anything that's projected to take so much time should be skipped. That applies to top scorers too, btw. If I think solving on a Parallel question is going to be required, I skip it too. I score so consistently well because of this (among other things . . .), not in spite of it.

But there is middle ground between skipping and solving. Instead of solving these, check the stimulus and see if you understand the rationale of the argument. The rationale is a more intuitive understanding. Basically, do you get what the argument is and generally why the person making that argument would expect you to accept their conclusion? If so, you know the rationale. And if you know the rationale, go ahead and read through the answer choices. And don't abstract the structure of the rationale and force it onto the answers. That's a good way to learn and review, it's typically a very ineffective tactic under timed conditions. Instead, deal with the Answer Choices on their own. The right answer should strike you as having a similar rationale as the stimulus. Your thinking should sound like, "Huh, my take on this answer sure is similar to my take on the stimulus." When you find that answer, choose it and move on immediately. Assuming reasonably good fundamentals, you'll usually be right and occasionally be wrong. The points you pick up with the time you're able to bank will pay back the occasional wrong answers with interest.

This is very different from solving it formally. I'm not talking about how to learn or solve these. I'm talking about how to execute under timed conditions using a tactical approach that is practicable and effective. You won't see any explanation videos on this, but every consistent high scorer knows how to do it and understands its importance. Solving these out just isn't viable, so you have to be efficient. It is, of course, less reliable than solving. But it's fast. I'd rather have 80% accuracy and average 45 seconds on these than maintain 100% accuracy and take 2:30 on them. That's a savings of 1:45 per question, which I think is routinely achievable for testers who are investing in trying to solve these all the way out. Let's say there's five parallel questions on a test. That's a reasonable estimate. 80% accuracy across five questions is -1. But in exchange for that one point, I've banked 8:45. That's right: eight minutes and forty-five seconds. I guarantee you I'm going to convert 8:45 into way more than that one point I lost to bank that time. This is the easiest and best time management deal you are likely to find on this test.

So find that middle ground and try working off of the rationale instead of the formal structures. A bad job done fast here beats a good job that takes too long. Your ability to execute with accuracy will improve as you strengthen your fundamentals and gain more experience. But in the meantime, I would still recommend prioritizing the time over the points when you're doing timed drills or taking PT's. Formal deconstruction on these should be limited to extra time, blind review, and drilling fundamentals. That's important work, but it's different work from executing effectively under time.

2

General · How to know if im studying correctly or not?

jhaldy10325

Thursday, Feb 13 2025

@courtneynicholecovington948 said:

I would like to know too because people think i'm crazy because I have PT'd yet. Makes it seem like i'm just only suppose to do pratice tests non stop. I don't have that many uninterrepted hours in my week unless I stay up late and i'd be too tired to fully concentrate.

PT's are important. Let me lead with that. But they are way overrated and their uses are broadly misunderstood. They are great as dress rehearsals and diagnostics, but very ineffective at actually tackling problems. Even really broad problems are not well addressed by PT's. Let's say you're really bad at NA questions. A PT will expose you to many of them, but how does it help you improve at them? You can't spend time reflecting on them. You can't explore your tactical options. You can't stick with them until you have a breakthrough. You can't do any of the things that need to be done to actually address the problem. PT's test your execution; they do not provide effective means of improvement. So if you know you suck at NA, all a PT will do is confirm that. Instead, you should study NA questions. What does it really mean for an answer to be necessary? What is the most effective tactic to approach them with? What are some of the common reasons for answers being wrong? What are the exceptions to those common reasons that can make those same answers right in a different context? Drill them untimed and write out full length reports deconstructing the stimulus and detailing exactly why each answer is right or wrong. Compare your explanations to JY's and then explain those questions to your study group. This is what the work looks like that will address and correct the problem.

Think of PT's as the start of a cycle: PT, BR, Analyze, Identify Problems, Address Problems. The PT itself is both the easiest and briefest part of the cycle. For most of my studies, one a week was about the most I could manage, and that was only once I was able to start studying full time. I couldn't really handle two a week until I was consistently scoring into the lower-mid 170's, and even then, I burned out pretty badly trying to maintain that pace.

