Great post, thanks for sharing your experience!

Focus on an area you feel weakest in LR. LG and RC come with practice, although you may need to dedicate more to these sections to get familiar with the methods taught here.

I've shuffled through weak LR areas to drilling a few LG and RC in between to keep it fresh. You can skip around, but I recommend staying the course when learning the lawgic tools. Even if you've familiarized yourself in another way, the methods taught here really catch on to give you that "shortcut" that I haven't had stick with me using other methods (I have tried Khan, Kaplan, and PS). It's easier to pull from one toolbox than several.

That toolbox tends to expand in correlation with the CC in the LR section, and mastery level comprehension takes a lot of practice with the fundamentals that the CC gives you. I don't recommend brute forcing your way through every practice set before you move on to another. You can always save the high numbered practice sets for later, and honestly, you'll never have 6, 4-5 star level questions of the same question type in a row on the test anyways. Mind you, they're still good to familiarize yourself with, as you'll see some advance stuff that could either que you to skip on the real test, or maybe you will make a breakthrough. In any case, the team here gives you particular questions on those sets by design, and they are meant to que you in on certain cookie cutter patterns.

Practice builds confidence, and confidence wades the anxiety. Give yourself time and patience to get the fundamentals to stick before moving to strict timing. Practice without time, especially doing RC low-res to high-res summaries.

Hope this helps, and good luck!

Check out videos in the introduction to Logic and Advanced logic tabs. It's hard to say which one specifically. The exercises there are also good for practice. Get good with group 3 and group 4. Know what inclusive and exclusive either/or (and not both) rules are, and know how it affects the placement of pieces on a game board. This will be particularly important to know for grouping, in/out games, and all their variants.

ex. Inclusive and/or - Require atleast 1, possibly both in the "in group"

/A ---> B

/B ---> A

Exclusive and/or (and not both) - Pick one or the other, possibly none in the "in group"

A ---> /B

B ---> /A

If this doesn't make sense now, that's okay. Refer back to this. You've found an important lesson when it becomes clear, now drill until it's understanding is second nature.

Hope this helps

Agree. Depending on your personality, it may do more harm than good. Even if you nail it with a decent score, it could hurt your study habits if you develop an ego about it. Some things about this test may come natural, but mastery and application of the lessons from CC are entirely different than natural prowess, and you're bound to hiccup when applying them with time.

PTs should be a measurement of your personal study milestones, and where to go from there if you feel lost about what to focus on next. The diagnostics is a trial-by-fire way of telling you how much you don't know at the onset. It's supposed to be a blow to your ego, so don't fret. There's always room for improvement, and that's a beautiful notion.

He's a little confused, but he's got the spirit

I love this!

Could you touch a bit more on what you mean by standardizing a strategy for RC? The strategies here (low res to high res, voices, etc) really helped with finding a guideline for my approach, but we know when time factors in, some of the method isn't practical.

Also, did you find that some strategies (say approach to LG grouping and conditional stimuli in LR) are related across the sections?

Is there a time in the early morning to do sections before the work day starts? You may have to break up your studies in chunks to master time in particular sections instead of doing them all at once every time you PT. The crunch can get real

As stated, reading some daily will help with info retention and those lengthy RC passages. Fool proofing games is also something that can be done during the week. Try and find things to do in between PTs to stay sharp if you're finding yourself low on time. Life happens.

Good luck!

Awesome! The negativity of "you're still studying?" or "Maybe it isn't for you" are some of those things I've been hearing reaching that 5-6 month mark.

You touch on some great points when it comes to the process and finding time away. You wouldn't continuously hammer out reps in the weight room to find gains; that would actually hamper results! So I find comfort in knowing there's someone who's made massive improvements while taking these things in mind for self care. I've found the strategy approaching the test is actually a holistic undertaking through your daily routine. Embracing this is better than going for that "3 month fallacy" both mentally and emotionally lol

I third Jess and Apollo. Even if you have to push back to another date, it would be much more beneficial going into it with a better mindset. Maybe try something different to keep your mind sharp? Then slowly work back up to your pretest routine. You got this.

