@gregoryalexanderdevine723 YAS!
http://i.giphy.com/YFis3URdQJ6qA.gif
I'd err on the side of not writing the addendum and not mentioning your grades in your personal statement. The general sense that I get, and David can add to this here, is to not use the valuable space in your personal statement to mention anything that seems to rationalize low grades/LSAT. You can certainly talk about changes that impacted you, where the reader can infer why your grades are what they are, but I've heard that this is one gap you do not want to make explicitly for your reader. As for the addendum, I'd only suggesting writing it if you can write it in a way without coming off defensive.
Been studying off an on for... 2.5 years now. I was not studying every day for 5 days a week for 2.5 years. While not ideal, I wasn't in a position to be able to study intensely for 3-6 months due to personal reasons. Instead, I had bouts of intense studying, followed by month long periods of rest, followed by more bouts of intense studying. Had I started with the mentality of taking breaks when I needed to and taking care of my other needs, I think I could have kept my time frame to about a year. I really want to echo what @msami1010493 said and take breaks for yourself when you need to, especially as you get close to the end - confidence/mindset is so huge for this test.
I also noticed that one of the sources contributing to the gap between my PT scores and BR scores was rooted in habits. Anyone who has been on this forum long enough has seen me mention habits at least a million times.
It's important that you're not creating two sets of logical reasoning strategies for yourself. I noticed that when I took PTs, I would freak out about the time element and not take the time through to eliminate ACs concretely - I relied too much on my gut feeling. Yet, when I BR'ed (and I BR'ed clean copies of sections), I would rarely rely on my gut feeling to get an answer. Sure enough, my BR was better because it was the true practice of applying the fundamentals while my PT scores was one step removed from guessing.
I had RC (exp.) -RC-LR-LG-LR
Could your friend talk about what he/she liked about the book? It could be worth getting to borrow strategies and then just practice independently using older tests.
I also know my recommenders very well. I'd just like to provide them with some guidelines.
@jclaridge202 what recommendations? Can you link me to this from the starter course?
Ideally, I wanted to be able to send my LORs my personal statement but I realized this isn't going to happen. I already asked them a month ago and they said yes so it's not like my LORs don't know they are writing LORs - they just want it to be as tailored as possible.
I'm curious as to what you guys asked of your LORs - did you send PS? Did you send them blurbs/short summary about what your PS was going to be?
I keep having the weirdest dreams, usually about missing more questions than I think I did. Last night, I dreamt I had to do a LG section but couldn't figure out the first two games in 20 minutes, leaving me15 minutes to figure out all 4. Oiiiiiiiiii
The email is literally that short:
Dear ______,
Your September 2016 LSAT score is ____. The percentile rank is _____.
This is an unofficial score report.
@jhaldy10325 Nice Book of Mormon reference btw! And I was very strict with this. I wouldn't answer the question unless I was able to eliminate all of them. In the beginning, this mean that I was only getting through 18-19 questions but what was great to see was that my accuracy remained consistent at a 91-93%. This mean that over time I got faster, being able to complete sections in the time frame, without sacrificing accuracy. To what extent this helped me out in real time is still TBD but I did finish one LR section on September's test with 5 minutes to spare, leaving time for me to double check answers. I suspect that the reason for this was because the process of eliminating ACs became muscle memory.
In terms of breaking the plateau, my trajectory broke off in 2 ways.
To improve accuracy, I cannibalized 10 tests in the 50s and took those as untimed sections. I chose the 50s because it was recent enough where I didn't think there was a huge difference in the language of LR stimuli but still leaves room for 15+ newer tests.
To improve my psychology, I took PTs in as strict of conditions as I could and FORCED myself to answer questions only if I had been using the logical process I used to drill or take timed sections. My PT scores weren't reflective of my potential for a long time because I realized I created two sets of habits: the "PT" bad habits of relying on my gut instincts and my timed section habits, which are the set of good ones I had honed through practice.
Yes yes yes to the fool proofing. For me, I really tried to get fast at the games I was good at so I would have a 15 minute buffer to finish game 4 (anticipating the fact that the real test will throw me a curveball game I won't be able to answer). Keep pushing yourself on timing for LG to position yourself for the real test.
For LR, I agree with @denis206 in devising a good skipping strategy, which is harder than it sounds. You need to spend time finding the balance between not hitting the same wall over and over again and recognizing when you're 1/2 deductions away from hitting the right answer. BR helped me find this balance.
For RC, I made sure that my last passage was not the longest passage (meaning the most number of questions). This actually helped me most psychologically because I wasn't panicked when I got to the last passage, given that it was around 5 questions and I had already gotten the "longer" questions out of the way. Psychology is a funny thing.
I also think that taking untimed sections is a really underutilized studying strategy. Taking a ton of PTs after going through the lessons forces you to both (1) apply lessons and (2) apply them fast - in trying to tackle both, most people fail to perfect 1 or the other. I would suggest taking some untimed sections of LR, LG, and RC to hone your reasoning skills and then add the timed constraint when you're accuracy is at or above 90%.
I am amazed by those of you who are able to remember LR questions. I seriously don't remember a single one.
@jhaldy10325 Oh man, if ONLYYYYYYYY. I'm less optimistic - I'm thinking -10/-11
Hey guys! I got a 166 on my previous LSAT and am waiting on my September score but I'm still available for tutoring :D (provided people are interested, obviously)
Virus is real. It's the only games section I had.
We are freeeeeeeee!!!!
I'm going to stop checking all LSAT related discussion boards starting tomorrow so I just wanted to wish everyone on this forum taking the September test good luck -- we got this :D!
I just took a PT today. I debated not taking it because I was super tired and I've just been not channeling positive LSAT energy these past few days. Still, I told myself I could do it and took it.
I was pretty happy because I thought I had been doing well, applying my processes and whatnot. Then I graded it and was floored: -6 in RC, -6 in LR1, and -4 in LG. I haven't seen such consistent bombing in a long time -- usually it just requires warm up and MAYBE I'll just rank one section, but rarely 3 in a row. What kills me is that I did much worse on this PT than I did 2/3 months ago, meaning somehow my score indicates my reasoning ability is getting worse which I know logically doesn't make sense but still feels that way.
Just needed to vent because I'm trying not to feel so distraught. I've been doing a good job of maintaining a positive mindset but my positivity is wearing out and now I'm feeling incredibly anxious.
Actually, most of the stuff in the stimulus is noise. The main elision is that if something has an effect ("gave pleasure" in conclusion), it was intended to ("in order to give pleasure" from the premise).
This is hard advice to follow but try not to stress out about being sick. Stress will only make things worse and could prolong flu like symptoms. Drink fluids, rest up, let your fever run its course until Tuesday (hopefully) and then maybe ease into drilling in Wednesday, Thursday, Friday getting as much sleep as you can.
I don't have any advice but I hope you have a swift recovery :)