So don't get me wrong, PT's are really important. But they are not as important or important in the ways that most people think. Their best uses are 1) diagnostic to tell you what is going wrong and 2) dress rehearsals to get you comfortable with the start-to-finish testing process.

3

General · How to know if im studying correctly or not?

jhaldy10325

Wednesday, Feb 12 2025

Agreed with above about untimed work. And as much emphasis on the work as on the untimed. One of the biggest mistakes I see with people--especially starting out--is they'll spend a minute or two reading through a question, and then watch the explanation to get JY to explain it to them. This doesn't work. You've got to do the work yourself; JY can't do it for you. This is slow, tedious, and painful work. Even relatively easy questions might take upwards of 15-20 minutes to work all the way through. The lessons give you the tools to do that, but you're the only one that can use those tools to build understanding. So just make sure the work is an arduous grind. That's where a change in results comes from.

7

General · How to break into 170s from high 160s

jhaldy10325

Wednesday, Feb 12 2025

What have your BR's been for those tests? If your BR scores track closely to your timed scores, then it probably is just fundamentals. What I'd hope to see is a BR score consistently in the high 170's/180. If that were the case, then it would be primarily a time management problem. Your BR score is your max potential on a test based on fundamentals. Your timed score is your max potential minus inefficiencies in strategic execution. So you either need to improve your potential to something more consistent and stable, or else improve your execution to be more routinely capitalizing on the potential you're already demonstrating. Very different pathways, so hard to say without knowing BR scores/what the issue really is.

0

General · Did Worse on 2nd LSAT Need Advice

jhaldy10325

Thursday, Feb 06 2025

This happened to me too. I dropped one point on my second take. Not improving is one thing, but dropping a point was just mean. What it meant for me--and what it almost certainly means for you--is that my study habits didn't change between my first and second take. I studied the same things in the same way for my second take as I did for my first. Same inputs, same outcomes. So if you're going to test again, you have to ask yourself how you're going to improve your inputs. For me, that meant a few things, but a couple stand out as the most important:

Proper BR and Analysis. For takes one and two, I just graded my PT's and looked over the ones I missed. If it didn't immediately seem clear, I'd watch an explanation. For my third take, I BR'd intensively. Then for anything still wrong, I'd do everything I could to try to solve it without turning to any external resources. The test took a few hours; the BR and Analysis took a few days. More, I started writing out explanations for both my BR and post-BR Analysis. I found that after something felt like it clicked, it actually hadn't: I'd go to write out the explanation and have no idea what to say. That was very revealing as to why my previous study habits hadn't actually resulted in as much improvement as I'd've liked. This change led to enormous improvement. It forced me to focus on my reasoning, and not just on right/wrong answers. We shouldn't actually care so much what the right answer is. What we need to target is comprehensive, correct understanding. That will produce the right answer, but it goes much deeper and will stick meaningful lessons that will inform understanding on future questions.

Studying Time Management Strategy. Proper BR and analysis is important at all stages. Strategy is important, specifically, once you've improved your BR score enough to where there is a sizable gap between your timed and BR scores. For higher scores, good fundamentals simply isn't enough, and I had no understanding of that before. Through proper BR, I mastered the fundamentals. Learning to execute good Strategy allowed me to actually capitalize on that mastery.

1

LSAT · How to Understand "most" questions that the curriculum FAILS to teach how to solve?

jhaldy10325

Tuesday, Jan 28 2025

Outside of the logic context, “most” just means what it always means, which is dynamic and sometimes context dependent. The curriculum can’t teach every possible meaning. It has a special application in formal logic, which needs to be understood very precisely. So that meaning is, of course, emphasized. Outside of that context it has different uses. Lots of words have this sort of complexity. We know their meanings, likely without even realizing we’re understanding anything at all complex.

Take the word “that,” for example. Simple enough word that I bet never confuses you. But it’s actually quite complicated. It can be a demonstrative pronoun: “That doesn’t look right to me.” A subordinate conjunction: “She doesn’t know that I already walked the dogs.” A determinative, “We shouldn’t have gone to that restaurant.” And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. It’s very versatile and we use it constantly in all different sorts of ways. And for the most part, (for native speakers anyway) we intuitively understand it without needing it explained to us. But even simple stuff can get complicated. Here’s a grammatically correct sentence for you: “I think that that that that guy said was probably correct.” So yeah, language is complex.