This one is tricky, but check out this breakdown:

Anyone who believes in democracy has a high regard for the wisdom of the masses

BD → WofM

WofM→ BD (Contrapositive)

Since the premise places Griley as an elitist, I regarded the next conditional to work within that domain and broke it down from there, which is as follows:

Any artwork that is popular is unlikely to be good

AP →Good

Follow me

BD → WofM

G: AP→Good

Therefore: G→ BD

Answer choice B starts off with "Anyone", but under our understanding of the domain, which is AP → Good this defines what an elitist is, according to the premise. As such, answer B in lawgic terms:

AP → Good → WofM

From our contrapositive of the first conditional statement, we have the following

WofM→ BD

And if we bridge the ideas to form the conclusion we get

G:Art → Good → WofM→ BD

Thus we can infer

G → BD

Hope this helps

This is great! Too often I get "Well, maybe it's not for you" or "People are born with a knack for that thing" and for the first few months, I may have believed that. I was inspired hearing your persistence after tuning into the community here, and now more so, knowing that you crossed that finish line. Thank you!

Synonyms can help when you're first trying to grasp these concepts. My prof in uni would refer to "sufficient" and "necessary" in terms such as "antecedent" and "consequent", respectively. Another one is "certain" and "required". If this helps, use it, if not, don't worry.

You're also not alone in being stuck with SA and NA questions. I thought of them being the most difficult to understand when you're introduced to them. Drilling can help, but I thought of it to be extremely frustrating when these concepts weren't sticking. Highly recommend @-1's breakdown, but also writing down sufficient and necessary assumptions following a premise or argument. You actually do necessary and sufficient assumptions all the time without thinking about it, but now it's time to draw a line in the sand of your mind and do some conscious sorting.

It's okay to move on and not have a complete understanding of that section, because you'll actually be called to understand sufficiency and necessity in different ways with logic games. Don't let that intimidate you. It will help you. Give yourself time, and be kind to yourself. You got this

I second the time management strategy. Find a window, whether in the morning before work begins, or breaks in between, while the mind is fresh and alert. If there's days you are feeling drained, review or foolproof. Something is better than nothing. Also, @ congrats for keeping it alive for this long! I thought I was alone in this, but I have also been chipping away at it the past two years. It's encouraging to know there are others willing to embrace the long game!

See arguments, journals, articles, under a RC strategy lens. Think about the NA and SA in this vein, gather the inferences, look at the facts, and form your own opinion regarding material you read. If you can let the strategies here bleed into your existence, you've made tremendous progress, not just in preparation for the LSAT, but also re-wiring your brain!

Where ever you are, no matter how long it takes, keep at it, and don't get discouraged!

To make the argument's conclusion more clear, we have to bring out what validates "Probably does not reflect a drop in population" between 1985 and 1989.

Consider the other answer choices

B - We aren't concerned about their habitat. This is outside the scope of the argument and doesn't connect us to the conclusion. In fact, this gives us more questions than a straight solution.

C- Again, outside the scope. We don't want to know when they move for food or anything about their reproductive habits, only what the observer did or did not see for those two years. The phenomena being introduced here could be possible, but it could be one of a number of reasons they did or did not move. Bottom line is, they have a higher activity when it's wet than when it's dry. Keep that in focus.

D - Although stated to be rare, rarity isn't the main concern. The dates given in this ac don't have much to do with the dates of our observation. Stick to the information that is given to us in the stimulus. Why was there more seen in the two years observations were recorded? Wet conditions, high activity. Dry conditions, less activity. These are our parameters for consideration.

E - This can be a tricky one. You might consider the presence of a predator to reinforce the level of activity. You could say that this is something not considered in the observation, that because NO predator relies on the beetle as it's major food supply, that this would strengthen the argument making the drop in population less probable. However, like B, this would give us more questions than one solution to reinforcing our argument. By introducing a possible scenario, we are creating more holes than patching what's given.

A is correct because it provides a solution to a hole in our argument: why were more beetles observed in 1985 than in 1989? Given the facts; the beetles can remain motionless for hours, and they remain less active in dry conditions. AC A gives us another reason why less of them were observed for that dry year as well as a connection to our conclusion: their population remained relatively intact despite less of them being observed in 1989 than 1985.

Hope this helps

Following

I think of MBT/MBF as looking through a telescope. Details and noting the degree of language used (i.e. all, most, some) is key to set a path to the right answer. There's at least two AC's you can eliminate just by scanning the language (i.e. crossing off a AC that contains the words "all" or "most" when passage only qualifies "some" or "few")

The same goes for RC, but since it deals with larger stimuli, I keep in mind referential phrasing. Getting lost is easy just because something sounds good within the scope of the passage, but isn't specifically mentioned (noting who said it is equally important!). I've practiced paraphrasing for both (like a high resolution), as the test makers will usually try to throw a curve with rephrasing (i.e. trading the term concept for idea), giving you a contrapositive, or an inferred statement as the AC. In the latter cases, it just pays to be well suited with lawgic.

