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that's incredible! I am also a Chinese and non-English native speaker. I am struggling on RC so much. Could you share how you improved RC briefly? Thank you!

Sure! You can message me or add me on wechat (martinxi679) to talk about it a little more.

Personally I think D is such a weird and weak answer choice. I got to D by process of elimination, then spent over a minute trying to figure out if such a weak/unrelated answer choice is actually the correct choice. I guess my lesson learned here is to focus solely on the yes/no scenario on this kind of questions.

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愿原力与你同在

Wow, it's such a surprise to get my first ever reply from JY. BTW, that's an awesome Chinese phrase.

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@ I do not think that your diversity statement has to talk about why you want to pursue law. If it does impact that that great, but don't force it. I would go over the admissions curriculum to learn more.

Got it, thanks for the help!

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@ ABSOLUTELY write a diversity statement. While oftentimes in other contexts diversity is seen as or portrayed as having a protected class or being disadvantaged by one's background in some way law schools are really looking for a much broader definition of diversity. They want a large diversity of view points and backgrounds of all sorts. Being adopted, being an immigrant, being Chinese, having a parent die, even potentially working cross culturally oversees in game design are factors that could be considered diverse. The last one is a proceed with caution but the others are all definitely green lights.

If you have not done so yet I encourage you to purchase the admissions course. It is ten bucks and can help answer questions like these. There is a great section on what too include or not in diversity statements.

Thanks for the suggestion! Just out of curiosity, I was going to write a diversity statement based on all the facts I listed above. However, based on your suggestion, is it better if I only talk about cross-cultural experience without stating motivation to pursue patent law? (Last one like you just mentioned)

I may have been unclear. I would advise you to proceed with caution regarding the cross cultural experiences in game design as a diversity factor. It is probably better suited to the personal statement if it works there. It is something you could use as a diversity factor but would need to be done more carefully than the others. However, if it absolutely does not fit into your PS and you feel that it provides you a valuable and different perspective than anyone else who might enroll in the class it could be used in the DS instead. The immigrant, loss of parent, adopted, non-US cultural background is all very safe. Work and education background stuff is generally potentially useable but is something with which discretion is highly advised.

I also want to say that, if your experiences in game design are what is motivating you to pursue patent law that really should be in your personal statement. A PS should always give readers an idea of why you are pursuing law school.

Thanks again for the advice. PS wise, I had a different story which I believed to be more related to why I wanted the switch from CS to patent law.

I always thought that diversity statement should conclude with how these factors motivated me even slightly to pursue law. (For example, immigrants going for immigration law.) This is why I wanted to tie in the cross-cultural work experience, which was a small motivator for my switch. Like what you said, I know that my cultural background and childhood experience are very safe to talk about, but they are not really that much related to patent law. So based on your opinion, is it fine to only talk about these cultural factors, while not including reasons for why these factors promote my decision to go to law school?

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You have wonderful and diverse stories for sure! Just out of curiosity, why not write them in your PS?

Thanks! Well for your question, first of all I was curious about my Asian/Chinese background being an ORM status which will potentially hurt my admission chance, and this entire process was not my central motivation to move from a CS/MATH background to patent law. I wrote about something else in my PS which I believe is more related to why I wanted this switch.

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definitely write it. i think you have a compelling story to share. good luck!

Thanks for the insight and good luck to you too!

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i agree with the above ^ i think you should definitely write it, i've seen in many diversity statement descriptions that it can be more than just culture or race and those experiences would make for a great diversity statement

Thanks for the insight! I will go ahead and start writing about it as I am waiting for my last LOR.

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@ ABSOLUTELY write a diversity statement. While oftentimes in other contexts diversity is seen as or portrayed as having a protected class or being disadvantaged by one's background in some way law schools are really looking for a much broader definition of diversity. They want a large diversity of view points and backgrounds of all sorts. Being adopted, being an immigrant, being Chinese, having a parent die, even potentially working cross culturally oversees in game design are factors that could be considered diverse. The last one is a proceed with caution but the others are all definitely green lights.

If you have not done so yet I encourage you to purchase the admissions course. It is ten bucks and can help answer questions like these. There is a great section on what too include or not in diversity statements.

Thanks for the suggestion! Just out of curiosity, I was going to write a diversity statement based on all the facts I listed above. However, based on your suggestion, is it better if I only talk about cross-cultural experience without stating motivation to pursue patent law? (Last one like you just mentioned)

My situation is very similar to you with a slightly lower GPA and higher LSAT. My suggestion would be to go ahead and apply to all of your target schools that have their 75th below 167, and you can always send more applications to other schools in January if you turn out to have a significant increase in your January flex.

I feel kinda ashamed... As a non-native speaker whose first language is Chinese, this passage somehow turns out to be the hardest passage for me from this set.

