Proctors: Between seven and ten

Facilities: Like the rest room? Perfectly adequate.

What kind of room: It was a vast, high ceiling conference room with retractable walls, all retracted, so we were in Navesink I, II, and III. Large windows facing a forested scene.

How many in the room: 60-80

Desks: Long, comfortable, widely spaced. I could stretch my legs in a V and my legs were still under my desk. Much more comfortable than what I was practicing on.

Left-handed accommodation: I don't think a left handed person would experience a problem.

Noise levels: Low. I heard almost nothing.

Parking: Parking isn't a problem anywhere in Monmouth County, NJ.

Time elapsed from arrival to test: Probably a full hour.

Irregularities or mishaps: I noticed several rule violations that there didn't seem to be an enforcement mechanism against. No one checked my watch and on the break I noticed at least six students had left their watches on the desks but they were LSAT Chronometers, and pretty clearly so. Just said 1-35 on the face. Kind of a relief actually, here I was worried a Palomnio Blackwing 602 was not a permitted pencil. Probably a problem intrinsic to large sessions in general.

Other comments: Very convenient coat rack offered before the door! Though I saw one guy get refused the opportunity to use the bathroom prior to the test just because he had presented his ID at the check in desk. Seems to me like they might as well have told him to leave. I don't see how he was "checked in" having not entered the room.

Would you take the test here again? Definitely!

Date[s] of Exam[s]: 1/26/2019

I've been having a lovely discussion in another thread and I happen to be on a very strict time table that can't be altered so naturally the subject arises, to postpone, is that possible? Unfortunately I pretty much have to start in the fall of '19. Having started in October I'm taking the January LSAT and hoping I score high enough that a mediocre GPA with an excellent addendum and some exquisite personal statements and LORs and the moral purity of my intent will be enough to compensate for the lateness in the cycle. So naturally, maybe, but maybe I don't get admitted anywhere in the top 14. Then what?

I'd love to attend pretty much anywhere, though. I'm thinking T14 or bust because all of the information that can be found in a cursory search says a JD from essentially anywhere else may as well be your corpse, as our rarer monsters are, painted on a pole and underwrit, "Here may you see the effect of irrecoverable debt."

My desire for the T14 in this sense is entirely practical; prestige has no effect on me. Of course some of these places like Yale are dream places because of the rare opportunities they represent and how Harvard and Yale have a couple of the largest libraries on Earth. Yet the Socratic method works as well at any ABA school, does it not?

My grandfather was an attorney. For undergraduate he went to Columbia. For law school he went to Fordham, where he got his JD in 1950 at the age of 29. He went on to have a terrific career and life, and died a well loved old man. His command of conditional logic was a thing of divine elegance. However, 7sage says they're 29-37 on US News in the last few years. Could things really have changed so dramatically in only 68 years that I may as well not go to Fordham if admitted? Where would I find the data?

I mean, I figure, I'm legacy, they have a great location, my grandfather always spoke very highly of them and their requirements are marginally less strict than the T14. I don't doubt my ability to top my class at this point in life. Yet would this be to acquire a hopeless debt?

Where is the exact line past the T14? Seems like UCLA is sometimes 15. Being one below the T14 couldn't be a death sentence, could it? Also their admissions policy seem friendly to me for a variety of reasons. I'd prefer to be anywhere in Pennsylvania to North Carolina but Duke is 11 and PennState is 74! I mean, University of Pennsylvania, hope for a miracle, but, woof.

Salutations!

So when I first saw the pencil threads here and at TLS my impression was that they were jokes entirely. But as a result of them I did notice that the videos of folks trying the logic games here do show an expensive pencil, they say Staedtler Wopex on them and I happen to have heard of that brand. In contrast all the pencils I have here do not have a brand that I've heard of because they were less than ten cents each, and not being a graphite artist or technical sketcher I've never had a reason to have quality graphite.

So, it did make me curious, does 7sage just happen to have oddly artistic grade pencils around or does a high quality pencil actually give you a bit of precious extra time on bubbling? I asked 7sage directly but the staffer there said to ask here, and encouraged me to become socially involved here as well.

