Man, I'm bummed. I scored 3 points lower than my PT average. July here I come I guess.

I really love the letters of recommendation content! Tons of useful information that I've never seen elsewhere

I had a similar drop in my average PT score when I first began taking PTs in the 70s (I also jumped from the 40s).

My theory as to why this seems to happen for so many people is that, over time, LSAC has had to develop new ways of crafting incorrect/trap answer choices and subtle correct answer choices. We all know that in some respects, the LSAT is very formulaic and that aspect of the exam can be exploited and adapted to. If you watch J.Y.'s live commentary videos, he'll often say things like "this just smelled like a trap answer choice".

Furthermore, because the core curriculum uses material from PTs 1-35, I think 7sagers in particular are quite accustomed to the tricks that LSAC was using back in the 30s-40s era. That might inflate scores a little bit in the 30s-40s range.

What helped me get back on track was sitting down and doing an exam untimed, and paying close and particular attention to the questions that were giving me a lot of trouble even when working the problems untimed. If I remember correctly, there were several questions where I could not decide between two answer choices and had to throw my arms up in the air in defeat. I would pay super close attention to the trap answer choice, and try to figure out what LSAC was doing that was tripping me up so much.

Just dropping in to say that I'm also in the stress-dreaming-about-the-lsat club.

ugh

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I had an LG LR LG RC LR test and have an unhealthy obsession with figuring out if the real LG (round table) was my first or second LG section - I can't remember - leaning towards first. I think the 7 schools/theater performances was the first game in the fake LG section (even though amanda.m.maguire says it was real - her only LG game - how could this be??). Can anybody shed some light on this?

I also had the 7 schools/theater performances question in the same section with the circular. Best I can figure, this "city workers" question that PowerScore is talking about was switched out with the schools/theaters on this go-round. They're assuming that the test was verbatim Feb 2014. I think eventually they'll figure it out and recant.

rwest90212 - I think you've solved it. So you didn't have the supervised/unsupervised game?

I had the schools game and the unsupervised/supervised

My games were

7 schools visiting 5 art galleries

Garden/furniture store with furniture, gardening and housewares

Supervised/unsupervised game

Circular game

I only had 1 game section so these are all real.

The 7 schools thestre performances was definitely real. I only had one LG section and that was my first game.

Seems like some people are predicting a -13/-14 curve. That makes it really hard for me to decide whether to cancel or not. Ugh...

Man, I'm not gonna lie -- I briefly looked over those Powerscore predictions and so I knew that there was a potential circular game lurking in the shadows, but I figured that LSAC would never re-administer an exam so quickly.

Knowing the reputation of the 4th game + knowing that the section wasn't experimental definitely played some sick psychology on me during the timed exam. In the end, all my mistakes are my own, but man that's such a weird and twisted thing to run into during an LSAT.

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today is the deadline for signing up for the sept test btw! for this one, you get a full refund if you get your score back in july or something like that (provided that you don't cancel and took today's lsat) just letting you know incase you didn't know and don't make up your mind before midnight haha :)

I'll be out of the country so the earliest I can register for is October, and of course LSAC doesn't offer refunds for that administration.

Would definitely be registering for sept now though if I was in the States

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If you already have a 170+ on a previous test, definitely cancel. One cancel means almost nothing. Much less than a worse score would look. With a 170+ score you should take the sept or nov. definitely don’t take the January test. Any gains would be more than offset by applying late. How are you scoring that high though and games is your weakest section? Also, if you are pt-Ing that high I would definitely advice canceling and retaking in sept.

Thanks for the input. I'm not sure either -- logic games are just really, really hard for me. Especially non-formulaic ones like this last exam had. I'm only able to PT high 170s because I usually go perfect or near perfect on LR and RC.

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For those that had LR-LG-LR—LR-RC, with the 26 question LR passage being thE very first one, think that the first ten were harder than normal??? #4 and #5 tripped me up and ruined my timing for the rest of the section.

