Link: https://v.ringcentral.com/join/177556372647

We will continue to use RingCentral, though I am still not really sure what the deal is with its apparently-absent waiting room functionality. So I'll probably just put the link up ~15 minutes early and let people filter in. Feel free to chat amongst yourselves in the meantime! Face cameras are gently encouraged - it's a lot easier to have a conversation that way.

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Hi everyone! I decided it would be cool to run some office hours and help some folks out. I've done a few of these in the past and it's always been fun to talk shop with people. Think of it as a drop in/drop out study group, open to all.

Limiting this to 7Sage for now because it's easier to get things done if everyone has a common basis in terms of vocabulary, how you learn the theory, etc. and after a decade of using 7Sage I know the curriculum like the back of my hand.

Who Am I/Why Should You Listen To Me?

I scored 175 on the September 2006 LSAT (-4 RC, -2 LR, -0 LG), graduated from Columbia Law School in 2010, spent a year on fellowship with a judge in Bronx Supreme Court Criminal Division while teaching LSAT on the side, and have been teaching the LSAT full time since September 2011. I worked with JY on PreProBono and in the early years of 7Sage, was a 7Sage "Approved Tutor" for the entire life of that categorization, and am the only person other than JY himself who has ever had an instructional video published on 7Sage's live site. I am also the lead LSAT tutor and department chair of a local NYC-based test prep boutique. Some of my writing still resides in the "Sage Advice" section of this forum, so go check it out if you're interested .

Over the past decade-plus, I have amassed over 8,000 hours of combined classroom-based and one-on-one LSAT teaching experience, working with a diverse set of students from across the USA and all around the world - Canada, Brazil, Netherlands, England, France, Qatar, Korea, and China just to name a few. The best score increase I've ever achieved with a student is +36 (136 -> 172).

If you listen to the 7Sage Podcast, you may have heard my name mentioned in episode #67 - Vanessa (138 -> 169) was my student.

How Can I Join?

I'll put up a video chat link above when the time comes, and take it down when we're done.

When Will These Be Happening?

I currently intend for this to be a weekly thing, but the timing will vary depending on the other moving pieces of my schedule. It's not likely that every time will work for everyone, but I will at least attempt to switch it up so that anyone interested can make it at least some of the time. I currently live in New York, but I am a born and raised Californian so I understand the tyranny of Eastern Time very well, so don't worry West Coasters - I'm thinking of you guys too.

What Can I Ask?

Anything is fair game for now - general theory questions, questions about individual questions, macro questions about how to study/trajectory, questions about what hair products I use, etc. Feel free to DM me questions in advance as well. I can't promise I will get to all of them (don't take it personally!), but I will certainly do my best.

I am currently unsure how to handle the whole 'spoilers' issue (for example, a student has a question on PT60 S1 Q1, which another person hasn't gotten to yet), but I think that shouldn't stop me from just getting started. We might just have to tell some folks to deafen themselves temporarily if they don't want to get spoiled for now. In the future I may limit discussion in a specific session to a specific range of PrepTests or curriculum-only, or choose a specific topic to address in depth, or whatever else comes to mind to avoid this issue, but I still have to feel that out organically. Suggestions welcome.

Will This Be Recorded/Uploaded Somewhere?

No plans for recording at this time.

What Will This Cost Me?

Nothing but your time. Happy to help.

What If I Have Another Question?

Fire away! In this thread or in DM.

Hi everyone,

Just had a major last-minute rearrangement of my tutoring calendar, so I'm copying @canihazJD from a few weeks back and holding impromptu office hours to fill some time.

I'll be around until probably 5/5:30pm Eastern or so (or whenever I feel like stopping). I'll probably be fiddling a bit with my new phone and smartwatch, but I'm happy to talk LSAT while doing it. All are welcome, ask me anything.

Google Meet link (I don't have Zoom premium and don't feel like restarting the call every 40 minutes): DONE!

Lots of good questions and fun conversation. Thanks to everyone that came. I'll try to do this again sometime, hopefully without the last minute emergency cancellation to prompt it. Now go study!

Today, we have our first discussion about attitude. This is a rather sensitive topic, because nobody likes to be told that their attitude sucks, but the fact is that sometimes peoples’ attitudes suck and sometimes they don’t even realize it. I also tend to be very blunt when I talk about this stuff (could you tell from the prior sentence?). Nevertheless, I think that it’s an important topic worth discussing.

This first topic is a UNIVERSAL problem that happens up and down the scoring scale, so everyone stands to gain something here. My goal here is to get everyone to think about the mental barriers that may be impeding their progress, so try to remember that if something strikes a nerve. That being said, if I have to be the bad guy and ruffle some feathers to help people, then that is a price I’ll gladly pay.

Ready? Let’s go.

===========================

The #1 most important decision you make regarding your LSAT prep is not about what materials you use, or how much time you spend each day studying, or what your overall timeline will be. Nothing like that. Rather, the most important decision you can make is the decision to set aside your ego and embrace the likelihood that you are actually very bad at logical reasoning and reading comprehension.

That last line feels sort of like I’m insulting everyone who reads this, so perhaps I’d better explain where I’m coming from.

Let’s start by considering exactly why it’s so demoralizing when you don’t do well on your diagnostic. It can’t just be because you don’t have the skills – after all, you probably wouldn’t feel bad if someone pointed out that you didn’t know how to juggle chainsaws. It can’t just be the academic component either – you probably also wouldn’t feel too bad if you couldn’t solve a differential equation or write an academic analysis of Shakespeare’s work.

And yet, just about every single person thinks that they should be scoring better than they are.

Why?

My theory is that it’s because the LSAT is ‘just’ logic and English, and everyone thinks they’re experts at those things.

This is not a universal thing. You can tell the average person that they suck at calculus or chemistry and they’ll probably laugh and maybe even agree with you. But try telling someone they suck at reading comprehension or logical reasoning, and the reaction is wildly different and much more defensive. Math and science can be, and often are, rationalized away as over-technical mumbo-jumbo that is irrelevant to most peoples’ everyday lives, so it’s easy for people to separate their inability to do math/science from their ‘actual’ intelligence level. But reading comprehension and logic? Challenging those things feels to the other person like you’re directly challenging their intelligence, because pretty much everything we do on a day-to-day basis relies on one or both of those skills.