I'm taking the January '19 LSAT incidentally so it will still be scantron. This is incidentally the only one I can take, postponement is impossible. I've had only the three months before to prepare and I just have 7sage starter. I wish I could postpone but I was displaced from my industry and home in California wine country by the Tubbs and Atlas Fires. I've been living with my parents and fiance since, trying to find a new, less flammable career. It only occurred to me in mid-October, my grandfather was an attorney, how might I do on the LSAT? So I took a practice test to see how I might do. Although my overall score was only 160 I did get -0 RC, and I really loved taking the exam, so I've been crunching 7sage videos at 2.4x and logic games ever since. I've never had any previous exposure to conditional logic, except, as I realised in retrospect, in my grandfather's sense of humor. Learning it since has been one of my greatest pleasures thus far. I've always been rather good at argumentation but conditional logic is a whole other level of perception, my experience of the universe has been altered irrevocably.

After noticing I was still confused (thank you Eliezer Yudkowsky) about certain principles of the examination in spite of having covered all of the materials on Khan Academy I tried the free trial here. When JY Ping in his description of the Blind Review said "[. . .] Your aim is true understanding [. . .]" I became enraptured in the curriculum and immediately purchased the Starter package, the most I could afford. This in combination with 7sage's assertion that law school is a more difficult challenge than the LSAT itself has had me exhilarated. Sharpen my mind, O grind stone! Rend confusion from the fat of my brain, O great Socratic axemen!

But yes, unfortunately I simply must begin in the fall of '19 regardless of how it goes. My situation cannot wait. I'm doing logic games over and over again as prescribed by 7sage's Fool-Proof Guide to Perfection and noticing rapid improvement. After the New Year I'll just be doing as many Practice Tests as I can before the 26th without experiencing diminishing returns and fatigue, on this point I'm sure I can do more than average for a variety of reasons each of which are matters of protracted discussion. Then I'll just see how it goes.

I worked 12 hours a day 6 days a week at a winery in Napa and I've been studying that way since mid-November, but I've been crunching the fundamentals and the games. I haven't taken a new practice test to see how 7sage has helped me yet. I can't wait, though.

Existentially anxious, though! Since yeah, it's Fall '19 or bust and T14 or bust. I mean, I'll be applying to some safety schools since my overall undergraduate GPA was 3.15. Though my average for the last two years of it is way better, I struggled with severe depression and other health and mental health issues associated with an utter lack of structure in childhood, something I've made dramatic strides in since. I graduated in 2012 though and my work experience since then is a wild ride of exotic types of labor, so, hopefully that'll matter less especially if I can pull off a 173-180. Also as a school of theater some of the grades were entirely subjective. I'm hoping if I really ace the LSAT and write an interesting enough application I can sway Yale, but then of course there's the probability I won't get in anywhere in the T14. I know if I had done any college lately I'd have a 4.0 but, I haven't.

Although, as to how far down past the T14 one can go and still not be indebted to an unemployable degree, I don't exactly know. I'd love to know more about this since, obviously a safer range of schools and a wider variety of places to live is better.

One thing that might help my situation is my intent, I noticed a few schools have debt forgiveness for people working in human rights or the public sector. My fiance grew up in poverty and really knows how to live well on a limited budget and neither of us have any special material needs. In fact we've at times roamed penniless between agricultural volunteer opportunities in the most rugged conceivable conditions. I can trod through several feet of livestock effluent with a hay bale on my back so I can certainly make a modest salary.

So I may certainly be interested in something like that, the only difficulty there is that my basic intent is to do the greatest possible moral good I may, like anyone, and not having a great familiarity with the industry of law such as it is constituted presently, I don't necessarily know which parts of the field that is. International human rights sounds like it'd involve a lot of moral good but I don't know that. It attracts my interest because human rights violations internationally is one of the primary focuses of my vocational reading. I'm revolted by the great number and frequency of them, and especially how many of them are directly caused by the United States government, regardless of who is in charge. As to what I can do about that with a JD from one of many schools each of which educated several politicians, some of whom are directly responsible for much of these moral horrors is, unclear. So far I only know I love the process.