I think you raise a really important point though. Language is not math, and if we try to reduce it to math, we’re not going to get very far. First and foremost, the LSAT is an English language and grammar test. We don’t teach the language and grammar as much because the language and grammar, unlike the logic, are so intuitive (again, at least for native speakers). In all the examples you cited, you don’t actually sound confused about what “most” means in them. If you understand, I’m not sure I see what the problem is. Sometimes people just need to know it’s okay to understand something like that outside of the strict formal context. If that’s it, I can tell you it is 100% okay. If you don’t understand what those statements mean, that’s okay too. You need to start out with grammar on a more remedial level than I think would be appropriate for an LSAT course to address. Let’s all be real here, the curriculum is long enough as it is.

0

LSAT · Reading efficiently on reading comp

jhaldy10325

Sunday, Jan 26 2025

I’m not a fast reader either, and I do just fine. Even spiked the elusive -0 RC on test day. (This was back in the day when they actually told us all that.) Speed is easily the most overrated strategic component on the LSAT. Normally, it is actively harmful. So do not think speed needs to be a part of the solution.

@natemanwell1617 is right about the efficiency point in that you do not want to be attempting more work in the same amount of time. That just amounts to speed. Rather, the solution will be to identify the work that is most and least productive. Instead of trying to do it all, simply don’t do the least productive work. For 95% of us, that’s going to mean investing more time in your passage read and then being more aggressive in the questions and answers.

For some idea of what that looks like, I spend an average of about 4 minutes reading each passage. That’s 16 out of my 35 minutes. That leaves 19 minutes for 27 questions which is about 42 seconds per question. So I need to attack the questions with a level of aggression that produces that average. That means I don’t get to return to the passage a lot. That means I don’t get to confirm an answer I’m 80% confident about. Learn to take some calculated risk. If you invest in strong comprehension of the read, you should perform well on a test of how well you comprehended the read.

3

General · Do you want to be anonymous on 7Sage?

jhaldy10325

Thursday, Jan 23 2025

The more supportive and personable nature of the 7Sage forums was always a big differentiator for me. Discussions on these forums are highly elevated compared to others like TLS, PS, or really anywhere else in the LSAT space. The user name and image are visually prominent here. That’s a subtle difference, but it really emphasizes that there’s a person behind the post. It’s the only place on the internet that I know of where we really treat each other as flesh-and-blood people instead of disembodied “users.” Anonymity will result in a much larger number of posts of greatly diminished quality and personality. Anonymity will always win the vote here, I suspect, but I think everything that makes this the best forum in the LSAT community would be eroded.

3

General · Best Study Schedule/Split for a Complete Beginner

jhaldy10325

Sunday, Jan 19 2025

@daniilmorgunov4 said:

@jhaldy10325 Thank you so much for your response, those are amazing tips! After watching the tutorial videos, I noticed that they also mentioned the "core curriculum" and that there was a section under the syllabus tab that was titled just that in the videos. However, when I enter the syllabus it just lists foundations, logical reasoning, reading comp, etc. I would love to follow your suggestion of following the core curriculum, but i'm just unsure as to what that means. Would it be following the above outlined sections in that same order?

Oh good point! The core curriculum is just all the material under Syllabus. Not sure when the terminologies changed on that, lol, but anytime you see core curriculum, that's what that means.

Just to address your last parargraph, I am aiming for a 170+ which means a long road ahead haha. I actually found myself struggling with the reading comp significantly more than with the LR during my diagnostic. I pretty much completed all of my LR questions (I ran out of time and guessed on the last 3-4 question in every LR section), but with reading comp I was only able to complete 2 out of 4 passages before using the last 30 seconds to randomly bubble in the rest of the unanwered questions. Would you still suggest to prioritize LR over reading comp? If not, would you by any chance have any tips related to improving at reading comp?

For 170+ everything is a priority, so you can't really push anything to the side.

