Best of luck to everyone! I'm so nervous I keep walking in circles :D If you're giving away the quasi-stockholm feeling @3993 I'm first in line!

The only shitty chart game was PT 28 Game 2 I think. The one with the languages, Rundi, Swahili etc. The first inference was more than a bit hidden. Made me feel clever after I got it though :D

Hey!

So lemme give a second shot at this. I think the term variables was a bit vague. In an in/out grouping game, you'll probably be given only one set of game pieces, suppose it's people and they can tell you:

a) you have two committees, plants and trails, and each committee has three people in it. So you would have to distribute those people (game pieces) into these committees (groups) according to the rules.

b) they can say we have these 7 singers (game pieces) and we are going to select 5. So the 5 will be in the in-group.

In this sense it is only one set of game pieces that you are distributing into an in and out group.

I get where the confusion comes in. With a.m. and p.m. you could also conceivably think of them as groups, with the only one set of game pieces (e.g. teachers Q, X, V, Z) given to be distributed in the a.m. and p.m. slot. The only thing I can say is if only a.m. and p.m. is given it will generally always be a dbl layer sq game.

So dbl layer sq games can also be of two types.

One is where they will say you have nurses: X, Y, Z and doctors: A, B, C all working from Monday to Wednesday. You have one doctor and one nurse working every day, so that's your two sets of distinct game pieces there.

OR you can have one set of game pieces as with some a.m. and p.m games. Another example is you have one editor and one publisher each going through one variable set that is books: D, E, F. In these types of games you will always have sequencing rules, and an order given in the stimulus and rules. For e.g. They can say the publisher edits D before the editor edits F. So you will Know that the editor and publisher are not groups. In a pure in/out grouping game there is no sequence or order. There are hybrids that are becoming common but once you master in out and dbl layer sq you will understand the hybrids easily.

By two sets of variables what I meant was even is if you have only one set of game pieces, you can treat them as two sets of variables based on whether they they end in the bottom sq row or the top one. But that was a rather unclear way to put it!

Let me know if this makes it more clear!

Happy to help! :D

YES. :D

Yeah the new tests are different definitely, LR can be more subtle, they sometimes throw in wacky games and if they feel horrible you might get a tough RC.

But the skills are all the same. So it's still about practice

I'd say BR, and really figuring out which are your weak spots. If it's games, then you will be golden cuz you can literally get a -0 just by insane amounts of practice.

If it's LR then it's about drilling question types you get wrong most often and figuring out the questions you do get wrong completely.

RC can be a tiny bit tougher, depends on your reading strength, but there are great threads on here to improve RC.

The best part is you have scored 164 before and you're scoring in the 160's so it's not a massive jump, more about practicing till you get those few points caught on a consistent basis. And you have a good amount of time as well.

Here is a discussion that may help:

https://classic.7sage.com/discussion/#/discussion/112

I've found looking to a) rules and b) standard acceptable situation questions helps too.

So with rules, in double layer sq games you'll generally have some sort of order mentioned in the stimulus, (e.g. days of the week)

You also will explicitly or non-explicitly be given two sets of variables. Explicitly would be something like two shifts per day, a.m. and p.m. While non explicit could say items on Thursday and Friday are not recorded. This would lead you to making a double layer making sure that you put /R on top of the Thursday and Friday slot.

If you are given a standard acceptable situation question, (generally the first question in the game) a double layer sq game might look like this in an answer choice:

a.m.: _ _ _ _ _

p.m.: _ _ _ _ _

an in/out game standard acceptable situation question Could look similar, but you'll generally notice it is groups they are talking about. And a lot of in/out games will say in their first question here's group 1, can X,Y, Z be in group 1 or not?

In out games also generally have not both rules ( A --> /B) which are NOT present in dbl layer sq games.

Lastly, the more you practice that more easily you'll be able to distinguish between groups and two sets of variables. Literally most of the games on the LSAT are repeated versions of each other (besides the wacky curve ball ones).

Hope this helps somewhat!

Thank you all for the amazing advice! :)

@jclaridge202 I completely agree with you, earlier PT's it was easier to go with your gut and have the right AC pop out at you. I shall definitely try this week to go in deep and figure out what was behind the questions I got wrong! Literally it's about getting stuck between two really attractive AC's and choosing the wrong one...

@jclaridge202 This is really great advice, the flavor of the later 70's is weirdly different, I always tend to get the Evaluate and Disagree types wrong, I guess because of lack of familiarity! I shall go diving into that 70's morass :D

@pcoelho113 you have given me hope to hit a 168. Fingers crossed!!

Best of luck to all you wonderful people giving it September. May the curve be ever in our favor.

Do you guys have any tips on how to prep more for LR?

I'm taking it in September. Kinda love the diagnosis to take a break :D

Fingers crossed and get lots of fluids!

You know it's rather surprising how much being in a crappy place tends to affect your PT score. My personal experience is days you don't really want to do the test, the score kinda suffers cuz the concentration isn't there.

The best part is this Won't happen on test day. The reason being we'll all be hopped up on adrenaline and concentration will be amazing. So! I think you'll actually do as well as you were doing before. Maybe even better.

Chin up soldier XD

Just an update... I have come back to the 165 - 168 range in the later 70's i.e. PT 74, 76, 77, 78. So I no longer know what to think :/ (skipped 75 for December just in case I need it)

@jinadarcy0610262, replying this late may be really weird but I didn't see the notification for some reason! I did do Prep tests in the 40's as well, and my score during those was anywhere from 160 - 165, so I didn't really expect what happened in early 70's!

Thank you! Fingers crossed the streak continues :)

My RC is normally okay-ish ( -3 to -4) except for Pt 71 where I ended up with a -8 but lucked out on the other sections. LG is my weak spot but the games have been easier I feel, except for the curve ball ones like you said :) LR has been kinder to me as well where my - 5 average went to a -3. The problem is I feel I didn't do anything different, and certainly the same amount of review, it was entering these later prep tests that changed my score. But correlation isn't causation so :D

I would think that one would end up forgetting the questions or miss important details in the passage just because I was trying to focus on both the passage and the questions! Cant get Right is correct as well though, because you know for a fact that you are going to get a What is the Main point of the passage question, might get a what function does a certain paragraph play, and author's tone questions. So as long as you read keeping these things in mind you should be good :)

Thank you!

On the subject of difficult games, PT 36 Game 3 really takes ones breath away lol. The problem with difficult games is that you end up being rattled for other games that might not be so difficult. Fingers crossed enough practice takes that away.

Thank you very much! That was a really detailed answer :) Yeah I believe it really depends on what you're good at and whether or not you choke on test day. I was hoping against hope that there would be similarities that people would know of, since doing some june/oct preptests from earlier you tend to see similar sounding questions almost and games that will be harder for june and easier for september of the same year, but you're right I haven't seen anything consistent.

I'd love to have an answer for this as well! For PT's in the 40's and early 50's I was getting max -3 wrong. For the later 50's I think the questions are getting trickier... and I've managed a -7 so far :O. How does one manage these trickier questions...

Thanks for the question and the info - I am also looking to do similarly! Best of luck :)