I don't understand how it is important whether or not OP is a URM? It's not even that a couple people above mentioned it, but it's the way you put it out there like it makes his story any less. It actually came across as a complete non sequitur.

Oh wow here is someone who did something great and achieved a big goal... Ignore that. "I'm pretty sure he's just a URM" Like it's some dirty secret.

How sad you take this motivational post and turn it into trolling. This forum used to be way more supportive and positive. Not sure what's happened around this forum lately but it's definitely missing the positive support it had when I joined.

Congrats @ UChi is an amazing school. And thanks for sharing your story! It's helping to keep me motivated.

@ said:

@ said:

@ said:

I think people can score their blind review scores because people do

Hmm sounds like circular logic lol But I see what you mean. Thanks for the advice. I'm aiming for a 170 score so even if I can't score my BR I'll be happy so long as I hit 170.

170 is a solid goal and anyone would be happy with the prospects that come with it. Of course once you have that in hand a 173 or a 175 may look like the new must have thing that is worth continuing to study for. And that is okay too.

Maybe you're right! For the schools I'm interested in a 170 should be more than enough for a full scholarship. Then again, if between now and July my scores keep going up I might as well keep aiming higher! A 173 would be pretty amazingggg

@ said:

You should be PT with 52 mins. I def wouldn't change that to anything beyond a 5 min difference. You do not have a cognitive issue that requires additional time to grasp things but time plays with your mind especially when under pressure. No matter who much you study and how closely you study to test conditions it'll never be what you're faced with on game day. Personally time threw me off because I started worrying about when time was going to be up. I felt like something was wrong because it seemed like it was taking forever for the timer to go off and it totally threw me off my game because I lost focus of what I was doing.

I have a TBI that causes some cognitive issues. Sorry to hear about that. I think I'll take your advice and just practice using 52 minutes and get used to the pacing of the extra time.

@ said:

I think people can score their blind review scores because people do

Hmm sounds like circular logic lol But I see what you mean. Thanks for the advice. I'm aiming for a 170 score so even if I can't score my BR I'll be happy so long as I hit 170.

@ said:

Take the test under your own test day conditions. We don't take practice tests with 50% less time than we will get on test day, why should you?

That extra 17 minutes completely changes the test. Try pushing your blind review score into the 170's and you should have no problem scoring close to there on test day.

IDK I've heard of some people doing sections in like 30 minutes instead of 35 and I've also heard of people with accommodations doing different things.

I have a physical disability such that the 17 minutes doesn't really change the test completely for me.

Also my BR scores are in the 170s. I'm not really worried about that so much as how to best practice with the extra time now that I'm starting to take full PTs. I see 7Sage has a special video proctor for those with time and half. TY 7sage (3(/p)

Why do you think people can score their BR scores on test day? Seems a bit over optimistic, no? Thanks for the vote of confidence tho :flushed:

Also does anyone know if there is a special accommodations timer?

@ said:

Yeah @ i was thinking along the lines of what u are saying. But i could also use rabbi bc he does represent that function as well.

Your family sounds awesome :) Either way, I think it's going to shape up to be a strong DS.

@ said:

@ said:

@ One last question, I promise :joy:

So you focused primarily on untimed work during most of your prep, doing all the Cambridge packs untimed. You also said you studied for about 9 months, so at what point (how many months in) did you begin doing timed LG+LR sections? Would you do 5-6 LR/RC sections per day as well on those 3-5 day stretches as well?

Thanks again :grimace:

I began to heavily invest in timed work about 3-4 months before my test. I would do about 4-5 LR/RC sections a day towards the end. My endurance on RC was never quite what it was with LR/LG, but I still made a concerted effort to improve on RC as well.

you're the best 99!

@ said:

@ said:

@ said:

I could be wrong here but rabbi in a synagogue right, not preacher? I would be careful with your terminology.

yeah, you're wrong.

In Judaism, you can be a Maggid or a preacher. Rabbis focus more on teaching.

That's a really cool idea of a DS. My parents are very involved in my synagogue too!

Just to be clear by "be a Maggid or a preacher" you mean that the Maggid is also called a preacher right?

If this is the case, then for the actual essay, I might lean toward using Maggid(preacher) or some variant of this and then whatever you want. While I am not representative of your audience, there are clueless people everywhere and it would be best to try not to confuse us.

The clueless shouldn't always be coddled but admissions essays are a good place to err on the side of safety.

Yes.

And it's only confusing because of your ignorance of it. You can be a Jewish preacher. That's the name they're called. Maggid is just the Hebrew word for it. If anything, I would think most clueless people would understand what a preacher does (preach) than know what the ancient term for it is. For example, when people hear priest they may automatically think Christian, but many other religions have priests. Using the ancient term for those people doesn't seem to make anything less confusing.

@ said:

I could be wrong here but rabbi in a synagogue right, not preacher? I would be careful with your terminology.

yeah, you're wrong.

In Judaism, you can be a Maggid or a preacher. Rabbis focus more on teaching.

That's a really cool idea of a DS. My parents are very involved in my synagogue too!

@ One last question, I promise :joy:

So you focused primarily on untimed work during most of your prep, doing all the Cambridge packs untimed. You also said you studied for about 9 months, so at what point (how many months in) did you begin doing timed LG+LR sections? Would you do 5-6 LR/RC sections per day as well on those 3-5 day stretches as well?

Thanks again :grimace:

@ said:

@ said:

@ said:

@ said:

@ said:

I used to do LG for 3-5 days, then LR for 3-5 days, then RC for 3-5 days, etc. Admittedly, there were some longer stretches (10 days+) when all I did was a single section type. I really enjoyed learning the LSAT this way.