Strengthen/Weaken is a different story. I'll freeze if I see two AC's that both qualify but one may differ from the other just by using a stronger word. I've read strategies that say go with the strongest one as your best bet, but all these need to do is improve validity (str), or cast doubt (weaken) even by a small amount to be the right answer.

I understand this. I don't get too bad with anxiety being timed, but I do know that If I hit a wall or find myself brute forcing, I can freeze. This just means I need more practice with that particular pattern or game. That's just me.

Granted, there are some games that can be a time sink. The more I try, even if it's accommodated timing, the faster I get with recognizing those patterns. From there I get a better sense of control with being able to make a choice of continuing or moving on. There's confidence in being able to give yourself that choice.

I think @ is spot on. I'm very similar in my style when it comes to marking Author's POV and other's POV.

For RC: I'll use different colored highlights to mark voices or if a statement marks a change in direction. For example, if the author's voice weighs on a particular view, I'll mark it in pink. If there's other POV's in the same paragraph, I'll mark it in yellow. The key is to stay consistent with your colors and/or markings so you know where to look or what you're marking it for. This is what I mean when things become second nature. You shouldn't have to second guess why you marked a sentence.

On a chance that there's a particular piece of the passage that I can't mark without interfering with another highlight or marking, I'll jot a quick note on scratch paper for that paragraph (i.e p3: auth agrees, P4: stats, critics disagree). Still working on cutting this down though, as I'll still come up short on answering all questions for the fourth passage.

For LR: Basically the same deal, but I'm very particular with what I'm marking. There may be one word that gives me a degree of certainty or strength of validity, but that's all. The conditional logic just takes practice until those rules are rolling out of your head like bullets down the barrel. If a question has a chain of logic rules that I'm just not comfortable with, or I know it's meant to trip me up, I'll skip it and come back to it later. Some are really just there to eat up your time.

I'm no sage, but these are some of the things that have helped the past 6-7 months of chipping away at this. Hope this helps

Oatmeal with fruit. Greek yogurt + granola, honey and fruit also works well for mornings

Any type of fish oil, or fish, sushi with avocado (healthy fats), nuts, seeds. These increase brain function.

A good protein source (whether meat or plant-based) to stick with a type of veggie like zucchini or squash if you want to watch carbs.

virtual salute

When I first started this journey a little over a year ago, I fought myself so much on what I knew, or rather, didn't know for that matter. I think a big part of starting something new is the amount of discomfort that comes with the initial growth. "Celebrating the scores you wish you never saw" is easier said than done, but when you can do that, I think you've grown past that ego.

Having said that, I find myself smiling at those mistakes I made (and any further mistakes I've made thereafter!)

This is awesome! How much did you improve from where you started and what was your length of study?

Prioritize your study time ahead of anything else that would take away from your mental endurance. Meaning, if you can, try to study in the morning before work. If that isn't possible, or you just aren't a morning person at this time, give your mind a min 30 min break after work before you start. In any case, consistency is key. Commit to the long term. Don't try to cram.

I would recommend you get a deep dive in Intro to Logic, Adv Logic, causation, Some and Most in relationships, and cover the basics to each question type before trying to jump into PTs. This will get you familiar with the 7sage method (if you aren't already) and some of the lingo covered in explanation videos. You can always do the later question sets to get good at a particular weakness. Do a few earlier PTs untimed, then blind review the questions you struggled with. BRing a whole test will burn you out. If you feel like you need to BR most of the test, then that's just a sign you need more practice without time until you master the section or question type.

I'm finding low-res comes second nature after a lot of practice. Have a handful of key words

(i.e phenom, 180, hypo, additional info) that que you on a particular pattern or structure of each paragraph, or even the passage as a whole.

I use the low res - high res method. Practice this untimed. You don't want to practice something new under time constraints. RC is difficult to just go by memory, especially if it's a harder passage with a lot of referential phrases to previous paragraphs. Some questions may ask you to refer to a line in the passage or a particular subject. You should be actively marking as you are going along, and you'll get a better idea of these patterns as you do more RC.

And the point is to stay active, especially with the denser material or a subject you just aren't interested in (science can be the worst). On the flipside, you can get caught off guard with a subject you do have interest in by making an assumption based on your personal opinion. As always, stick to the passage, and don't let those testmakers bait you into calling into your own feelings on the matter.

Hope this helps

Gold. Bumping this so others have a reference or a framework. Great job!

Awesome! How often were you studying in those 5 months? You obviously had some supreme confidence in your techniques. What is your key take away from your random disconnects and stops during the test, what did you do to reconnect?