hmmmm i would look into how you get questions wrong? is it usually guessing incorrectly 50-50? in that case maybe you still don't truly know the question type or are still careless despite averaging in the 170s.
For example if you guess all right on 10 50-50 questions you might score at the high end of your range, but if you are unlucky with guessing it might not even be in the 170s. I think there's a tendency for some people to attribute doing well to actual competency/improvement and not doing so well to bad luck/anomalous test question distribution when in reality both are products of the great binomial distribution probability god.
i guess the takeaway is that you might want to be very honest with yourself about your actual confidence, and to seriously review if there was some doubt above a certain threshold. unless you are getting -0 for all sections every time, there is room for improvement
another thing that might be a problem for you is time management, reaction under pressure during tests. what is your reaction when you encounter a difficult question? do you tend to stare at it for awhile, spend an above average amount of time on it and still get it wrong often? if that is the case maybe skipping and returning later might be a viable strategy. even if you end up spending the same amount of time on the easy/difficult questions in the end, you allow yourself to be in a less anxious state of mind for the questions which you should be getting right and similarly anxious for the harder ones, rather than continually anxious if you did the questions in order.
here's a 7sage article about that: https://classic.7sage.com/why-you-have-to-skip-questions-on-the-lsat/
i think the analytics tool would be useful here, to see what kind of questions trip you up so you can decide what to focus on improving, or maybe just knowing what questions you tend to do consistently badly on, so you can skip them initially?
another piece of borrowed wisdom i utilized was compiling a list of errors i tended to make and look over them before each PT. when i got stuck i would try and recall the list and see if i was committing any LSAT sins. highlights of my personal list included: LG stimulus might have important stuff, don't be careless, read question again. Which actually all fell under what one might consider carelessness.
I guess it depends on recognizing where you are and what is stopping you from realizing your potential and figuring out the most effective way to rectify that by Sep/Dec and executing that plan of action
I think the general consensus is that even among the T-14s, most schools only look at the highest score.
Perhaps test day nerves got the better of you and you mis-bubbled for half a section? That would kindof resolve the paradox, with you coming out feeling good about it, scoring much higher on pts and given your test anxiety for your first LSAT.
I took the LSAT twice, 174 and 178, going through almost all the PTs each time. I believe there was still much benefit to redoing them.
I would handicap myself in multiple ways to offset what might be inflated scores from repeated takes. My 5 section PTs would always start with RC, which I too loathed. This meant that I was more tired for the 4 scored sections. For LR I would force myself to explain why I didn't like each answer choice, which possibly offset familiarity with the question. You can give yourself less time for LG or you can force yourself to do more during the LG time, like eliminating answer choices even after you circled one you were pretty confident about (doesn't work so much for open-ended questions where you need to diagram out each answer choice)
My thoughts on anxiety and pressure would involve learning to perform under stress, perhaps taking PTs in a suboptimal environment like a busy cafe, or setting yourself up to be as unstressed as possible on test day. For me this involved understanding my sleeping habits so I would be the right level of tired the day before the test to get a good night's sleep, waking up early for some exercise, and doing a warm up "section" of the first 10 LR qns, an RC passage and a logic game before leaving for the test center.
For you it might involve looking at your current prospects on mylsn which should have you accepted at some T-14s if you apply to alot of them. In fact Chicago accepted 63% of 165-166, 3.9-3.95 applicants from 2015-2017 and Northwestern took 81%. I mentioned your mylsn chances because I feel a do-or-die mentality for you might be detrimental given your past anxiety.
I think it's a matter of not just improving your understanding of the LSAT but your understanding of yourself in relation to the LSAT. How can we convert those PT scores to a score on the actual LSAT?
There's a guide on TLS for retakers which you might find helpful: http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=195603
In terms of general law school admission strategy and your LSAT timing, you could register for September and decide by Aug 22 whether you postpone til December, which still isn't too late for T-14, there's a fee of $100 for postponing but I don't think it's too high a price to pay for the option.
파이팅!
I did almost all the PTs twice. Once per real LSAT take (174, 178). I also did most logic games about 4 times each, including as part of a full PT.
Time taken was about two 3 month periods of ~4 hour days.
The time spent per day might seem relatively less but as you get more competent, you score higher, take less time on doing it and spend less time reviewing since you make less mistakes. You also get motivated from seeing higher scores/progress
I scored a 174 first time and retook for a 178.
With the change in testing limits perhaps an easy way to get that 172 is to be open to retaking. If you take enough LSATs with the same level of competency you should sooner or later score at the high of your range. Or perhaps you could spend the time before September trying to shift that range up. Either way, September is plenty early for applications, and there will be much less pressure with a good score under your belt.
You provided a range for your other sections but not for LG. If disaster LG sections result in -4, perhaps making sure you are comfortable with hard games, brute-forcing and the unusual games would be a good use of time. It limits the variation on your LG score and should also help you maintain calm during the LSAT since one knows pretty often when one messes up on the LG section and panic could spillover to other sections
With LR, 7sage analytics should show you what questions are still causing issues for you. If the questions seem to be of a certain type/types then perhaps a couple of days spent really understanding those types would be the most efficient way to spend your time. If the questions that you don't seem to be getting are all over the place, and of different difficulties, perhaps your issue is carelessness, which would call for a different strategy, perhaps slowing down. If you are already rushing to finish in 35minutes that would be tricky, since you might get a higher accuracy early on, but result in having to hurry to finish the later half of the section. In that case you might need to work on speed/competency for the question types that seem to slow you down the most, to allow for a bit more time for other questions and thus limit errors from rushing.