Fact is, everyone thinks their viewpoint makes sense and is arrived at rationally, because nobody considers themselves to be irrational or their reasoning poorly-considered. When’s the last time you heard someone say “My logical reasoning skills are terrible and it’s a big problem for anyone who has to work with me”? Now when’s the last time you heard someone excoriating someone ELSE for making no sense? In most cases, calling someone out for being illogical or being a poor reader is just one step away from straight up calling them stupid, so it’s really not hard to see why most people take so much personal offense to being challenged in this arena.

And yet, the proof is in the pudding. The LSAT is nothing but a mix of logic and reading comprehension. Not doing well on the LSAT demonstrates that one or both of those skill sets isn’t up to par, at least in the specific (and highly relevant!) context of understanding and responding to written argumentation. It’s understandable why people would be defensive about their skills, but that doesn’t make it justified.

Let’s be clear here. The LSAT is not the sum and substance of your worth as a candidate, or as a human being generally. The LSAT cannot tell me that you spend your weekends volunteering at the local homeless shelter, or that you have excellent leadership skills, or that you’re an incredible musician in your free time. But here’s the thing – it’s not designed to do any of those things. Despite its limitations, the test really does do a good job of testing a specific set of logical reasoning skills; just ask anyone who’s made a big score improvement how obvious the mistakes they were making before are to them in retrospect. The fact that there are other considerations relevant to whether a candidate will make for a good law student or lawyer doesn’t change that. Overemphasized as the LSAT may be in the admissions process, it is still a hugely relevant piece of information.

That being the case, it is imperative that our reflexive defense mechanisms don’t limit our learning potential. The most important thing to get out of your head is the notion that you ‘deserve’ a better score, because even if it were true (which it probably isn’t), it doesn’t help anything. Your score is largely the result of your skills, and if you’re dissatisfied with your score then there are clearly some things you need to work on. The test isn’t changing, and if your skills don’t improve then your score isn’t going to change either. This would be true even if the LSAT was based on truly arbitrary principles, but it’s especially true when the LSAT is based on actual logical precepts. You can either get defensive about not knowing how to do it, or you can do something about it. Only one of those things is going to make a difference in your chances of going to law school.

Your ego will take a huge hit in the short term as you make mistake after mistake, but that’s honestly how it should be. Every mistake you make is 100% on you, because sugarcoating your competence level only hurts yourself. You need to be your own biggest critic, and that means not being too prideful to admit when you’re bad at something. We’ll deal with the motivation issues this brings up another time.

Bottom line: the faster you let go of your pride, the faster you can get to the business of actually improving yourself, and the higher your score will rise as a result.

Hey folks,

I'm holding office hours again because it was fun last time (https://classic.7sage.com/discussion/#/discussion/28551/impromptu-office-hours-whos-on-their-grind-today-done) and I just got another late cancellation. While I could just take a half day and be happy, I'm not going to because I'm the kind of person who tutors the LSAT for a living (weird doesn't even begin to describe it). And this time, the schedule shift even came early enough that I can actually give ~15 hours of notice! Yay. Maybe next time, it'll be a full day in advance.

Anyway, I will hold open court from 4pm-6pm at least (the time and length of the original lesson I had planned). After that, we'll see how long I feel like sticking around/when I get hungry enough to wander off in search of dinner. As with last time, I might be fiddling with some random stuff or get distracted occasionally, but I'm happy to talk shop while doing it.

[Done!]

And, since last time I realized that nobody probably knows who I am or why anyone would care, I'll paste my tutor directory description here for reference:

"After graduating from Columbia Law in 2010, I've taught the LSAT both alongside and in parallel with JY as my full time employment and passion. JY and I gave LSAT seminars together up and down the east coast with PreProBono for a while, and I was around when 7Sage was just a figment of JY's imagination. I'm still the only person beside JY himself who's ever had an official instructional video up on the site. In addition to my private tutoring work, I'm PreProBono's senior instructor, a featured instructor for 7Sage, and run the LSAT department for a small test prep boutique in New York City as their lead tutor.

I've worked with students from all across the United States and also internationally, from a diverse set of countries including China, Korea, Qatar, France, Brazil, Canada, Turkey, and the Netherlands. My tutoring achievements include a 136-to-172 score jump, sending students to Harvard in 7 of my 9 years of tutoring (including one year where I sent three students to Harvard and four to NYU in the same cycle), and having students of mine attend every T14 except Stanford (because they're picky) and UVA (a lot of acceptances, but sadly no matriculations), many with substantial scholarships.

While I'm not egotistical enough to say I've seen it all, I know the LSAT inside and out and I'm confident I can help you out no matter what your situation is."

Of course, there's a perfectly reasonable argument to be made that you still shouldn't listen to me. I do swear quite a bit, after all (so if you have sensitive sensibilities, this might not be your jam). But I suppose the only way you'll find out for sure is to listen for yourself.

Hope to see some of you there!

***I love to write, and I also happen to have a little knowledge about the LSAT and law school admissions generally. With JY’s blessing, I have decided that I will scratch my writing itch on a semi-regular basis by posting long-form blog-style pieces on the forums. If you have a topic that you’d like to see me write about, feel free to PM me. And please, discuss the piece freely in the comments below, especially if you disagree – I love to hear other viewpoints and am happy to engage in respectful and reasoned discourse.

Not a lot of people know this about me, but once upon a time, I was a Dance Dance Revolution fiend.

I picked it up around the year 2000 or so, when DDR was just starting to make a splash in the US market. At first, I was obviously awful at it, but I was enamored so I stuck with it. Eventually, I managed to become a pretty good player, though I never quite made it into the top tier.

When I was still developing my skills, there was a song called “MAX 300” that I made it my mission to beat. At that time, it was one of the two ‘boss’ songs in the game - songs that even the best players could barely beat, never mind score well on. Nowadays it’s a joke, but back then nobody had ever seen anything like it. For reference, a video of the song being played (not me, in case that wasn’t clear):

Pay particular attention about 1:15 into the video as the song approaches its midpoint, starting with the appearance of green ‘freeze’ arrows (which require you to hold down the arrows in question). After 366 steps in about 45 seconds, the song seems to be giving you a reprieve – an 8-count to catch your breath and rest a bit before launching into the second half of the song. How nice of them, right?