Again... I knew exactly what the main conclusion is, but overlooked the fact that the approach's name was "outcome analysis". That's why C and E for question 14 both sounded so awkward to me.

God I want to beat myself up... Got all the difficult questions right from this passage and missed the easiest question 14... How could I interpret "must" as a "most"? I guess I really need to stop trying to go too fast on some "easy" questions.

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My advice would be: try not to lose confidence, find some study partners, and think through your study plan to see if there should be any change to how you study and review the PTs. I was in a similar boat for July test where I scored about 5-6 points lower than my PT average (though it was largely due to some outside factor), but I was able to come back with a 11-point score increase on this August test. I personally changed my study plan considerably and really forced myself to dig deeper into my weakest section (RC). Lastly, trust yourself. If you can do it on regular PTs, then you can do it on the actual LSAT.

I'd also be interested in hearing what you did!

Please check on the upper post, thanks!

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My advice would be: try not to lose confidence, find some study partners, and think through your study plan to see if there should be any change to how you study and review the PTs. I was in a similar boat for July test where I scored about 5-6 points lower than my PT average (though it was largely due to some outside factor), but I was able to come back with a 11-point score increase on this August test. I personally changed my study plan considerably and really forced myself to dig deeper into my weakest section (RC). Lastly, trust yourself. If you can do it on regular PTs, then you can do it on the actual LSAT.

Would you mind elaborating on how you changed your study plan from getting your score back to going into August to best maximize the remaining days?

Well I pretty much changed my plan so I could focus on RC in a very deep and through way. I think this really differs between people, because for me pretty much my weakness lies entirely in RC, with both LG and LR being -0 or close to -0, so I started a method where I kinda "fool-proof" all RC passages. Then I tried to make sure my PT environment is very similar to the real testing environment.

Since your PT average is already high (169-174), I would think that there is nothing wrong with your study plan. It might just be better to put a little more effort on your weaknesses and make sure your performance and confidence on the real test is similar to your PTs. Lastly, if August was your first test, it is very common to have a well-below average performance on the first test. So keep up with your confidence and try your best!

My advice would be: try not to lose confidence, find some study partners, and think through your study plan to see if there should be any change to how you study and review the PTs. I was in a similar boat for July test where I scored about 5-6 points lower than my PT average (though it was largely due to some outside factor), but I was able to come back with a 11-point score increase on this August test. I personally changed my study plan considerably and really forced myself to dig deeper into my weakest section (RC). Lastly, trust yourself. If you can do it on regular PTs, then you can do it on the actual LSAT.

I think we are in the same boat: RC being the weakest, LR in the middle, LG being the strongest, and both aiming for that mid-170's mark. My friend and I are both scoring around low 170's, so would you like to join us as a study partner? Please message if you are interested, thanks!

Thanks for all the insights! I will reach out to schools and ask what their policies are.

I am not sure if you are a Native Chinese speaker. Although I currently reside in the US, I can always share links for several Chinese LSAT discussion groups on wechat or QQ which have a lot of LSAT-flex test takers in Mainland China, if you are a Native Chinese speaker or can at least understand Chinese. Please disregard this reply if you are just living in Mainland China without being a Chinese speaker.

I think this is a pretty good example of an easy passage with relatively tricky questions. Do not recall JY ever spends almost an hours explaining just the questions of one single passage.

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Could you share us about how your day to day looked liked, your study schedule and how worked through it?

Since I worked full time, I really didn't follow a set schedule or something. I basically studied in most of my spare time while making sure I don't experience burnout. There were weeks I focused solely on drilling or speeding without any timed section, and there were weeks I took 3 PTs. I don't think a strict study routine is necessary as long as you keep yourself motivated.

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Congratulations man! I'm currently working on speed on my LG (consistently -0 in BR) and LR (-3 in BR). But I can't seem to wrap my head around RC. Even with unlimited time in BR, my best was still -9. Do you have any recs for how to improve on RC? Like did you read any nytimes or wapo articles or whatever to improve your comprehension skills? (Native Vietnamese speaker here; moved to US at age 16, now 26 yo.) Thanks a lot in advance!

I read economist during LSAT preparation and I basically dig deep into the passages in BR and even after BR (knowing which questions I got wrong) before listening to JY's explanation videos. I personally believe that although trying to figure out what passages mean and why answers are wrong can be tedious and time-consuming, but the processing of figuring out yourself gives you much more improvement than simply getting the explanation from JY. I think deeper understanding and getting used to some LSAT tricks are important.

Interested!

Wow this entire section... I spent about 5 minutes on this question and realized that I eliminated all answer choices each time. Well, at least the good news is that the 3-4 lessons I learned are from on a PT section instead of a section on a real test.

I knew D was the correct answer choice, but I just couldn't figure out how to justify A as an incorrect answer in timed condition. I guess I need to remember "it is possible that" is a phrase that's worthy of attention.