Time management strategy on RC is actually very simple compared to LR exactly because it is so intensive. In LR, you have options and flexibility to exercise discretion. RC has a tendency to force the aggressive option. So it's easier because we just don't have much of a choice. It's way more uncomfortable, but that doesn't mean it isn't simple. I'll give you my RC breakdown to demonstrate:

On average, it takes me 4 minutes to read a passage. So that's 4 minutes times 4 passages: 16 minutes. 35 minutes total for the section minus 16 minutes gives me 19 minutes per question. 19 minutes divided by 27 questions is about 42 seconds per question.

I typically find that for most people, 3:30-4:00 average passage read time ends up being optimal. (A 3:30 average passage read time will give you about 46 seconds per question.)

So look at your numbers to see where you're bleeding the clock. Adjust to try and distribute your time somewhere along these lines. But as a general principle, you want to invest in your read so that you can answer the questions aggressively. It is, afterall, literally a test of how well you comprehended the thing you just read. If you have strong comprehension of the reading, then you should perform reasonably well on a fair test of your comprehension. Say whatever else you will about the LSAT, it is a fair test. And don't be afraid to answer on comprehension without confirmation. It's Reading Comprehension, not Passage Citation, so take the test they're giving you, not the one you might otherwise prefer.

1

General · LSAT Score Increase

jhaldy10325

Sunday, Jan 19 2025

Scored a 152 on my first PT, but I didn't take a PT until after 4 months of studying. So I've always figured my starting range somewhere in the upper-mid 140's.

Scored a 170 about a year after that first test. Scored a 176 a year after the 170. (I was fully content with the 170, btw. Circumstances just so happened to play out in a way that testing again made sense.)

I studied about 15 hours a week before that first 152 PT. And about 30 hours a week between that PT and the 170. I was tutoring between the 170 and 176, and only started my own studying again for about 3 months prior to that test, about 20 hours a week maybe.

Advice: We all like to think we're in the effortless brilliance group. Very few of us are. I am not, and the odds are overwhelming that you are not either. And that's okay: I did just fine, and so can you. But most of us want our study experience to go as smoothly as it does for this brilliant group. And this is an extremely dangerous thing to want.

The effect of it is to lead us to focus on the things we're good at. I did this for like six months of my own studying. Tutoring over the years, I've seen it hundreds of times. It is, by far, the biggest and most common barrier to LSAT success. Working on things we're good at makes us feel smart and capable. The things we're bad at, on the other hand, make us feel dumb and inadequate. We like feeling smart and capable; we hate feeling dumb and inadequate.

So if you aren't struggling and suffering, you aren't progressing. You must spend as much time feeling dumb and inadequate as possible. When you catch yourself feeling good and smart and successful, stop doing whatever it is you're doing. Interpret that as a very serious problem, and search for work that'll start making you feel bad again. As you improve, it will become harder and harder to find work that will challenge and frustrate you. Dig deep, ask for help, but do whatever you have to do to find it.

And as you progress, you will find the work increasingly rewarding. You will change your relationship with failure and inadequacy and learn to value it as opportunity. And then--for as long as you can accurately identify your failures--you will be unstoppable.

21

General · Best Study Schedule/Split for a Complete Beginner

jhaldy10325

Sunday, Jan 19 2025

The core curriculum is laid out very optimally to work straight through in sequence. The most important thing to remember is that you don't get any credit for just completing the lessons and checking the boxes. You really have to learn it for it to have any value. There are parts that will go fairly quickly. For me, question types like Resolve-Reconcile-Explain came very intuitively. Set and subset theory, conditional logic, and causation required slowing WAY down.

So I recommend working in sequence. But if things are progressing really smoothly, that's actually a bad sign for most students. If you never find yourself stopped dead in your tracks, stuck on some module or other for days if not weeks, you aren't picking up on critical fundamentals with the level of mastery that is required.

To some extent, this depends on your target score. If you're aiming for a 160, you're starting off pretty close to where you want to be, and I'd adopt a more aggressive posture. Go through the LR, skip the RC, and see if that gets you across the finish line. But for target scores in the mid 160's+, it's a long hard journey even from a 155 diagnostic.