Wrong.

For most people, it’s much easier to stay in “the zone” once you’re already there, as opposed to having to find it from scratch. When you’re in a state of full concentration, it’s easier to maintain your thought process as you make your way through the task at hand. In DDR, once you get in the rhythm of parsing the arrows and stomping the appropriate arrows, you can essentially go on autopilot and play almost unconsciously, just reading and reacting. MAX 300, as hard as it was, was essentially just a stamina test – no weird rhythms, no tricky step patterns, just a straight up challenge to see if you could keep up. And indeed, many fairly average players were able to do so, at least for a while.

But, when they gave you those precious seconds to rest, all of a sudden you had time to realize that your lungs and thighs are burning and you can’t quite stand up straight or see clearly anymore. And when the steps started up again, you simply didn’t have the energy to keep up anymore. So, while it superficially looked like a gift from above, that break was actually one of the harder parts of the song – not just for the actual physical difficulty of going from full speed to a full stop and immediately back to full speed again, but also for the sheer psychological toll it took on the player in doing so.

That’s what the break in the LSAT does to you. If you’re not careful, you will spend the entire 15 minutes dwelling on things that you did wrong in the first half of the test. You’ll suddenly remember that you didn’t get much sleep the night before, or remember that you’re actually incredibly nervous because this is your third attempt and you REALLY don’t want to wait another year for another bite at the apple. You’ll spot that despondent test-taker (there’s always at least one) who’s already contemplating canceling his score due to bombing the first half of the test, and that’ll start you questioning how well you’re doing. You’ll hear some guy talking about how he got two RC sections, and panic because you could have SWORN that your experimental was that unusually difficult LR section. No matter which one of these happens to you, you’re sunk. Your mental game is torpedoed, and there’s only one thing that happens from there.

What DDR players took to doing during this break was doing something – anything – to stay active and maintain the beat and not allow themselves to be psyched out by the structure of the song. Take a look at this video for an example, around 1:04:

He could take a break, and it would likely be well-deserved, but instead he’s making additional work for himself in order to avoid taking that break. This allows him to continue on after the pause without a hitch, because he never actually stops what he’s doing – he’s “in the zone” even when he’s not explicitly required to be.

Treat the LSAT the same way. Test day is one monolithic entity, from the moment you wake up to the moment you exit that testing room, and you must maintain your focus at all times. The break is not a time for you to relax – it is a test of your ability to remain focused. During your practice, make sure to simulate your breaks, because they are not optional and they have the potential to completely derail you if you’re not used to taking them. Eventually, you’ll get used to maintaining your focus through the break, or at the very least quickly picking back up where you left off once the break is over.

My suggestion for the break is to maintain a low-level state of readiness. What I mean by that is that you should focus on some concepts that you know like the back of your hand, and keep yourself LSAT-engaged by using those concepts to occupy your mind. Recite all of the LR questions types, or play with some conditional translations and make sure you can go between all four groups fluently, or go over your strategy for tackling a particular section you haven’t seen yet, or even just run your personal highlight reel (we’ll talk about this some other time) through your head over and over again. The name of the game is to make sure that you’re not headed into section 4 cold – that you “hit the ground walking”, as I like to say.

Oh, and make sure to seek out a local DDR machine and pump some quarters into it during one of your study breaks. 15 years and many mixes later, it’s still a ton of fun.

Link: will be posted here ~15 minutes before session start

Previous thread was getting a bit long in the tooth, so starting a new one! Face cameras are gently encouraged - it's a lot easier to have a conversation that way.

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Hi everyone! About a year ago, I decided it would be cool to run some office hours and help some folks out, and so far I think a bunch of people have gotten good stuff out of our discussions so I'm continuing to run them. If you've ever wanted to talk through an issue with a high-end tutor but couldn't afford top-end tutoring rates, here's your chance to get that perspective.

Who Am I/Why Should You Listen To Me?

I scored 175 on the September 2006 LSAT (-4 RC, -2 LR, -0 LG), graduated from Columbia Law School in 2010, spent a year on fellowship with a judge in Bronx Supreme Court Criminal Division while teaching LSAT on the side, and have been teaching the LSAT full time since September 2011. I worked with JY on PreProBono and in the early years of 7Sage, was a 7Sage "Approved Tutor" for the entire life of that categorization, and am the only person other than JY himself who has ever had an instructional video published on 7Sage's live site. I have also been the lead tutor and LSAT department chair of a high-end private tutoring boutique here in NYC. Some of my writing still resides in the "Sage Advice" section of this forum, so go check it out if you're interested.

Over the past decade-plus, I have amassed over 8,000 hours of combined classroom-based and one-on-one LSAT teaching experience, working with a diverse set of students from across the USA and all around the world - Canada, Brazil, Netherlands, England, France, Qatar, Korea, and China just to name a few. The best score increase I've ever achieved with a student is +36 (136 -> 172). I've sent students to every t14 school except for Stanford (my white whale! they rejected me back when I was applying too), as well a wide variety of other schools across the United States and Canada, including at least one student to Harvard in 12 of my 13 full years of doing this (as of April 2023).

If you listen to the 7Sage Podcast, you may have heard my name mentioned in episode #67 - Vanessa (138 -> 169) was my student.

How Can I Join?

I'll put up a video chat link above when the time comes, and take it down when we're done.

When Will These Be Happening?

I currently intend for this to be a weekly thing, but the timing will vary depending on the other moving pieces of my schedule. It's not likely that every time will work for everyone, but I will at least attempt to switch it up so that anyone interested can make it at least some of the time. I currently live in New York, but I am a born and raised Californian so I understand the tyranny of Eastern Time very well, so don't worry West Coasters - I'm thinking of you guys too.

What Can I Ask?

Anything is fair game - general theory questions, questions about individual questions, macro questions about how to study/study trajectory, questions about what hair products I use, etc. Feel free to DM me questions in advance as well.

