@ Sorry to hear that- I'm sure that if you keep working for it, you'll get the score that you want later this year!

@ It should be by 6:30 pm EST as I understand. They send out emails in batches.

@ @ Today is the day! Grey day.

Hi @!

I can't speak for others, but I did not do a 5th section for the majority of my PTing. If you can get through a full PT and not feel totally drained, then I don't think it is imperative to add a 5th section every time. When I got closer to my test date, however, I did add the 5th section to simulate the same experience I would have during the real thing. I did this with practice tests for around 3 weeks.

I think the main factor to consider is how strong your test stamina is currently. Why not take a PT with a 5th section and see how you feel mentally? If you do not feel any significant difference in your fatigue, you could probably get away with not adding the section until later. If you notice that you feel pretty beat after 5 sections, then definitely consider adding the 5th every time to increase your stamina.

The other thing to consider is that your score data may change with the 5th section added. It is hard to know how you will be affected without trying it first.

I have spoken with an individual who works as IH Counsel for a non-profit and associated LLC. I think that the track really depends on the scale of the business from what he told me. If you are referring to being part of a small team, or being the only lawyer who works for the group, then I would imagine that there is an expectation of experience. He worked in corporate law prior to his current position for over a decade.

Much like any job, if you can get in the door and know the right people, the parameters change quite a bit. Going into an interview as a stranger, though, it can take more convincing for a company to bring you on as a big part of their legal team. I would imagine that company size, age, and overall work culture play a big impact on what they look for.

I guess the only solution is to read them all! Good luck!

For me, the diagnostic helped to point out areas of relative weakness after completing the CC. It helped me to focus my additional drilling, especially for LR. While one test doesn't give you a perfect model of your testing, it is a great place to start. By the time I hit around 10 PTs, I could see how the areas on which I focused had become stronger, and other weaknesses became more apparent.

It gave me something to focus on in the short run, and it really is fun to take the first timed test!

I think that @ makes a good point. While they will look at 'geographical diversity', it seems like this is one of the factors that move applicants from the strong-maybe to the yes pile. This group of applicants is relatively small, and there are several other parts of your application that will have a great deal more sway e.g. gpa/lsat/ps.

While location may give you a small bonus on your application, it seems like a highly secondary thought compared to other parts of your application. Additionally, the admissions officers will see that you went to an out-of-state school, and it's pretty easy to put 2+2 together: you moved to Texas recently. From there, they may ask 'why did @ move to X-town, Texas?'. If it really did become an important point in your application, I would be prepared to address this.

From my own experience, it was more important to live where I could be a part of a community that I loved. Instead of thinking about how to game the application process, think about what will help you to thrive. This can in turn help you to build a stronger resume and personal story.

We talked about this in depth in a BR group once. That could really shakes things up! It really changes the conditional relationship.

Glad that you were able to break this down solo, as we spent a loooong time discussing it!

@ One thing to keep in mind, in addition to the information above, is that drilling is meant to reinforce strategies/skills/concepts. Using early preptests (1-35) is a good option, because as a whole test, these are less similar to current tests. The fundamentals of the questions are the same, so they are an excellent way to practice question types without using up precious PTs that will be valuable later in your studies.

I use PT 1-35 to reinforce specific question types when I find weak points in the BR process. I use up these questions fairly indiscriminately, because I will not use any of these as a full practice test. This still leaves 40+ blank PTs for you to take later while giving you a huge bank of questions with which to practice during the curriculum! You can always return to the earlier tests to buff up on areas that show weakness once you get to the PT/BR phase.

(These early tests are also where J.Y. draws examples from in the curriculum, so I only pulled drilling questions after I was through the course.)

@ Makes a really good point in his example. The thing to keep in mind in this example is that referential phrasing can lead to very misleading relationships between English and Lawgic.

