I'm interested!

@ I'm interested but I'm wondering if Sundays at 7:30 is a set time? If so it conflicts with a previous commitment of mine, but if they are going to be at different times I might be able to make some.

I would say absolutely go with the full ride. Especially if Northeastern fits the kind of law you want to practice. I have friends that graduated T14 law schools with mountains of debt, and felt pressured to take high-paying jobs for firms or in areas they really didn't want to practice in just to pay off that debt. You could also have better success at a lower ranked (but still good) school, because you have a better shot at being in the top of your class, getting on law review, and getting more opportunities as a result. I cannot overstate the importance mitigating your debt while in school. I have a good friend that went to Emory, and 15 years later she's paying $1000 a month to try to pay off her debt. She often says she wishes she would have went to a less prestigious school with a cheaper price tag.

@ I'm going to ask a follow-up question on this. One of my applications goes into great detail on the C&F, and says that you also should explain any traffic violations, even if minor. So do we have to disclose speeding tickets?? Like not even reckless driving, but I think I've maybe been pulled over twice in my lifetime for going like 5 miles over the speed limit. This would seem extremely trivial to me, but they said even minor incidents.

I already have to write an addendum for a Minor in Possession of alcohol from when I was 19.

@ said:

Hi!

I took my first real test this past Saturday and found that no matter how many breathing exercises I did, I could not calm my nerves. I had this horrible nervous energy/anxiety throughout the first 3 sections of my exam that made me a lot more flighty/panicky than usual in choosing answers which resulted in my confidence and level-headedness diminishing. I know I will do worse than I usually do on PTs, but think I will still score good enough to get into my second choice school. I am tempted to take the December test as I know I can do better than I did on Saturday, but I don't think I can improve significantly if the nerves are as real the second time as they were on my first time.

From your experience, did you find that your nerves were of a lesser severity or went away faster during your second time doing a real LSAT? Any information you can provide is helpful! Thanks in advance.

These are a few tips I have on nerves that realllly help me:

I went in telling myself Saturday that this was just PT 82, and I was going to approach it like I had my last 15 PTs. I think taking lots of PT's before hand helps a lot with this, because then you're able to tell yourself, I got this, I've done this so many times before, and I'm going to play my game. You can also think about the fact that most of the people in that room have done little to no prep; you're way more prepared if you've been taking PT's and putting in the work.

Don't let all the students freaking out around you transfer their fear on you. The first time I took the lsat a couple years ago, I way underestimated how freaked out everyone would be. And then I felt like, whoah, these people are really terrified. Maybe I should be more scared. And I ended up almost having a nervous breakdown.

This Saturday, I noticed I was considerably less nervous than everyone around, and that actually gave me a huge boost in confidence. I stayed away from getting drawn into conversations of people talking about scores and nerves.

You need to go in wanting to get on base, not wanting a home run. I mean, you need to be targeting the average of your last ten practice tests. I know this sounds counter-intuitive because we all want the best score we can get, but when you go in saying, I'm going to score the best score I've ever gotten, you ratchet up the pressure a ton. And you make stupid mistakes. If you usually don't finish an LR section, but you decided on test day that you're definitely going to finish every section, you're going to go too fast and make dumb mistakes. And then your confidence is going to plummet when you can't finish the sections.I think that's why some people end up with lower scores on test day.

You've got to go in playing YOUR game on test day. Hope this helps!

@ said:

One big difference for me is the experimental section will play mind games with you. I don't know how people usually practice with a fifth section but if you know which section is which when you do, it's really different when you don't. Like in June when my first section was the difficult RC, the whole rest of the test I was praying for another RC. This obviously affected me mentally. Or just the unknown of, I wonder if this is the experimental? If not, which kind will I get? I hope it's LG... those kinds of things. Which are difficult to simulate in practice unless you print out the sections and randomize them such that you don't know which is which.

I think the key with this is to tell yourself repeatedly, that the test is actually five sections. All five sections matter, one just happens to be a wildcard. When you go in on test day, don't spend any time worrying about which is experimental. I had an lsat teacher tell me this, and I really think it helped me on test day. You just have to train your brain to think this way and talk yourself into it.

@ @ @ thanks for the feedback guys, it really reassures me!

Hey J.Y., I just signed up for your starter course. Would love to be added to the workshop!

Please add me!

Ahhhhh this is definitely me too. I've done this on several practice tests, and on the most recent test 5 or 6 of my answers ended up being off before I noticed my question number and bubble sheet number didn't correspond. I wasted a couple minutes by having to go back and find which answer I made the mistake on and then had to erase, re-bubble, and re-check. Nightmare. Thanks for everyone's tips above!

Definitely need some help on LR! Please add me.

@ said:

This a big reason I use Above the Law. US News worries about things that don't make a difference. I think the main reason people go to law school is to get a stable job, ATL values employment outcomes the most so I believe its the most valid ranking site.