"Spoilers" (questions from more recent tests that not everyone might have gotten to yet) will be handled on a case by case basis. Over the past year or so of running office hours almost every week, I haven't found them to be too much of an issue, so I won't attempt to handle a crisis that hasn't cropped up yet.

Will This Be Recorded/Uploaded Somewhere?

No plans for recording at this time.

What Will This Cost Me?

Nothing but your time. Happy to help.

What If I Have Another Question?

Fire away! In this thread or in DM.

So I was all ready to leave for my European vacation when I receive an email from the system telling me I have a private message on 7Sage. Hmm, what is this? Oh, it’s @nicole.hopkins suggesting an article topic? Grumble grumble. Whoa, it’s really been like a month since I’ve written one? Grumble grumble. FINE, I guess I’ll put something together. Don’t say I never did anything for you, Hopkins. Better watch your back.

OK, so. BURNOUT is the word of the day.

Cutting right to the chase - I recommend Burnout: Paradise. It’s a really sweet open-world driving game that’s held up surprisingly well over the years and…oh, not that kind of burnout? Darn.

How to tell you’re burning out:

The ideal learning attitude is for you to come into the whole thing expecting to make all kinds of awful, terrible mistakes that you have to spend hours upon hours cleaning up. When you just get started with a new task, that’s the high that accompanies it. “I’m going to get this”, you tell yourself. And for a time, you’re willing to roll with the punches and (assuming that you’ve put your ego aside, as we’ve discussed a few times previously) learn what needs to be learned without it affecting your mood too much. Frustrating as it may be, you work through your mistakes because you can feel yourself learning.

But like all ideal things, this cannot last forever, no matter how much you consciously try to maintain it. Usually, it starts when something doesn’t click right away or when you otherwise plateau, however temporarily. Don’t worry – nothing’s wrong with you. That just means you’re human (or a highly-realistic cyborg clone). It’s normal to get irritated sometimes when you feel like you’re not progressing (or even if you’re not progressing as fast as you feel like you should be, though that again has to do with the ego thing we talked about before). But that’s where it usually starts. Because here’s the thing – have you ever heard of someone burning out when they’re on a constant upward trajectory? Yeah, right. You show me a student who goes +1 scaled point every test, and I’ll show you a student who will never burn out.

Assuming you hit snags on your path like a normal person, you will eventually reach a low point where you dread studying because you’re sick of making mistakes and always having to struggle to find the right way to fix them, only to make what seems like negligible progress. Instead of properly analyzing the latest error you made, you just throw your hands up in frustration and complain about how ‘nobody writes like that’ (and since that’s one of my biggest pet peeves, I’ll state for the record – yes, they do. All the time, in fact, so you'd better get used to it). Mistakes make you increasingly more irritable, as you lament the fact that you made a sufficiency/necessity mistake, AGAIN. I mean, can they really just stop that? This test is so dumb sometimes.

Many times, this increased irritability and loathing results in avoiding studying, sort of like one avoids doing the laundry in favor of lounging on the couch catching up on back episodes of Pokemon (no? just me?). Go downstairs to put my laundry in the dryer? Maybe later, Ash is about to finally gain the trust of his Charmander! That scene always hits me right in the feels. Who cares about the laundry, anyway? Maybe I’m just not cut out for laundering.

That’s a state of burnout in a nutshell – the apathy, the excuse-making, the frustration finally boiling over. Which, if you’re a particularly nervous type, can even result in you panicking about not studying while simultaneously making excuses not to study. A pretty odd spot to be in, frankly, but it happens more than you might think.

Addressing the issue:

There are degrees of burnout. Small instances of burnout happen all the time, and usually just necessitate a bubble tea run to clear your head, or perhaps a quick trip to these discussion forums to bask in the schadenfreude of your similarly-suffering peers, or maybe just yelling a swear word at the top of your lungs and scaring the dog. Larger instances of burnout happen over a period of months, as your dedication continues to wane on a macro level. But the micro instances of burnout are instructive, because they suggest the solution for larger instances. Which is rather simple, in my opinion.

When you’re burned out, you need to take a break. Yes, you. Listen up:

Take.

A.

Break.

There’s no way around it. You are no longer in the mindset required to learn, and you need to get it back. Studying more isn’t going to help, because remember – you’re already no longer in the mindset required to learn. Which begs the question – if you’re not going to get anything out of it, why would studying more ever be the right call? It’s not. You have to take a break and recharge your batteries.

Q: But what if I don’t have time to take a break?

A: Yes, because you’re accomplishing so much more by forcing yourself to study when you clearly aren’t learning anything from the time spent.

Q: But the test is just two months away!

A: And?

Q: So I need to be studying all the time, right?

A: That’s not how it works.

Look, here’s the deal. If you aren’t getting anything out of studying, you might as well be banging your head against a brick wall. In the process your mood will continue to worsen, leading to further frustration, panic, or both. (Frus-panic? Pan-stration?) Whatever you call it, it’s bad. And, not only are you literally wasting your time studying with that kind of mental state, it can be actively detrimental to you because this is precisely the time where you are most vulnerable both to lapsing back into old (bad) habits and also creating brand new (bad) habits in your attempt to make things make sense again.

Never confuse the steps you take to get to a goal with the goal itself. Having a consistent schedule is important, but it is not the end goal – learning is. Studying consistently is merely a means to that end. When the circumstances change, you need to adapt. You would not go to the gym and try to do leg presses if you broke your ankle. Why are you trying to ‘go to the gym’ (study for the LSAT) with a ‘broken’ brain (a mindset that will not allow you to do what you need to be doing)?

The hardest part is actually giving yourself permission to take a break without feeling guilty. My suggestion – write yourself a contract. You are going to take 48, or 96, or 144 hours away from the test. During that time, you are expressly prohibited from opening an LSAT book, looking at an LSAT question, visiting 7Sage, or anything else. Use this time to remember what life was like before you put the weight of the world on your own shoulders all those months ago. Read a book, sit by the pool, go out with your friends. Give yourself permission to punch anyone who asks you about the test in the face, too. In exchange, when you come back, you promise to do 30 minutes of (X), where (X) is some combination of fundamental tasks like question stem drills or conditional translation exercises. Just 30 minutes, to get back on your feet. And then take it from there, one step at a time.