Yep. I felt that the first LR section was abnormally difficult. I usually finish with 8-10 minutes to look over my answers but finished this one with only 4.

Can someone explain question 6 a little more? In the video explanation, J.Y. seems to interpret 'corrido variants' as corridos with different topics, but I interpreted it as corridos that are all based of a similar shared event.

During the timed exam I thought that both (C) and (D) were supported, and unfortunately changed my answer from (C) to (D).

Lines 12-15 lead me to believe that answer choice (D) was supported. They say that "A single important event is likely to have inspired several corrido variants, yet the different versions of any given story all partake of standard generic elements"

And of course the last paragraph about despedidas is talking about these standard generic elements.

So I understand that certain lines in the depedidas would change from corrido to corrido depending on the subject and story of the corrido, but I think that lines 12-15 strongly imply that the despedida for corrido variants concerning the same story would be the same.

I finally went with (D) because even though we know that corridos have a set convention, who's to say that that convention is universal across all corridos? Just because something is a convention doesn't mean that it's universal across all examples...

#help

Doing one final PT tomorrow, and then over the weekend I'll just be lightly drilling logic games and RC.

I did all of them when I did the core curriculum.

I would advise against it really -- I wished I had saved several problem sets from each area so that I could have used them as drilling materials after I started PTing.

I went into this question with the pre-phrase of 'relying on quackery instead of scientifically valid information must, at least in some instances, do harm' and spun my wheels so hard on this question because none of the answer choices came close to my pre-phrase nor struck me as necessary.

I actually thought that the question stem must be a typo and picked (B), lol.

PT68 S4 G4 is a good one to practice on

Hey,

Just wanted to comment that having variation in scores is completely normal. According to LSAC, the standard deviation for a given person is usually about 2.6 points.(https://www.lsac.org/jd/lsat/your-score/score-band). That means that your range of 164-175 with a 168 average is just about within +/- 2 standard deviations. I know it's frustrating seeing scores go up and down, but hopefully knowing that almost everyone experiences similar fluctuations can ease the anxiety a little bit.

I also experience a pretty large degree of fluctuation in my test scores. Sleep and stress seemed to be the largest contributing factors in my experience. Before taking my exam, I would always rate my observed quality of sleep and my stress level on a 1-10 scale. I did notice a correlation between reporting a high stress level or very poor sleep and a lower score on my PT.

My advice for attaining better consistency would be to first look for elements of the exam that could account for your variation. Perhaps you're struggling with NA, and a particular exam had like 6 NA questions. Or, perhaps a section had 4 parallel reasoning questions and you found yourself running out of time -- whatever it is, try to look for shared elements between the exams where you see the fluctuations.

Then, I would also begin tracking certain other elements like sleep, stress, exercise, diet, and anything else you can think of that might affect your scores. Be sure to track your feelings on a particular day before you take the exam. If you do find that there are elements that appear to be affecting your score, you can then take measures to control for these variables.

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I've edited my posts to your request. I did try to confirm my numbers by visiting your website before posting, and could not find open price information so I assumed the $5k+ numbers I had seen thrown around on other forums put your firm in a similar strata to the other very expensive admissions consulting companies.

Sincere apologies. I wasn't trying to misrepresent the price of your services, rather to make a point that people spend a lot of money on these services and your excellent branding led me to assume your firm was the cream of the crop in admissions consulting, the "Rolls Royce" of law school admissions if you will.

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This reeks of privilege. I understand that the thread comes with the caveat of only applying to those who are financially able to do so, but so few people truly are, and it's not even a matter of "things will be tight but I won't buy my coffee from Starbucks daily and I'll make it through." This post vastly underestimates lower-class and middle-class life, and makes generalizations that sound like those of us forced to work simply don't want a good score badly enough.

I don't think that anyone on this thread is making generalizations. I shared my experience because I am a first gen college graduate who comes from lower-middle class upbringing and through sacrifices I made during my undergrad years I was able to save money to enable myself to study full time.

A lot of people in this thread are acting as if taking time off work to study for the exam is fundamentally different from many other ways of preparing for this exam -- that it's somehow significantly more expensive than other methods of studying.