Wow that's a cool strategy. Sounds like you can really go all in for specific sections and then return fresh. Did you feel like the time spent away from each section was helpful for letting the things you reviewed sink in?

Yeah, definitely. I'm a huge advocate of breaks from study when you need them, too. I think this sort of preparation gave me an edge.

when you did LG for 3-5 days, how many sections of games would you aim to do per day?

It changed over time. In the beginning I would try for 8 LG untimed. Towards the end, I would reliably complete 5-6 timed LG sections per day. So from 8 LG in the beginning to 20-24 in the end.

whoa!! Thank you :) I am going to try a similar approach and do 3-5 days of studying a section.

Which PTs did you do untimed up until?

@ said:

@ said:

@ said:

I used to do LG for 3-5 days, then LR for 3-5 days, then RC for 3-5 days, etc. Admittedly, there were some longer stretches (10 days+) when all I did was a single section type. I really enjoyed learning the LSAT this way.

Wow that's a cool strategy. Sounds like you can really go all in for specific sections and then return fresh. Did you feel like the time spent away from each section was helpful for letting the things you reviewed sink in?

Yeah, definitely. I'm a huge advocate of breaks from study when you need them, too. I think this sort of preparation gave me an edge.

when you did LG for 3-5 days, how many sections of games would you aim to do per day?

having a similar problem. I'm stuck between 158-162 and have a similar score breakdown. I miss the harder questions on LR and make a couple stupid mistakes per section, but I think that may be because I'm trying to go too fast.

Aside from getting LG down to -0 which seems like it's a lot harder than some make it out to be, I don't know what to do :(

@ said:

I agree with @, and I feel like the best way to distinguish that is to look at your BR score. If you're consistently less than -2 per section of LR on BR (and more often -1/-0), then you can start looking at execution strategy and timed work.

@ I did a mix of both but usually I drilled by question type. It kind of depends on where you are in your prep and how much you have left to go. With a couple months remaining I was taking 1-2 PTs per week and that meant I had tons of BR to do. I felt that all that intensive BR was a good portion of my studying. I then sprinkled in drilling by question type.

I tend to miss 2-3 on my LR blind review, but miss 5-6 per section on timed. Would you recommend drilling and doing more untimed work until I can get that timed score down to -3 or so? I just don't feel like continuing on with timed sections is really helping me. I think most of why I miss questions at this point is just because I mis-understood something complex or just couldn't really fully understand it while taking the section if that makes sense.

@ said:

It depends. Do you think you are taking a long time because you don't have a good understanding of stimulus? This is usually evident when you go through answer choices and you find that the understanding from the stimulus was not in fact adequate to pick the right answer?

In this case, doing untimed drills and focusing on cookie cutter nature of arguments can be helpful.

If you find that your time is spent agonizing over answer choices, like getting stuck on 50-50, eliminating all answers, learning how to skip questions and doing drills with a good section strategy can be really helpful.

I think the worst thing people can do to increase speed is just try to rush and go faster. You'll just end up rushing your reading of the stimulus and getting more questions wrong. Speed instead results from having better understanding of the cookie cutter nature of arguments and being decisive in answer choices. Moving on from stimulus that are too hard, or going to the next question where you read an answer choice and pick it and move on without reading the rest of the answer choices because you are confident .

Thanks Sami :)

I've been doing some timed sections and am consistently missing about 6 questions. There doesn't seem to be a pattern to the questions I miss. Some just feel harder and even with drilling the question types I miss, BR, and reviewing my fundamentals, I don't seem to be doing much better.

I don't necessarily feel like speed is a primary issue for me since I'm able to finish sections on time. I do find myself not being able to understand the complicated stims sometimes though and I usually skip those questions. But it does seem like I'm not getting better by continuing to do timed sections, so I'm looking for other things I can do like untimed sections to work on solidifying better strategies & work on my accuracy.

@ said:

@

I think untimed work is so critical. You could do the occasional untimed section if you wanted a variety of LR questions to deeply study. Or you could maybe be focusing on a particular process for LR (like really identify the flaw, or the conclusion, or something that is pretty universal to LR questions).

For LR, I would just do deep dives on your weaknesses, untimed. That could be by question type, it could be "lawgic" or maybe argument structure.

Generally, the only time you should worry about timed work is when you're near the end of your prep. That's when you can start doing sections timed for confidence drills. But near the end of your prep you should be getting in enough proctored PTs that you're getting plenty of timed work by the nature of the test anyway.

Thank you so much AllezAllez :)

Did you take untimed sections or opt to focus on drilling by question type during the drilling phase of your studies?

@ said:

Speed is a function of accuracy--I whine this to everyone all the time. The best way to increase your speed at this stage, imho, is to continue to drill diligently and intelligently. Continue to finds ways to increase your accuracy/understanding of stimuli. Skipping and pacing strategies are another consideration, but the benefits that come from continued drilling are incredible. You want your approach and ability to answer questions correctly to be as reflexive as possible on test day.

Do you think doing LR sections untimed is a good way to drill? Or should I only do them timed when getting better while drilling?

@ what ethnicity are you if you don't mind me asking :smile:

@ Just found you on facebook! :)

hey alex, i sent you a message idk if you got it... I need your help :neutral:

omggg you are literally the best. thank you thank you

@ said:

Thanks for everyone that joined. See you all next week for #38 :dizzy:

Yes, thank u everyone! I got alot of out of that session. See u all next week