If your mental game is in shambles, no amount of LSAT mechanics will save you.The test will be there when you get back; you just need to be ready to tackle it. Do what you need to in order to preserve your state of mind.

Just like I'm going to do, right freakin' now. No LSAT for 10 days for me! Catch you suckers later!

Hi 7Sagers!

I'm Jonathan; or, as some folks at the NYC Overlook meetup called me, "the other guy". If you've watched any problem set explanation videos, some of those are mine; I have a bunch of videos in the full test explanations as well. I've also been popping into the forums a bit more often lately, as a few of you have noticed.

As you're all aware, the LSAT is hard. And while 7Sage is awesome, sometimes you might need additional help with a certain question or concept. I've worked closely with JY and 7Sage since the beginning, and I also happen to be a full-time LSAT tutor. Rather than clutter discussions with shameless self-promotion, we thought this announcement post would be the best way to inform you folks about how to go about getting private tutoring.

You can have a lesson with me from anywhere in the world via Skype or Google Hangout. Whether you want a someone to walk you through the entire process, or just someone to talk to for an hour or two about a couple of sticking points (or anything in between!), I'm your guy.

My standard tutoring rate is $250/hour. However, due to my excellent working relationship with JY and Alan, I'm giving a 10% discount (down to $225/hour) if you're enrolled in the 7Sage program! Just send me a study buddy request and some kind of proof that you've paid for the course (any tier).

You can see testimonials from my students here:

http://brightlinelsat.com/

If you decide that you'd like to receive some tutoring, don't post in this thread - drop me a line via the contact form on my website and we'll make it happen. Be sure to include your 7Sage name and any relevant information you'd like me to know. Please also feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns you may have.

See you guys around the forums, and happy studying!

I was always a pretty computer-savvy kid; growing up in the heart of the Silicon Valley with parents who run their own custom computer shop will do that to you. As a result of being around computers all the time, I was a pretty reasonable typist by the time I was 10 years old. Though I never actually measured, looking back I was probably capable of typing about 50-60 words per minute with my custom hunt-and-peck technique, which included the brilliant innovation of using both the index AND the middle finger on each hand to speed up the process. Four fingers instead of two, for twice the typing speed! Talk about revolutionary. Those silly 2-finger-using folks just couldn’t compete.

When I was in fifth grade, I was introduced to the devil herself. I refer, of course, to the one and only Mavis Beacon (if that is her real name), and her heretical “touch typing” teachings. Initially, I thought I’d like her. I figured that she’d maybe teach me a few new tricks to speed up even further, and otherwise just reinforce how great a typer I was. After all, how could I possibly have any difficulty with ‘learning’ typing? I was already pretty good – if anything, I figured it would just be some refinement of technique.

Instead, she told me to do some ridiculous stuff. She told me that I should use all ten of my fingers to type, which I thought was completely unnecessary since I was getting by perfectly fine with just four. Then, she told me that I wasn’t supposed to look at the keyboard while typing, which really convinced me that she was off her rocker. What do you mean I’m not allowed to look at the keyboard while typing? How am I supposed to see what I’m typing if I can’t look at the keys? And, maybe just as importantly, what’s the point? Was this lady seriously trying to tell me that the mere act of looking at what I was doing would somehow be detrimental?

I tried it her way. I really did. But as a direct result of taking Ms. Beacon’s advice, my typing speed plummeted and my accuracy suffered tremendously because I couldn’t see what keys I was hitting. I mean, duh, what did you think would happen when you told me not to look at the keyboard? And when I went back to the four-finger method, I was suddenly fast and accurate again! Needless to say, I was quite displeased with Ms. Beacon and her so-called “instruction”, and decided that she was a fraud.

When we conceptualize progression, typically we think about building off of a base that we’ve already established. We spend 20-some odd years (at least – shout out to the older crowd!) speaking the English language, arguing about various things with friends and family, getting As on our essay exams, and so forth. From that, it seems reasonable to think that our base should be pretty strong. This is further reinforced by the notion we discussed last time out that everyone thinks they’re perfectly logical. And indeed, you can often get a surprising amount of progress by bulling forward with poor fundamentals, which further adds to the illusion. In any case, our brain (reasonably) thinks that we’re X amount of distance down the road, so anything we add on top of it should push us even further down that road, right?

Wrong. Because sometimes, you’re just on the wrong road. The fact that the you’ve spent a long time on that road doesn’t mean it’s close – in fact, it’s probably just more infuriating when you realize that it’s not taking you where you want to be going, and you need to get off that path ASAP. If you’re halfway to Mexico and you need to be going to Canada, then minor course corrections really aren’t going to help much.

So how do you fix that? Well, the first thing you need to do is backtrack to where the initial error took place. In the process, you will ‘lose’ some ‘progress’ that you’ve made, and that’s terrifying. When people see their preptest scores stagnate or even drop, they inevitably scurry back to doing things the ‘old’ way – the way that has ‘worked’ for them so many times before - because they're scared to death of losing those few points they fought so hard for. That’s an understandable reaction. But if you continue to hold onto your old, unprincipled methods of tackling the LSAT, you can only ever get so far. You will hit walls just like everyone else, but you will never be able to get past yours. Why? Because unlike what it is for others, where it’s just an overgrown speedbump, yours is actually just the end of that particular road. For example, you can get reasonably far without any conception of formal logic, but eventually you won’t be able to fudge it anymore and your score literally cannot increase until you deal with the issue. In the process of backfilling the gaps, you will likely have to rethink a lot of the ‘tips and tricks’ you’ve picked up along the way because they no longer make sense within your new theoretical framework. And so, the ‘regression’ happens as one bad habit exposes another.