But really, it's not. An in-person LSAT prep course from Kaplan in my area costs almost $1500 dollars. That's a 7 week course, 28 hours total class time. Week for week and month for month, taking time off work and spending down my savings would actually be LESS EXPENSIVE than that Kaplan LSAT course, and a hell of a lot more effective at raising my score.

Fundamentally, taking time off of work and spending down savings/taking on debt is no different from the other methods of preparing for this exam. People spend thousands of dollars on courses from Kaplan/Powerscore/Ace/etc. People spend thousands of dollars on private tutoring (I've seen tutor rates as high as $200/h!). People spend tens of thousands of dollars on admissions consulting services. These are all successful companies that have thousands if not tens of thousands of paying customers each year.

Why do all these people pay so much money for these services? Because it's an investment in their future. A $900 7Sage course might enable you to raise your score and get a $10,000++ scholarship to a good school. It might enable you to get into T14 and significantly enhance your job prospects after graduation. Taking time off work to focus on the LSAT is exactly the same.

Just gonna chime in and say that if you do go ultimate+ for 7Sage's RC curriculum you should also think about supplementing it with the LSAT Trainer. IMO, the two methods are very complementary and a combination of the two has worked well for me. You don't need a new copy of the trainer either -- you can find some old used copies that are pretty inexpensive if you look around. I used a 2014 copy of the trainer.

I went -0 in RC for June and average -1/-2 on RC generally.

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I agree I don’t understand the purpose of the thread. As with pretty much anything in life, maximizing the amount of time you can take on something will give you the best results in the shortest period of time. This is obvious. Not everyone can do so bc they have responsibilities. I’m not really sure who this thread is addressed to bc not many people can just stop working.

Do a search for "quit job" on the 7sage forums and you'll find dozens of threads from students who are considering quitting their job for a short period of time to study for the LSAT. This is a real choice that many students can make, and it has a lot of pros and cons attached to it. I think a discussion like the one we're having on this thread is actually quite fruitful.

This post just feels like conservatives yelling at poor people to just save money. In the US we don’t get free healthcare or education so idk why anyone would assume that the average person can just quit their job to study...on a basis of a possible way far future financial gain.

I mean, I can completely sympathize with the students who are not able to take off work to study for this exam. I think it's RIDICULOUS that this exam requires 500-1000+ study hours of preparation. I think it's CRIMINAL that LSAC continues to charge absurd amounts of money for test licensing which makes all prep material extremely expensive. And it's a straight up INSULT to the supposedly meritocratic admissions process that applicants are allowed to shell out $10,000+ for consulting packages from admission consulting companies. The entire LSAT is just one gigantic class barrier that unapologetically and unambiguously gives the middle finger to the less privileged in society.

But it's precisely for this reason that students can and should approach preparing for the exam in the best/most efficient ways possible. For those that can take time off work to study for the exam (and that is who the OP addressed this post to, no less no more), then it is an option that is definitely worthy of consideration. In purely financial terms, taking time off work to study for the LSAT can be well worth it -- that's why we're having this discussion.

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TLDR: Attending law school earlier won't get you more years at a Big Law salary in the event that you get Big Law, but it will make those years earlier. If you are smart and invest the money the interest will therefore start compounding earlier so it will be financially better.

I like your post and I think you bring up a great point, but you might've understated it just a tad. A few years of extra savings from Big Law earlier in life can make an enormous difference.

Say we have two students who both score highly on their LSATs, and are able to attend UChicago on full-ride scholarships. The students are such that:

Student (A) is a K-JD starting law school at 22 years of age. Student (A) took 4 months off from work to study full-time for the LSAT, and in doing so burned through $4,000 dollars of savings.

Student (B) began working as a paralegal after graduating from undergrad, and the office they are in has grueling hours. These hours have interfered with their ability to adequately prepare for the LSAT. Nevertheless, after 3 years and several takes student (B) finally achieves a superb LSAT score.