1

General · Considering…

jhaldy10325

Saturday, Jan 18 2025

The most legendary moment in the history of baseball has to be when Babe Ruth called his shot. He was down two strikes and the other team was mocking him. In response, he held up one finger pointed deep towards center field. And on the next pitch, he hit the ball over the fence at the exact spot he had pointed to.

Or so the legend goes.

When asked about it later, he explained that everyone had completely misunderstood what he'd meant. He wasn't pointing at all. He was holding up that finger to say he had one strike left before he was out. And as long as he had a pitch left, he was dangerous.

The truth isn't quite as exciting, and even with Ruth on record saying what really happened, the legend of the called shot has always remained the story. But when I quit LSAT after my score went down on my second take, it was the truth of the one-pitch-left that came to my mind. It nagged at me. I'd quit with a pitch still to come. After about two months, I decided I couldn't abide by that. If I strike out fine. But I'm taking all my swings.

18

General · Does "and" mean "and" or "or?" Supreme Court to decide in Pulsifer v. United States.

jhaldy10325

Monday, Mar 25 2024

This case was just decided, if anyone is interested to know what "and" means.

In a 6-3 split decision, the Court has ruled that "and" means "and." Very bad news for tens of thousands of low-level drug offenders sentenced under the statute in question, but there you have it.

Kagan wrote the majority opinion and was joined by Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Kavanaugh, and Barrett.

Gorsuch dissented and was joined by Sotomayor and Jackson.

2

General · Studying and working 9-5

jhaldy10325

Monday, Mar 25 2024

@gam121800389 said:

The best advice I got f when trying to start these consistent study habits is to just tell yourself you are going to study for ten minutes and if it’s really just a bad day then you will give yourself some time off. But more often then not you will find that is just enough to get you over that initial hump of sitting down and starting to work. I’ve found this helpful on those days I’m not motivated or don’t feel like studying.

These sorts of very small time goals were really important for me. I was working 5-5, and my job was physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausting. I started out trying to power through, setting up highly ambitious daily study goals. The effect was that I was overwhelmed even by the thought of studying and so I'd usually not study at all.

By setting a goal of 30 minutes or something similarly manageable, no matter how tired I was from work, I could wrap my head around the study goal. Even days I most dreaded studying, I was able to think of it as getting it out of the way. If nothing else, that got me on my desk, and getting started had always been the hardest part for me. Some days I'd hate every minute of it and would quit as soon as I'd logged my time. Other days I'd get into it and want nothing more than to continue.

Eventually, it became almost like a hobby. My friends would look forward to getting off work to play video games, go to the bar, or go fishing. I'd look forward to studying for LSAT. That's a challenging tipping point to reach. Studying is tedious at first. But effective, engaged studying really helps move us in the right direction.

I did not achieve my final score while working this schedule, but I went from a starting range of high 140's/low 150's to the mid 160's. I still had a long way to go, and reducing my hours and eventually leaving work altogether was really beneficial. But moving from 50th to 90th percentile while working 60+ hour weeks was a major accomplishment, and I only started gaining traction once I stopped pursuing super-human study goals, embraced my limitations, and worked within them.

1

General · Best way to prioritize time

jhaldy10325

Wednesday, Oct 11 2023

I think PT's are overvalued. Don't get me wrong: They're highly valuable and very important. But as tools for learning the test, they're very blunt instruments. The most important part of taking a PT is not the PT itself. It's not even the blind review. The most important thing is that it will tell you what you need to do. If you crash and burn on the LG, for example, you need to review fundamentals and foolproof. If you don't, there's very little reason to expect to do any better on the next PT. If there is no reason to expect one PT to be any better than the last, what was the point of the last PT? Our studies should propel us forward so that for every PT we take, we have specific and articulable reasons to believe we will do better. Anything else is going through the motions.

The reason it's so important to start with the Core Curriculum is that, until you've done that, we already know what the PT is going to tell you: Learn the fundamentals. If you already know what the PT is going to tell you, there is very little value to taking the PT.

5

LSAT · Guessing for Main Conclusion Questions

jhaldy10325

Tuesday, Aug 15 2023

How do you know what the conclusion is if you haven't read the stimulus?