Dealing with these issues requires you to internalize things that you haven’t really ever thought about before, and that’s hard. Mistakes will be made, and it won’t feel good. It feels like you’re taking a step backward because your results are decreasing as you continue to backtrack through your shaky foundations. It’s really tempting at this point to just throw up your hands and say that the new ways just aren’t working, just like 10-year-old me did in his first go with touch typing. This is also the point that a lot of people end up with a new set of LSAT books (because their previous materials *obviously* weren't very good), only to be further disappointed when their new materials essentially tell them to do the same thing as their old materials. Sorry folks, there are only so many ways to teach someone how to identify a main conclusion.

One of the most important parts of the process is unlearning all of the awful bad habits you’ve gotten away with your entire life. In the process, a lot of things that previously seemed clear will suddenly get murkier. That’s normal. Your brain is undergoing a course correction and establishing new neural pathways, and there will inevitably be some transition pains. Your brain has had 20 years to build up lazy junk pathways, so of course it’s going to be more comfortable with those than the new ones you’re trying to implement. But as you continue to internalize those better processes, your performance will leap ahead of where it was previously. You just need to give those processes time to lock in properly.

So don’t fret if your test results aren’t shooting skyward as soon as you finish the curriculum. That’s normal, and it’s happened to a lot of people who ended up scoring very well (including me). Instead, focus on making sure you’re learning the theory properly and not taking shortcuts, because if you cheat you’ll pay for it later. And, make sure that you stay mentally strong and resist the urge to lapse back into your old habits. As I sit here 20 years later, able to type 110 words per minute on my awful laptop keyboard and almost 140 on my good mechanical keyboard, I am incredibly thankful that I stuck with it and learned how to touch type. My short-term loss turned into a huge long-term gain, all because I gave it time to click.

Thanks, Mavis.

***I love to write, and I also happen to have a little knowledge about the LSAT and law school admissions generally. With JY’s blessing, I have decided that I will scratch my writing itch on a semi-regular basis by posting long-form blog-style pieces on the forums. If you have a topic that you’d like to see me write about, feel free to PM me. And please, discuss the piece freely in the comments below, especially if you disagree – I love to hear other viewpoints and am happy to engage in respectful and reasoned discourse.

My personal philosophy has always been that fundamentals are paramount because they set the groundwork for true understanding, and true understanding is a foolproof way to do well on anything. Some methods out there eschew a deep discussion of formal logic in favor of more ‘holistic’ approaches, relying on the student to supply their experience with the English language instead. I don’t buy it, and here’s why.

First - if the LSAT gave us everything in “if…then” terms, then I would absolutely agree that formal logic would be mostly unnecessary because everyone understands the “if…then” construction on a very basic level. There would still be some purely logical issues that would need to be addressed (for example, thinking that “if A then B” is equivalent to “if not A then not B”), but those could at least theoretically be addressed without resorting to formal logic mapping. Unfortunately, the LSAC is not so accommodating. Semantics plays a huge role on the LSAT, so we can’t just ignore it as if we lived in some idealized world where “if…then” is the only game in town.

Next - if people were naturally proficient at identifying equivalence between statements, I would also agree that learning formal logic would be mostly unnecessary. But unfortunately, that’s not the case either. The number of students who complain that certain arrangements of conditional statement are ‘convoluted’ or ‘complicated’ speaks to the sheer difficulty of that level of translational proficiency for even the most clued-in students, to say nothing of the average person. Sometimes, even a simple reordering of words can be enough to throw the most astute of students. If you’ve ever missed a conditional indicator because it was in the middle of a sentence, then you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Finally – if there were an easier way to give the required background than what currently exists, then I’d embrace that wholeheartedly. Unfortunately, when we’ve got a conditional (if-then) statement, we need an “if” side (sufficient), a “then” side (necessary), and a way to express the relationship between the two (the arrow). I’m really not seeing how this can be made any simpler.

I take a lot of pride in my ability to teach formal logic, but believe me – I would not teach formal logic at all if I could help it. It is one of the least fun parts of the curriculum for the student, and is very difficult to teach well. It took me years to get even reasonably proficient at conveying the concepts. In addition, once learned, most students go through a phase where they try to translate literally every statement into conditional logic, which I then need to scale back, causing more suffering for everyone. I teach it not because I want to, but because I have to.

Formal logic is not an end unto itself. It is not something where as soon as you learn it, you can go crush the LSAT by mapping everything out. Rather, it is the means – the fundamental first step toward actual comprehension of what’s going on. That comprehension facilitates the application of logic to the facts at hand, because now we’re clear about what the facts actually are. This critically important piece is often overlooked – it doesn’t matter how good your logical skills are if you don’t understand the facts correctly, and screwing up the relationship between two elements is one of the surest ways to screw up the facts.

This is why it always amuses me when people ask whether they have to use formal logic in a question if they can ‘just see it’ (or whatever variation of that metaphor they prefer). That’s actually the entire point. Being able to ‘just see it’ means that you’ve already unconsciously used and understood the formal logic – you just don’t perceive it because the translation is already automatic for you. It’s akin to ‘seeing’ the answer to 2+2: it may be automatic for you now, but there was a time where you had to count it out. That you don’t have to count it out now doesn’t mean that you don’t need to know how it works – in fact, it is precisely because you’ve learned how it works that allows you to avoid counting it out. And if you've ever misinterpreted something even though you thought you could "just see it", that's not just some minor mistake - that's a gaping hole in your logical reasoning instincts because that suggests you've internalized faulty fundamentals. It's the equivalent of going through life thinking 2+2 is 5; what you "just see" winds up being confusing at best, and flat-out wrong at worst. How do you fix that? By going back and learning how it actually works.

When you learn formal logic, it’s important to understand why it works the way it does. A lot of methods just teach formal logic as a series of trigger words and rules to memorize, and in that light it’s entirely understandable why there’s so much animosity toward it. In addition to it being remarkably difficult to apply rules we don’t understand, it also just feels arbitrary – like it’s something the LSAC is forcing you to learn just because. Who wouldn’t get frustrated in that situation?

Conversely, when you understand WHY it works the way it does, several things happen. First, you can ‘prove’ to yourself that the theory itself is sound, which (although it sounds dumb) is an important part of internalizing it. Second, you start to synthesize your existing intuition with the explicit underlying mechanics, allowing you to have principled bases for adjusting your intuition. And finally, because you understand the theory and aren’t just memorizing rules, it becomes much easier to apply the rules appropriately in a wide variety of situations. If you don’t understand why things work the way they do, then you’re forever bound to memorizing lists of words and hoping that no variations show up (though even if you do understand the theory, you’ll still have to memorize some words – sadly, there’s no avoiding that).