The phrase "I only work on Tuesdays" is really saying "The only day I can work is Tuesdays", not "If it is Tuesday, then I must be working". Expanding referential phrasing can help to clarify the relationship: DW->T

The relationships between sufficient and necessary conditions can be tricky at first. Speaking from experience, I found this infuriating for longer than I care to admit. English is just so fricking ambiguous sometimes, and the LSAT capitalizes on this. But the more instances of ambiguous arguments that you expose yourself to, the more intuitive translation will become.

Practice makes perfect!

When I was skipping questions in RC, it was largely because I did not adequately absorb the information in the passage. Either there was specific info that I could not refer to quickly or other concepts that I did not retain that were needed to answer the question. In having to return to the passage, I was wasting a lot of time, and I tried skipping these to answer questions that I could do right away. In the end, skipping these was not a fault of me not understanding the question stems or ACs, but instead not working enough on the stimulus.

I think it is really important to distinguish why you are skipping the questions. If it is because it is hard to remember the referenced information, this is a problem that can be addressed through improving reading strategy. It is another thing entirely if the question feels difficult because of phrasing or misleading answers. I found that when I worked on my reading strategy for the stimulus, I was much less compelled to skip questions in this section.

Obviously, there are going to be hard questions mixed into the RC section. However, all of the questions rely on a strong understanding of the passages. My experience was that as I improved my strategy on the passage, I could skip a hard question here and there to finish at the end. But similar to LG, each passage has 6-8 questions, so skipping more than 1-2 questions in a passage would suggest that it may help to focus on overall understanding.

@ is right on the money with this one.

When I was learning the lawgic form, I followed the rules like gospel, but I also found that it was helpful for me to understand the why behind the lawgic structure. For some conditional relationships, it can be clarified by turning the sentence into an if/then statement.

In this example there is only one way that this would make sense: "If in Philadelphia, then it must be sunny". That is totally feasible and it maintains the original intent of the sentence. Alternatively, "If sunny, it must be in Philadelphia". Here we can see how to logical structure does not follow the intent of the original sentence. It's just silly; it's going to be sunny in Cabo, and that's definitely not Philly. I'm not going to Philadelphia to get my base tan, because plenty of other places get lots of sun and have better margaritas.

While this is not a foolproof technique, especially when you are dealing with conditional relationships that may not be as cut and dry, I used it as a learning tool to improve understanding.

@ No problem! Let me know what you think of notation once you give it a shot!

Hey @ !

For me, note taking was an important part of practicing the memory method in the untimed phase of my study.

The goal when timed for me, however, is to have practiced the memory method so much that I can do it without writing down summary notes. I can't speak for others, but I rarely write more than one word as a small reminder when taking a timed section.

Instead, I notate the stimulus with a legend that I adapted from this strategy designed by Nicole Hopkins, who has done a webinar on BR for 7Sage:

In doing so, I am able to mark important concepts and keywords quickly without having to write anything out. This can save huge amounts of time and is worth at least trying, and it acts more as a reference tool than a summary.

In the end, RC strategy is not as cut and dry as LR or LG. Since we are dealing with a much larger amount of information at a time compared to other sections, it is definitely important to find a way to effectively compartmentalize that information. If improving your time is the main goal, and you do not use your notes, I would consider employing a strategy that relies more on mental note-taking or notation.

Happy to help @ !

See you soon, @

+1 for @ . It would only stand to drain your stamina.

Just remember, your PT scores are all in your head, especially if they were different than they usually are! They only hold as much value as you give them. If you are dead set on sitting for the exam this weekend, go in feeling confident in yourself. So much of the test is a mind game, and those PTs don't matter when you're sitting for the real deal.

Warm up how you usually do, and go in feeling ready to kick that test's booty!

When I think of the word side-effect, I think it relates more to unintended effects of an action.