Both students work Biglaw in NY for 3 years before moving on to a different job. They both save 20% of their income, investing mostly in equities with a compound annual interest rate of 8%.

At retirement age....

Student (A)'s savings from their time in Biglaw will equal approx. $3,370,000.00

Student (B)'s savings from their time in Biglaw will equal approx. $2,650,000.00

Now of course student (A) has an opportunity cost of spending that $4,000 back when they began school. Compounded for 43 years, the future value is approx $125,000.00

Even so, student (A) is still at a net gain of $600,000.00. That's future value though -- accounting for TMV gives a present value of around $22,000.00.

So essentially by spending down their savings and entering law school earlier, student (A) "earned" $600,000.00 more by retirement age just by virtue of beginning to save earlier.

And all of this is assuming that student (A) and student (B) have similar outcomes. What if student (B)'s work interfered so much that they never scored 175+ and instead paid full-ticket price to go to UChicago rather than a full scholarship? In such a scenario student (A) is coming out millions of dollars ahead of student (B).

I did quit my job to study for the LSAT full time, and so I can understand where OP is coming from with this thread. There's a lot of hostility towards the OP, but I do think that they have a point.

If you are able to take time off to study, I actually do think that it should be a consideration for a lot of people. I took ~4 months off from work to study, and pulled a 170+. Everyone is different, but I definitely wouldn't have been able to score as highly if I had been working (I have a finance/accounting background and the hours in my field are brutal and not conducive to studying for this exam).

Just judging from lawschoolnumbers, the 4 months that I took off has translated to around ~$50,000-~100,000 USD in scholarships. If I can improve my score by 3-4 points in July, then that will turn into $200,000+. That's post-tax as well. This is far more than I would've been able to make had I been working part/full time.

Also, it's not like the reason I was able to do this is because I come from a super privileged background. I made a lot of sacrifices in the past 5 years that have made this possible for me. For example I:

Chose to go to a very mediocre state school on a scholarship instead of an ivy, because I did not want to take out loans for undergrad

Lived with 3/4 other fraternity brothers in the same room to save on rent

Prepared all of my own food/coffee for all 4 years of undergrad

Busted my ass in undergrad so that I finished top of my class and won scholarships

Saved and invested the majority of my undergrad earnings. Mostly in equity.

That said, choosing to quit to study for the LSAT is still a very personal choice that depends on a lot of factors. The things that made me make the decision were:

I knew that I could pull a 170+. At the time I made the decision to quit, I was BRing 178-180 and knew that I had the potential to score very highly. It was just a question of dedicating myself to the test and investing the time necessary to get my timed score up to match my BR.

My uGPA is very competitive, which makes me a more attractive scholarship candidate.

I only took 4 and a half months off of work, not 1 year+

For some people, quitting the LSAT to study actually makes a lot of financial sense. I don't think the OP deserves all of the hostility on this thread.

AC (B) is contradictory to the findings of the study.

We looked at a lot of arthritis suffers, and took note of their self reported levels of pain and then compared it to various weather patterns and found no correlation between any of the weather patterns and the pain reported. Also, the members in the study that had a particularly strong belief in such a correlation had widely varying accounts on the time delay that it took for the weather to affect their pain levels.

If AC (B) was true, then we WOULD find a correlation between the pain levels of the people with arthritis and the weather patterns they experience. If their beliefs really did impact the levels of pain they experienced, then you would have a group of people that thought something like "It's going to rain on Wednesday, my joints are going to hurt like a mfker" and then they would actually experience increased pain through some type of placebo effect.

But we don't find any correlation between pain and weather patterns -- so (B) definitely does not logically complete the argument.

This question is horseshit, and has two correct answers IMO. I couldn't eliminate B or D during the timed exam, and really just lucked out on D.

I think it's perfectly reasonable to assume that deicing procedures are covered under road maintenance, and it's also perfectly reasonable to assume that in a world where we go from 0 deicing agents to using deicing agents, the costs of road maintenance will increase thereby burdening low income people.