So, don’t think about formal logic as just sufficients and necessaries, arrows and slashes, contrapositives and other seemingly-arbitrary rules to follow. That approach misses the mark entirely. The only way you’ll ever be able to consistently parse out complicated sentences is if you have a firm grasp on the underlying mechanics, and you can only have a firm grasp on a set of mechanics if you understand the theory behind it. Formal logic is one of the most important elements of the LSAT, so prioritize accordingly.

Bonus points for those of you who unconsciously translated that last bit into formal logic.

***Some background here before we start. I love to write, and I don't get to do it enough. I also happen to have a little knowledge about the LSAT and law school admissions generally. With JY’s blessing, I have decide that I will scratch my writing itch on a semi-regular basis by posting long-form blog-style pieces on the forums. For those of you who have the patience to read the huge post that follows, I hope you find it helpful! If you have a topic that you’d like to see me write about, feel free to PM me. And please, discuss the piece freely in the comments below, especially if you disagree – I love to hear other viewpoints and am happy to engage in respectful and reasoned discourse.

I took a linear algebra class in my third year of college.

For those of you who are backing away from me slowly like I’m some kind of alien, relax. It was a required class to ‘upgrade’ my in-progress B.A. in Economics (my second major) into an in-progress B.S. in something known as “Management Science” (a.k.a. “sorry, we don’t actually have an undergrad business major at UC San Diego, so take this thing instead and have fun explaining it to people for the rest of your life").

Well, despite my lack of enthusiasm for math-related things, I actually did pretty well. Actually, enough with the false modesty. I crushed Math 20F. I ANNHILATED it. I studied like a dog for that class, and I earned a solid A competing with a class full of legitimate engineers and hard science majors. And as a result, I couldn’t forget some of that stuff if I tried. If you give me an hour, my old textbook, and some leeway to swear loudly and rapidly, I would probably be able to do 99% of the things we covered in that class right this instant. I’d be rusty, but it’d all come rushing back before too long. I am firmly, and probably forever will be, in the “I know how to do this” camp.

That said, let’s say you had to take a linear algebra exam right this instant, in test conditions similar to your standard college math class testing environment, and if you failed it you’d be forced to listen to Nickelback for 96 hours straight. BUT, you’re allowed a ringer – someone to take the test for you. Knowing what you know about my linear algebra background, would you trust me to take it for you?

No?

Ladies and gentlemen - that, right there, is the difference between knowledge and mastery.

I’ve taken on a lot of what I call “brush-up” students in my time as a tutor – people who have prepped previously and come to me seeking further refinement of their skillset. And no matter where they are on the scoring scale at that particular moment, there is one phrase that inevitably sees the light of day:

“I know how to do everything. I just have (insert issue here)”

Timing is the most common one, but the reasons really run the gamut. Point is, there’s always something holding back the student, and it never seems to be their knowledge. And you know what? They’re usually right. Now let’s be clear - nobody I’ve ever worked with has ever had perfect theoretical knowledge of the test. But, that’s never stopped anyone from missing questions that they really should not have missed given their level of theory knowledge. So it’s not their knowledge that’s holding them back (or at least, not JUST their knowledge). It’s their MASTERY of what knowledge they do have, or lack thereof.

See, here’s the thing about the LSAT. It’s not just a skills test. It’s not much of a knowledge test either. And actually, if you looked at a bunch of 165-168 scorers and compared them to a bunch of 172-175 scorers, I don’t think you’d see all that much difference from a theoretical knowledge perspective. To score past the mid-160s, you simply have to know certain things – how to translate conditional statements, what your valid argument forms are, common methods of reasoning and flawed methods of reasoning to watch out for, how to tackle the various different question types, and so on. And to a large extent, you need to be fluent in them (i.e., no wracking your brain for 5 minutes before “A some B -> C = A some C” comes out; heck, even 5 seconds is probably a few seconds too long).

The difference is in the details - in how fast the 173+ kids are at breaking apart arguments and identifying methods of reasoning; in how razor sharp their instincts are, allowing them zero in on the relevant issues quickly despite unfamiliar context; in how seamlessly and effortlessly theory is invoked at the appropriate time, every time. It’s like magic – the theory just appears when it’s needed, and is tucked safely out of mind when it’s not, ready to be invoked again on a moment’s notice. These kids always seem to look at the right rules in LG, to find the right sentence to refer to in RC, and generally are just humongous walking jealousy magnets. Hell, I’ve been jealous of some of my more advanced students – I couldn’t do some of what they’re capable of when I was taking this thing. And you ask yourself – HOW? How can I be like them? (Pro tip: it's not sacrificing goats. Not that I would know anything about that. Uhh, moving on.)

It’s not that these kids have perfect LSAT knowledge – usually far from it. But, they apply their valid argument forms like you would answer 2+2. They translate conditional statements across groups like you would count to 10. They can give examples of common flawed methods of reasoning in their sleep (and probably do so on a semi-regular basis). And it’s all done with meticulous attention to detail, utterly consistently, almost instinctively. That’s what it means to be a master of a concept. Now, you don’t have to be a master at everything to score decently - most people aren't - but you do need to be a master at SOME things. Those "some" things are usually the core fundamentals. And when you can rattle off ten different phrasings of an A -> B statement off the top of your head; when you can recite the 9 valid and 7 invalid argument forms by heart and articulate the reasoning when pressed; when you reach the point where you will never ever screw up a contrapositive again - when you can do those things, you're on your way.

Put another way - a lot of people are probably capable of doing something right, whatever it may be. But only a select few people in any context are good enough at something that they are literally incapable of doing it wrong. Which camp are you in? And which camp do you expect to see populating the top 1% of an already self-selected sample?