In this case, the susceptibility to middle ear infections is correlated with the virus, but the author never says "the virus causes middle ear infections". This is the key piece of information that is missing from the stimulus. Since we know that antibiotics clear up the infection, and we know that antibiotics aren't an effective treatment for viral infection, we can assume that there must be a different cause for the infection. If the virus were the sole cause of the middle ear infection, antibiotics would never clear it up, according to the information provided by the author.

Hope this helps!

I have experienced similar trends in my PTs, though usually it is the first section of the test that I tend to miss questions toward the beginning. I have also noticed that my score is generally higher on the second LR regardless of its relative difficulty to the first LR.

In order to mitigate my cold-brain effect going in, I integrated a behavioral modification with the goal that it would help me feel more warmed up. I always start a section by clearing my mind, taking four slow breaths, and then basically saying "I am ready for this" in my head. I do it before every section, and I think it has helped me to prepare cognitively, as it is like an indicator to my brain that it is time to turn on.

It was essential that I practice this every time, as it helped to associate the behavior with cognitive performance. It is entirely possible that this is all a placebo effect, but it doesn't really matter. I feel more prepared and confident, and this seems to lead to better overall performance.

Since you may not know which section will be coming up next during the actual exam, I don't focus on prepping in any specific way. Once I open to a particular section, I do a quick mental checklist of things to remember, though. LG: "Okay, double check all rules, work deliberately, you're not racing the clock." RC: "Look for keywords and transitions, think big picture/little picture." LR: "You got this."

Hope this helps, and remember, consistency is key!

Here is the takeaway for me from the stim: The author never says that the virus itself is what causes the middle ear infections, just that children develop middle ear infections. Since the antibiotics, which aren't effective on virii, clear up the infection often, we can conclude that the cause of the middle ear infection must be caused by something other than the virus directly.

(A) Irrelevant to the stimulus. We are not talking about different antibiotics. The stimulus implies that all antibiotics are equally ineffective against the virus and that all antibiotics clear up the middle ear infection.

(B) Bingo. If the virus means that they are more susceptible to another cause of the infection, this leaves room for explaining why antibiotics treat it.

C,D,E all are way off mark for me, and they don't even feel relevant.

I can see why (D) could be an attractive answer choice, but it only makes sense in the context of answer (B). Nowhere in the stimulus are bacterial infections noted. This is simply a statement that one can take at face value, but it does nothing to actually resolve the conflict until you explain the relationship between the infection and bacteria.

I spoke to a couple of admissions officers about application timing, and they said that it is best to get in applications within 30-60 days of the cycle opening up. Most of the schools I have looked at will open on Sept. 1, but they also allow you to submit your LSAT score when it is released after applying.

Bottom line is that it is better to be prepared and do well on the LSAT than to apply on the first day applications are accepted. As far as I understand, application officers will still look at your app before the score comes in, but no decision can be made until then. If those three months would be a difference of 3 or more points, I would think it would be well worth waiting.

Hey @ !

I worked through this problem in BR for the exact same reason. I think it is safe to conclude that we cannot attribute knowledge to the scientists in D. While 'many' scientists have knowledge of the impact of pollution, that word means it could be just one guy sitting in his lab. It could be that this one scientist didn't get the memo that this had other impacts, like affecting the size and intensity of the fires. There is a lot of room for D to be false, and I see that 'many' word as the red flag. It seems like the author wants us to assume that the majority of scientists are aware of the impact of pollution so that we can attribute knowledge to them.

E, however, follows a very logical chain and does not have room for error. Given the information we are provided, we can safely infer this relationship to be true.

Hope this helps! If you'd like a more in-depth analysis, I'd be happy to talk through it in discord. I synthesize better out loud than typing.

I like @ 's suggestion of going off of a goal score. I went in once I was hitting well above my goal. I didn't quite get the score I wanted, but I would not have wanted to sit for the test with any less studying than I did.

@ I'm right there with you. Happy with my score, but not satisfied. I really only feel bad about having to dedicate more time to studying again. That's not all that bad, anyway.

I'm sure we will be seeing each other around the discussion board!