Hi. I hired a LSAT tutor from an agency in Shanghai and they are pretty good. It is on the pricier side but I thought it was worth it. PM me if you want the name.

I am interested! Im having trouble with my PS's ending but already have it 90% complete

Your struggle to perform under timed conditions is a big reason why you should take at least one timed PT per week. I would say execution is as important as logic skills. There is no point in knowing how to do a question but not being able to do them to the full extent of your ability because you are running out of time. Depending on your other commitments, I would take at least one full PT per week and could go up to two or three if you have the capacity. Yes, analyzing the ones you missed and seeing improvements is important but stamina gained through repeatedly taking the test as important IMO. Good luck!!!

It sounds like to me you are experiencing fatigue. How often do you study? I second the other comment that every time I force myself to take breaks, I end up scoring higher. The process may be difficult since you would be constantly thinking if the break will keep you from reaching your goal score. From my experience taking the LSAT four times (lol), it will not and a proper break will actually bring you closer to your goal. I took a short two day trip with my friends when I was getting slow in my PTs. When I look back, I think that break healed me so much.

Another advice since you mentioned you usually have a comfortable amount of time left is to intentionally slow down. Slowing down (like with 2-3 minutes left in the section once I finish all questions) helped me break 165. It will be nerve wracking at first because there is a constant fear of not being able to finish the section but at the end of the day, it gives you more space to evaluate before you pick an AC. May not be the best thing to try now since you say you are running out of time but something to consider. You can do it!! Good luck!!

I think it absolutely could work if you articulate well how you reflect on the story and whether you took any actions etc. etc. A general rule that I stand by is that it is better be authentic or honest about Why Law for you than trying to fit into some boxes. So I second the other comment that it should still be about you. If you spent 80% talking about the story and simply say "this is why I want to study law", it's not going to work very well. But focusing on the details, how you acted when the events happened and what part of it motivated you could absolutely turn it from "other person's story" to "my account and experience of other person's story and how it changed my life".

I also started again in May since my application results this cycle were not great. I spent about a month rewatching/doing the 7 sage curriculum. This time I treated it as the main studying approach rather than a supplement like I did last year. Once I concentrated on the content more, I start to realize the curriculum contain a lot of good information. This got me out of the 150s. Hope this helps and good luck on your journey! Feel free to reach out if you have any questions.

Hi! I am so sorry this happened to you. My initial reaction is that it maybe more of an issue with execution rather than content, especially if you are blind reviewing 175+ (guessing). How often are you currently taking prep tests? How do you feel before, during and after?

I picked up LSAT again back in May since my applications were looking bleak and took August. A main issue I had consistently was not sure how to manage my energy, fatigue and eventually terrible sec 3 and 4 performance. I would start shaking in the middle of a section due to low blood sugar bc I didn't eat enough or literally felt like my brain disconnected and nothing made sense. After a prep test, I would have to take the entire day off doing nothing to recover from the two and a half hour torture.

Something that helped me:

Take as many prep tests and as often as you could (preface by saying that don't burn fresh prep tests doing this, use ones you have done before or not brand new tests). I know this is contrary to a lot of suggestions online in which they usually suggest taking no more than 2 a week. Towards the end of my prep, I started taking one prep test per day and this trained my brain to be comfortable with intensely concentrating for almost three hours. Also treat the process as a REAL test. Eat a proper breakfast, get dressed, pack your bags etc. Ideally, find somewhere new, like a study room or a new building where there are small amount of noises but you still get your own space to work. During each prep test, focus on how you feel and how to deal with those feelings. Like how does coffee or tea makes you feel, how does lack of sleep or good sleep makes you feel, how does a very tight noice canceling headphones makes you feel (happened to me on test day). Once you accumulate enough simulations of the test, you start to develop a routine that works best for your and feel more confident with dealing with surprise situations on test day. It also expands mental capacity so you would have more brain power to focus on each individual questions. Reviews are very important definitely but the main goal should be get yourself comfortable with the execution of the test itself.

This is a very painful process and it may not work for everyone. I hope his helps and good luck on your journey! Feel free to reach out if you have any questions:)))

I second others in the comments that 170+ eventually is not impossible but requires significant effort. A 45 points increase by Oct. feels to me honestly unobtainable.

For context, English is not my first language and I get my RC from -13 initially to around -2/-3 pretty consistently . For RC, if you are getting almost all of the questions of passages wrong, it means that you didn't actually understand what the authors are trying to say. Especially because RC tests you on very specific things (i.e. the correct AC could literally be from a SINGULAR sentence or word), the ability to understand the thesis and tone of the passages on a boarder level is step one to increase RC performance.

An exercise that helped me is: sit down with a RC passage and start reading each sentence one by one. After you read one sentence, write down what you think the role of that sentence is, make sure you understand what it is trying to say and then move on to the next. With every sentence think about how it connects to the previous or the next sentence and why it exists in the passage. After repeating this for the entire passage, write down a one-sentence summary of each paragraph (I never really understood how to do low-res as 7sage suggested...), the role of each para. and the main point. If there are multiple voices, try to single out each one of them and restate what they said with your own words. This is not as time consuming as it looks (takes me about 15-20 minutes for each passage) but it helped me SO MUCH. After doing this for several passages, I start to see repeated structures and writing patterns that makes RC easier to digest. It also trained my attention span and made me comfortable reading hard subjects for long period of time. Since I cultivated the ability to read for meaning slowly, then I was able to read faster and faster maintaining the same level of accuracy.

Another advice is to just read widely! Novels, articles, news what have you to shape your mind into a mode to automatically dissect and digest once it sees words.

I hope this helps! Good luck on your journey:))) Feel free to chat if you have any questions.

Would A be a necessary assumption?

If the first sentence of the stim says "... and undoubtedly brought A new disease with them" instead of "diseases", would the flaw be circular reasoning?

I initially thought the flaw is circular reasoning since the premise basically repeats the conclusion but missed out on the plural.

Interested! registered for the January lsat :))