So the next time you hit a wall and get frustrated with your (lack of) progress, ask yourself whether you would really trust yourself to be able to articulate 100 questions worth of LSAT logic if Nickelback torture was the price of failure. With stakes that high, the answer will almost always be ‘no’, but that’s okay. Find out what you’re unsure of, and work on it. Don’t stop until you can do the basics in your sleep, even if it does take some loud swearing and possibly kicking your little brother in the shins in the meanwhile (blame it on me if you need to, I can take the hit). And then, once you’re done with one thing, move on to the next. Slow and steady really, truly does win the race.

Take the time to truly master the basics and you will be rewarded.

One week before test day! Here are three things to do and three things to avoid in the lead-up.

DO:

Scout out your test site – Even if you don’t know exactly what room you’re going to take your test in, don’t throw up your hands and skip this! There are a lot of different things you can scout out on test day, assuming you know at least the general location they’re going to put you in. Your mileage may vary, but if at all possible you want to get in there and poke around a bit. A (non-exhaustive) list of things you can do:

• Look into the classrooms. Are they full of student desks with those fold-up half-tables, or are you getting long desks? Classroom layouts within the same building generally follow a similar pattern, so look and see if there are clocks inside the rooms and, assuming you’ll be oriented toward the front of the room, whether you can see them easily. Are the seats bolted down? How closely packed are they? Decent lighting?

• Check for bathrooms. Does each floor have both a men’s and a women’s bathroom, or perhaps they alternate between floors? I suggest looking for two bathrooms so that you don’t have to wait in case there’s a line. You can maybe even get away from everyone and clear your head a bit while heading over to your backup.

• Find multiple parking lots, if applicable. Recognize that there will be a lot of people there on test day, and if you can’t find a parking spot it’ll throw a wrench into the whole works. For large university campuses and other such spaces this shouldn’t be a problem, but better safe than sorry.

• Get a sense of the traffic at that time of day. The last thing you need is to have entirely-predictable traffic gumming up the works on your big day. This might be difficult for folks who have full-time jobs, but you students out there have no excuses.

Get all of your logistics ready – Do you have your pencils? Passport photo? Plastic baggie? Lucky jeans? Adult diapers, if you’re going that path? (Just kidding – please don’t go that path). Don’t wait until Sunday; get it all done ahead of time. Especially true for things that you can’t just drop into a drug store on Sunday evening to pick up (i.e. get your passport photos taken right this instant). Think about how you’re going to keep yourself occupied while the test proctor deals with the people who didn’t realize they had to bring their own pencils or know their own social security numbers (there’s always at least one). Also, pick the questions you’re going to do for your Monday morning warmup ahead of time – no scrambling day-of allowed.

Fix your sleep schedule and set your routine – June takers obviously get a bit more leeway on this, as the test doesn’t start until afternoon. Still, the last thing you want to be doing on the day of the test is deciding what to have for breakfast, whether to go for a jog, where you should be doing your warmup questions, and so forth. If you haven’t already, nail down a routine that will allow you to be ready to go at 1pm. In particular, it’s important to avoid the ~2pm food coma – figure out how much food you can have at lunch such that you have enough energy to get through the test without putting you on the brink of mid-afternoon naptime. On test day, it should be pure robotic execution.

DON’T:

Attempt to Cram – Cramming for the LSAT makes about as much sense as cramming for the Tour de France. At this point, if your skills aren’t up to par, they’re not going to be by the time next Monday rolls around. There really aren’t that many things you have to memorize, and all of those things should be completely burned into your brain by this point anyway. Even if you learn an extra thing, it’s just as likely to hurt you as help you – it won’t be integrated into your thought process so it’s not likely to be principled or well thought-out when applied to a question, and it might even introduce confusion. If your skills aren’t there, the solution is not to cram – the solution is to take in October. I typically tell people to shut the books between 48 and 72 hours before test day (in other words, if you’re taking on Monday, stop studying on Friday, or Saturday at the latest). Spend the last few days relaxing, scouting out your test site, and getting into a good mindset.

Take a PT in the last few days – What’s the point? This is all downside and zero upside. If you do about as well as normal, then nothing changes – I accept that maybe it’ll be a minor morale boost in the best case, but it’s certainly not going to be a significant one. If you do better than normal, you’ll wonder if it’s a fluke, and you certainly should know by now not to put too much stock in fluctuations that you can’t replicate. You have no time to even attempt to replicate it, so it’s functionally worthless. Meanwhile, if you do poorly, you risk completely ruining your confidence and mind frame. I’ve seen the doom spiral too many times to count – people get one subpar mark, freak out because it’s so close to the test, take more tests in a desperate attempt to validate themselves again (usually failing because, well, if you’re in that mindset you’re way too tilted to do your best), and wind up scoring way worse on test day for no real reason other than that they took a meaningless practice test way too late in the game. Remember that full-length practice tests are taken for the purpose of giving you a benchmark for how you performed at a particular point in time. Does that benchmark really matter anymore 7 days before the test? You should know what you’re capable of at that point. If you don’t know, then you haven’t practiced enough.

If you insist on studying until the bitter end, then don’t take a practice test – review things you’ve already done instead (it’s much more helpful). If you’re going to take one last practice test, take it early in the week and score it by Wednesday or Thursday at the latest, and then DON’T DO ANOTHER ONE. And if you absolutely positively insist on risking your state of mind for no good reason at all, then for the love of the flying spaghetti monster do not score that last test. In my opinion, if you’re looking at an answer key at any point in the last 72 or so hours before your test, you’re doing it wrong.

Freak Out – Take a deep breath. Look over your previous practice test results, and understand that you are perfectly capable of scoring just as well on the real deal as you did on those. To you, this is the June 2015 LSAT, and it’s understandable that you’re stressing it and putting a ton of mystique around it. But at about 4pm on June 8, 2015, the test will be nothing more than PrepTest 75 - just a number like all of its brothers before it, a tool for September 2015 takers to use as practice. Heck, for those of us who work with the test for a living, it’s already just PrepTest 75, and we eagerly await its release. There is nothing special about this test. It’s exactly the same as all the PrepTests you took before it. Don’t let it psyche you out.

I don’t wish any of my students good luck on the LSAT, because luck has nothing to do with it. Stay calm and focused, apply what you’ve learned, and you’ll be just fine.