I don't know how this ended up sprawling so much, sorry. I should probably get back to logic games. Incidentally I notice a lot of people saying "Fool-proofing" as a verb, I think because of the document "Fool-proof Guide to Perfection on Logic Games." Interesting that it developed that way. The language instinct is fascinating.

Oh, random thing! I had a previous thread about my confusion with "or." As someone very language oriented I had always understood or as biconditionally exclusive and it was screwing me up. I've since found it helps to think that "or" in natural language is not generally equivalent to the inclusive disjunction A ∨ B in formal logic, but that on the LSAT, it is.

Got a 172 on a practice test this morning! I'm taking the LSAT the 26th of this month so I feel pretty great about that, hopefully I repeat that a few times before and on the day.

I was worried that my entire endeavor might be foolhardy as I was ignoring one of the curriculum's first pieces of advice, which was that three months is not enough time. I've actually only had like two and a half and one entire week was taken up by my entire home flooding and another by the liturgical season of Christmas and it's been like, damn.

But the same article that recommends that is basically warning against lousy and expensive prep courses and unrealistic expectations about your own behavior. Since I'm a bit older and I've already worked jobs where I worked at least 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, I already knew it wasn't unrealistic to assume I could study for 10 or more hours a day and in fact I have done just that since I began.

I just did the core curriculum in order and followed all of the advice precisely, save for the 3 month thing and the recommendation only to do 30 hours a week if you study full time, and the recommendation of diminishing returns on doing consecutive practice tests each day and close together. Since I can work a 10 hour day without any particular mental fatigue I just do the practice test in the morning and the blind review in the afternoon til night and I feel no worse for wear or over saturated with the LSAT the next morning. This morning was the third practice test I took since doing the core curriculum and drilling all LG from PT 1-35 repeatedly, and fourth overall, so I went 163-166-172 over the last three days.

Blind review really is an incredible process. One can feel themselves gaining greater mastery of the test's form while they do it.

If anyone would be interested in any advice from me I guess the one thing I'd say is a piece of advice they gave me in the theater. The context of this advice is that actors new to the trade tend to speak too quickly to be understood from the audience but also tend to pause too much in between lines because they don't know how to evaluate how much weight each moment needs and so they're in the paradoxical predicament of being told they really need to speed the hell up because the play is taking 2 hours and forty-five minutes and some members of the audience live in Brooklyn but also slow the hell down because no one can understand what you're saying.

The obvious piece of advice from outside of their perspective is, "don't speak faster, speak sooner." Similarly while taking a timed LSAT do not think faster, or fall to the trap of having a general impulse to rush that just feels like the subconscious thought process yelling an electrical impulse in the back of your head. Take as much time as you need to think precisely and according to 7sage's methods, just do it sooner. This is also related to the concept of mindfulness which is something I've benefited from a great deal recently. Listen to 7sage's methods and you will understand the fundamentals. After that the test taking experience really is psychological. There's no question you can't get right.

So, the concept of an inclusive "or" was 100% foreign to me when introduced, and then even the exclusive "or" given another moment to think and allow the inclusive concept to sink in. In my English such as I've always understood it, "Or" is bi-conditional.

A (-) /B

Always, unless it means "and." Not neither, not both. I can't think of an example in English where this isn't the case. It's really screwing me up.

None of the examples given anywhere on the internet strike me as actually meaning anything else. People speak imprecisely all the time and all of the examples of inclusive or exclusive "or" unless "either" or "and/or" is actually used just strike me as imprecise verbal handles, not precise instances of or, which always means A (-) /B to me.

Help!

Woo! With a scholarship too though they said they'd FedEx the deets so I'm not sure for how much yet. Of course I still need to hear from everyone else but I was thrilled that I really did it and got into a high enough ranked school because my UGPA is mediocre, my undergraduate school unheard of and I had a very tight study schedule for the LSAT so, I wasn't sure I'd get in anywhere while I was crunching the core curriculum, but, fuck yeah! I shall be an attorney.