I hear you.

I've been studying for 2 years, started 7sage back in December, and even got a private tutor (who is lovely, by the way, but sessions are $$$) through them and my score actually went down from where it was before I got the tutor (after 10 weeks). I find that JY's teaching style does not usually work for me unless I already know what he's talking about - for example, the abstract concepts don't work for me (the flashcards for or, if, if only, except, etc definitely made me more confused than when I started). I also find that the lessons tend to be so incredibly tedious that it makes me not want to study at all. I say this as someone who was a math/science teacher for four years and is now a program manager for a PhD program. I'm not an idiot. But the amount of work that is expected to go into this without actual accurate feedback tailored to you is insane (why did I get this wrong? JY just told me to go watch another lesson if I don't understand it but a simple explanation without the 'if you don't get this yet you're obviously not ready' would be way more helpful...).

I'm also reading the Loophole in Logical Reasoning book and it's really helping me improve my logical reasoning skills. I find that Ellen's teaching style works way better for me (she's funny but not in a mean way that often turns me off from the lessons on here) and after I learn something from that book I can tackle the PTs and problem sets a lot smoother. My suggestion would be to find different resources for your different needs. People who score high on this test rarely use just one resource, many of them use a variety and most take in-person classes. I've done Khan Academy, the Lsat Trainer, 7Sage, 7Sage tutoring, and the loophole in Logical Reasoning. They all have their strengths and weaknesses. I find that 7Sage is great for analytics, PTs and alternative explanations, my tutor keeps me on track, and the loophole helps teach me how to crack the concepts that have not been clicking for me. Khan Academy was a great place to get my feet wet and see if this is something I wanted to devote my time on. You may not need as many resources as I have used - I have ADHD and an accommodation so I need a variety of styles to keep me engaged.

I've also purchased other books that I haven't used and watched many youtube videos. As annoying as the process is, you can improve, but you may need to find the resources that work for you. I believe in you! At the end of the day, this is a hard test and requires most people to put in way more work than they normally would study, because it doesn't assess factual knowledge, it assesses the way we think, and we've been thinking that way our entire lives.

Should you ever need a buddy to vent to - reach out! I'm always looking for an LSAT buddy. I'm taking the June/ August/ October LSATs.

Were you working full time or devoting time to studying full time? Or a mix of part time for both?

I'm working full time as an upper level manager and can't devote a ton of time to studying during the week, so I try to do an hour or two everyday during the week and then devote all day saturday to studying.

What do yoy mean by "recurring patterns that show up" in RC?

Thanks!

Victoria

I'm in a similar boat. I have ADHD, I work full time and I feel like I can barely PT. One thing that has really helped me was getting a tutor, and trying to meet people either taking the test or who have taken it and have similar goal cores to myself. If you know anyone who was able to get their goal score, ask them what they were doing and try to emulate that, then adjust for what works and what doesn't.

I’m not sure if this is helpful or not but I started studying with the LSAT trainer schedule and I supplement the practice drills with the 7sage custom problem sets because they have the explanations and are much easier than going through the book with paper and pencil. I’m sort of at the end of LSAT trainer’s 16 week schedule and only doing 1-2 PTs per week with a lot of review and drilling specific question types.

Lol, as a child born out of wedlock, the term bastard hits hard and not in a good way. It's maybe ok for Game of Thrones, but it's 2022...

I am interested! I also had a somewhat winding experience and am working in higher ed now.

I got this one wrong and something that helped me understand the logic was to switch out all of the important words to other words that were more familiar to me.

I kept gen theory but switched art with bananas, aesthetic with beautiful and painting and sculpture with yellow and sweet bananas. Premodern I switched with magic. music i changed with plantains.

The purpose of a general theory of bananas is to explain every beautiful feature in any of the bananas. Magic general theories of bananas, however, focus primarily on yellow and sweet bananas. Every magic theory of bananas, even ones that succeed as theories of both yellow and sweet bananas, fails to explain some feature of plantains.

After I wrote this down I realized the keyword here is "any" which encompasses all bananas. So in order for the conclusion to be true, a general theory cannot fail to explain every beautiful feature in any banana. So therefore, plantains can't be bananas by this definition.

Logic is formulaic; if you can't understand the variables they give you, try switching out the variables for others that make more intuitive sense to you.

Hi! We have the same name!

Send me a private message and I'll send you a video of how I solved it.

Vicki

If you can swing it I suggest the Loophole by Ellen Cassidy and the Daily Live Tutoring with her as well.

Most problems with LR come from misreading the stimulus or trying to read it all at once and remember it all at once. Read it line by line and make sure you know what you're reading before you move on to the next line. If this slows you down significantly, that means you don't actually know what you're reading and you should definitely get the Loophole book.