I'm going to second this. The US News law school rankings are also slightly b.s. because they mainly take into account lsat scores and gpa's of entering students. The ATL rankings take into account bar passage rate, how many students graduate and get law jobs, debt to starting income ratio, among other factors. The kinds of things law school students should really care about when looking at schools. You'll see some overlap, between the two lists, but you'll also see some schools move up in the ATL rankings.

http://abovethelaw.com/law-school-rankings/top-law-schools/

@ said:

Please confirm "Beads and Gold" and "Homophones" as questions if you did NOT have experimental LR.

Confirmed!

@ said:

The [removed] in the experimental RC was literally the hardest I've ever seen. So glad that wasn't real

Looks like the actual question in your post was removed, but if you're referring to the science passage, then YES. It was nonsense.

I had RC, LR, LG, RC, LR. There was a RIDICULOUS science passage on quantum physics and particles (for those of you that have seen Interstellar, all I could think about was Matthew Mcchaunahey jetting around in his astronaut suit talking through a bookcase LOL), but it looks like from previous comments that it was the experimental. The third game tripped me up, it was one of the students ones, but besides that the games were pretty easy. I found my last LR section unusually hard, but I may have just been worn out.

Thanks for the review! I'm actually taking the September LSAT at Furman so this is good to hear.

Ann Levine with Law School Expert is who I'm planning to work with on my personal statement, resume, and addendum. I found out about her through the Thinking LSAT Podcast (which I also highly recommend) and she has pages upon pages of great testimonials and success stories. Unfortunately hiring a consultant is probably going to be pricey anywhere you go. But I liked that Ann offered an "all-in" package, but also a cheaper package that just dealt with your personal state, resume, and addendums, which people usually need the most help with.

http://www.lawschoolexpert.com/

http://www.thinkinglsat.com/blog/

@ Yes, most restaurants definitely take advantage of their servers and overwork you even if have pre-agreed arrangements with them. I'd have to find the right place. The place I worked at in undergrad was small and family owned, and they had servers that only worked during the week, and another set that only worked weekends. I'd have to find something like that again to do it.

@ I hadn't thought about Uber and Lyft, but your're right, that's also a good part time option, especially for some of the schools in larger cities I'll be applying to. Thanks!

@ Your notes for this workshop were really thorough! I'll tack on a few more things that I picked up that really helped me in the workshop:

Timing & Question Difficulty:

The difficulty of questions in an LR section is similar to a bell curve; some of the hardest questions are actually in the teen numbers, and there are some easier questions sprinkled in the 20's. J.Y. said that he sometimes even skips whole pages in the middle of the LR section where these questions are if he doesn't fully grasp the stimulus the first time through, and he comes back to these questions once he's finished the rest.

I found this information valuable because I tend to spend too much on the middle of the section where these hard questions are, and then I run out of time before I can answer some of the freebies at the end.

I'll echo the above comments on practicing being aggressive with your questions and then scaling it back if you find your self missing too many questions. Since we covered this, the past couple days I've practiced answering questions with 100% aggression, and I'm getting the easy questions right MUCH more quickly by not wasting time reading the wrong answer choices, and I have more time in the problem sets on the harder questions.

PSA:

One tip that seemed to help me on PSA questions in the work shop is that you should "shove" AC's back up into the stimulus and see if it strengthens the conclusion. 'I think this helped me get more right in the PSA's we drilled. However, I'm also still have trouble recognizing PSA question stems sometimes.

Flaw:

The idea of flaws being "cookie cutter" really makes these questions so much easier. For example, we all know what a triangle looks like. We've seen a million of them over our lifetimes and we can see them a mile a way. We can also see that a square is clearly not a triangle. Drilling what the common flaw types are, how they look in the stimulus, and how they look as an answer choice, has really helped me say, "I know the flaw in this question is circular reasoning (a triangle). This answer choice says it's percentage vs. numbers (square), which doesn't look anything like circular reasoning (triangle).

J.Y. probably did a much better job of explaining this, but basically, most flaws are very cookie cutter and much easier to recognize when you drill them.

P.S. The workshop was awesome, and if J.Y. does more I encourage everyone to apply!

@ That is awesome information, thank you! I turn 26 in September, so I'm guessing I will include my income on the FAFSA. Which is actually too bad, because I'm not sure I will qualify since I have a decent income and no dependents. I'll have to check into the schools I'm looking at applying to. Thank you!

Team LG all the way! I actually find the games really fun and I am super crossing my fingers that I get an LG experimental in September. On the other hand, RC is my mortal enemy. So I'll probably end up with that as my experimental.

I don't have a book recommendation, but a friend gave me some great advice on LR that has really helped me. At first it sounded dumb and I didn't believe them, but it's helped me get my LR section down from -7 or -8 to -1 or -2: Flashcards. And using flashcards in two ways:

Making flashcards for all the question types and what I'm looking for on each. I didn't make these super in-depth, but just knowing right away what tools I can use on a question type (I'm looking for a weak AC on MBT's, or strong AC's on strengthen), has helped me build speed and accuracy through a section.

When I go through the blind review, on questions I get wrong I force myself to form a "takeaway" and write it on a note card. When I was reviewing before, I would understand why I got a question wrong, but it never seemed to stick or help me on future questions. By writing it down, I'm forced to fully comprehend it.

Then I review these flashcards every day. Hope this helps!