I think there isn't much time to carry out a complete overhaul of your RC strategy. I would think it would be better to try little tweaks rather than breaking out the brackets and new styles of annotation.
Do you spend alot of time reading the passage and find yourself rushing through the questions? Perhaps if you spent more time on the questions you might notice key words/phrases there.
Or do you spend what you feel is an adequate time on passage and questions and still get a bunch wrong? Maybe time would be best spent going over each wrong answer and wondering why you liked the incorrect answer and why you passed over the correct one. Perhaps there is some trend you will see that you should keep in mind for future RC.
Or do you read through the passage really quickly and have lots of time for the questions? With an inadequate understanding of the passage the first time round you might be tempted to pick less attractive answers and waste time having to locate where things are each time you answer a question.
@doohocho35
Add me as a study buddy and I'll have a look at some of your pt breakdowns and see if I can offer any constructive input.
@brownkristen77339
I think this question is a lot easier if approached by eliminating definitely wrong answers. The moment you start going down the if-then path you fall into their bait & switch trap.
In order to be both inviting and functional a work of architecture needs to be unobtrusive
I think that while the logic is that
inviting+functional -> unobtrusive
or
obtrusive -> not inviting or not functional or not both
having knowledge of this if-then relationship is not necessary to answer the question.
rather answer B seems to stand out if you pay attention to the 2nd sentence, that "Modern architects, plagued by their egoism, have violated this precept" with precept being having to be unobtrusive, thus they have produced buildings that are NOT unobtrusive
So I sent you my thoughts for the remaining questions. If you let me know which questions exactly were problematic and what exactly about them gave you a harder time I could try and answer that
I pm-ed you my executive summary for questions 1-13 I hope they are helpful, would probably need more information about your thought process doing the section to offer you more detailed help. Will get started on the remaining questions shortly
I think a couple of clues that phytopathogens are plant specific are the fact that the paragraph opens by discussing "cultivation of a single crop" and explains how crop rotation works: by denying the phytopathogens of a "suitable host". If they weren't plant specific I'm understanding that rotating crops just provide them with a new host that, while less infested, would still be suitable (maybe the phytopathogens might even be happier with newer plants). If they weren't plant specific as well I think crop rotation would not be as effective as something like crop removal, that just lets all the phytopathogens die out.
I am trying to follow your logic but couldn't this follow still even if you have to perpetually crop rotate it is still an increase from the otherwise decreased yields from not rotating crops?
Also maybe your emphasis on for a period of time might be unwarranted? The period of time its referring to is denial of a suitable host. In addition, even if you choose to interpret it as stalling for a period of time does sentence does say that crop rotations can cure the problem and explains how it does so. And I don't believe stalling can be inferred. I understood it as after denying suitable hosts for a period of time, the problem is cured.
Here's how I understand it through an analogous sentence. Animals can be killed by neglect, denying them food for a period of time. Neglect can kill animals in part by denying them food for a period of time.
Also isn't suppressive soil a good thing in this case? It is suppressive to those diseases. Also I don't quite understand your interpretation of E. The species don't cause them to be unsuitable hosts, they just are unsuitable hosts. I'm understanding it like this: I eat certain species of animals but find other species to be unsuitable for consumption
@potatocowpower864.E.D educationally? I didn't take precalc and calculus before dropping out of high school. Finished high school and learned math through khanacademy during college in order to complete a degree in economics
GMAT matters way less than the LSAT for admissions and the actual level of math required I would say is high school level? But there is a different element of problem solving and decision making involved, you don't get to come back to questions oftentimes spending 2minutes and guessing 50 50 is better than 5 minutes to definitively answer it. Spending too long on a difficult question might mean not enough time for an easy question you would definitely get right
@annaantonova1009436 original guide. I believe there were like cheat sheets of what you were supposed to know for each section in terms of formulas and properties of stuff like integers and factorial that you learnt but forgot
You should have a look at the raw scaled conversions and a couple of practice questions.
I think its alot less intimidating when you think of whatever score you need as getting the easiest questions right and getting to 50 50 or one in 3 on the hardest ones
I've taken both exams: 174, 178 and 770 for the GMAT and the GMAT was many orders of magnitude easier for me. No official prep courses, I just read the OG for stuff I didn't know/forgot and did the free prep software offered by GMAC of 2 PTs twice. Took me about a week in total. I believe you can take some random sample questions without wasting your actual free PTs to see where you are before you decide to go crazy with purchasing of materials.
The LSAT took 3 months of full-time study first time round and another 3 the 2nd time round. It also involved lots of anger and frustration. Also there isn't the restriction on takes in a 2 year period but the general consensus is to keep it under 5?
Anyone interested?
I took the LSAT twice: 174 and more recently 178
I have done almost every PT twice, and most of the logic games multipe times
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I don't know if this is helpful but I know someone who just got into michigan with 50% scholarship with a 3.49 double major with a 172 lsat