0

LSAT · To retake or not retake, 170 for T-14

jhaldy10325

Friday, Jun 30 2023

Congrats on the 170! While that's an incredible score that will open lots of doors, a retake would certainly not "just be for vanity." There is a huge difference between a 170 and a 173. Every point matters until around about a 175.

I retested a 170 and had lots of reasons to believe my retake would improve. My 170 was a greater underperformance than yours, and I was also able to diagnose and correct my last major weakness. Your 170 is in your score range, but you clearly can outperform it even with your present level of ability. You don't have much time to improve, but if you were to make the most of it, do you know what you need to direct your efforts at? I think that would definitely tip the scales for me towards a retake: If you can find a way to meaningfully improve, then I'd say for sure go for it. If not, it's a lot closer. Your expectation to improve is not particularly unreasonable, but it is much more speculative than mine was. Another thing to consider is that improvement probably helps you more than non-improvement hurts you. So if it's close, might be worth a shot.

Also, non-URM status may not matter as of today given the Supreme Court's decision on affirmative action. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's irrelevant, but it certainly is going to disrupt business-as-usual in admissions offices, and for now, it's hard to predict exactly what it will mean in practice.

4

LSAT · Reading Comprehension Tips

jhaldy10325

Wednesday, Jun 21 2023

One thing people often forget is how central a role active reading plays. It's the first lesson in the CC for RC for a reason, but it so frequently gets set aside. And active reading does not just mean to pay attention. I see that characterization of active reading constantly and it's so aggravating. You have to engage with the text. Talk to it like you're having a conversation with the author. If the author says something that doesn't make sense, stop and piece it together. If you come across a line that references something you're familiar with, connect it with your background knowledge. If you're overwhelmed by a sentence that presents an avalanche of information, pause to recap and summarize. If a new piece of information is surprising, ask questions. And allow yourself to wonder about the subject more broadly and to think about the further implications beyond the immediate scope of the passage. Try to visualize things: What does this artist's work look like? What would this global weather phenomenon look like on a weather map?

All of these are parts of reading actively. Watch JY's explanations and he'll do all of this and more. That isn't just him explaining the passage to you; it's his process of developing the meaning for himself. It's active reading. It's how we understand what we read, and it is crucial to comprehension. A lot of students I work on active reading with will merely tell me what a sentence's LSAT role is: "This introduces a phenomenon that they're probably going to explain." My response to something like that is: "Okay, but what is the phenomenon?" And they usually can't answer without returning to the text. It should just be self-evident how huge a problem this is. So make sure you're not approaching RC with a labeling-the-LSAT-role approach.

To review, get a good, active re-read of the passage and then use that read to approach the questions. Take your time. I think there's a couple different stages of review which may be most helpful depending on where you are in your studies. Initially, I recommend going back to the passage to find the support directly in the text. This type of exercise is more about developing your passage reading strategy by learning to recognize the types of details that may be important to recognize when you read passages. The second method of review is more about the questions and answers, and you should restrict your return to the passage to questions where you would return to the passage on a timed section. Often, you won't have time to return to the passage, won't know where to go in the passage, or simply won't find the text helpful to answer certain questions. It's important to study these situations to learn how to use your comprehension to successfully answer the questions without reliance on citation to the direct support in the text.

Hope this helps!

2

General · Panicking about maintaining high PT scores

jhaldy10325

Wednesday, Jun 14 2023

This happened to me first time I scored a 180 on a PT. The 180 was exciting. It was proof of concept that my studies were proceeding effectively and that I was on the right track. But I had the same heightened anxiety for the next PT. Here's what I figured out to do: On my next PT, I kept doing all the things that I'd been doing that were bringing me greater success. I executed as strategically well under time as I could, BR'd, analyzed, and learned from my errors. What's the score matter? How does the score change anything about how to study most effectively? It doesn't. I scored a 169 on my next PT and learned as much as I could from my mistakes.

Don't study to prove how good you are. That's a highly destructive study objective. Study to get better. On your next PT, execute your testing strategy as effectively as you can, BR, study your errors, and get better at the LSAT. That's all there is to do.

1