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working fulltime as a brief writer while trying to prepare for the LSAT. no accoms. UK degree.
if you're contacting to me about a PS review, please wait! a lot of people have asked me and right now i'm focusing on my LSAT prep. i will be happy to help afterwards :)
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that is above or at the median of literally every school. the ones where higher would matter for aid are need based. it may just come off as neurotic
Congratulations!! Also, do you write? Just this post was so delightful to read :) Good luck on the rest of your application!
Thank you soso much! I'm going out for dinner and a movie today to celebrate :D Good luck with your own application!
The 7sage cheat sheet tells you what strategies to take: https://7sage.com/lessons/logical-reasoning/introduction-to-logical-reasoning/logical-reasoning-cheat-sheet
My own explanation is this:
You need to think of what the answer could be like while reading the stim.
There's certain questions that you CAN predict an answer for (flaw, argument part, agree/disagree, must be true, fill in the blank, evaluate, SOME sufficient assumptions, parallel, parallel flaw, main conclusion)
There's certain questions you can't predict an answer for because there's too many possibilites (weaken, strengthen, necessary assumption, RRE, harder flaw questions etc)
This way when you read the question, you automatically know whether or not you need to hunt or POE, which saves you time.
Three VERY IMPORTANT caveats:
Do not get attached to the answer you formulated in your head if you're hunting. The worst thing you can do is twist the answer to match the answer in your head, even though it's not saying that. Some trick answers are designed to sound like the right answer you might immediately think of (a lot of flaw questions are like this, which is why they're in both categories. if the stim seems like it has multiple flaws, its better to POE)
If you can tell it's going to be hard, even if its in the first category of questions, it's helpful to POE just to be sure.
You should be thinking what the answer can be like during the second category of questions too, just to train your mind
I see your skill ceiling is high so this stuff is really important when you're closing the gap bw BR and timed, because it's basically a time management strategy.
From a 164 diagnostic, 154 downslide once I started studying, 169 jan lsat... I GOT A 177!!!!!!
I genuinely would not have gotten this score without 7sage and their generous program for those with fee waviers, I'm literally emotional thinking about it. I signed up for 7sage after my third surgery due to a work related injury that wiped out all my savings and ruined my plans of leaving a toxic housing situation. I was buying used prep books from 2017 because it was all I could afford at the time until I found out about 7sage from a coworker.
I'm so thankful to this platform, its resources, style of teaching, classes, community, podcasts and all the passion driving this team to prepare generations of lawyers in getting to their dream schools!!!
If i could give advice to anyone:
take weeks off between studying to relax. my score always improved after a week off. make sure you've eaten and slept properly before prep tests
understand how negations work i cannot tell you how important this is, it was the biggest thing that made me jump because NAs were kicking my ass.
learn where to hunt and where to POE
religously apply the tests to question types.
read questions and stims slower = saving time on finding answer
in RC, you should always be looking back and forth, not answering from memory. even if its for a few seconds
READ, READ, READ!! i reccommend magazines like "the baffler" and "the london review" and books on nature writing the most. i've personally found them to train that same brain muscle for RC, and the sept LSAT legit had a passage on something i was very familiar with because of my reading habit so i'm glad for it.
Ahh, I'm applying so I can't submit my essay :') But what a wonderful opportunity, and I can't wait to see one last podcast episode from Dean Z.
it sounds like you have a support system, but they don't know anything about the LSAT. which is OK, it's hard. you should try to ground yourself into them as a "normal" space where you don't have to think LSAT all the time. in the meanwhile, find a study group for a community that "gets" it
my PS and DS were about similar things.
PS was about leaving my country where i was about to take the bar exam on short notice, bccs my family was arranging my marriage, to be w my gay partner, and how ive been trying to get back into practicing law since.
DS was about how growing up gay in a country where being gay is penalized by jail time changed how i approach people and the perspective it brought me in regards to both law and people who hold extremist views.
same thing basically: that im gay and its impacted my life and why i want to go into the law. but different aspects: the first is my life story and why im pursuing law, the second is HOW that experience brought me to my view point and interest in law.
like, just in this comment section, say why you want to be a lawyer. even if its money. say why and why you think youd be good at it. theres your personal statement.
you mean pattern recognition as in recognizing the bad habits i fall into or patterns in my thinking? I think for me, I knew exactly which questions i was faltering at and why, because id feel tripped up. since i remembered that, when i did BR i wrote down what my original thought process was. then i picked my new answer and wrote down why i was changing it.
articulating my reason for the original answer helped a lot, whether it was picking under time pressure, trying to "meta-game" or take shortcuts through what i think a question would or wouldnt do, or genuinely not getting logic. eventually i started noticing most of my wrong answers were because of time pressure + misreading, so all i had to improve was my execution. which was easy because i was taking all my tests at late night when i was sleepy, hadnt eaten properly, or in noisy cafes since my house is loud / busy all the time. thats when i got my 180 on pt 159 i think.
i notice your tests dont have blind reviews. you should honestly try doing them. i had 0 tutoring and my score jump was all from just doing BR and constantly articulating to myself, thats how helpful BR is. good luck, you got this!
Yeah I have the same issue, not an international applicant but have UK degree. since our GPA is non reportable, we rely more on lsat + softs so I put it up to 4.0 since 0.0 just gets you rejected everywhere lol. not accurate, but non reportable helps schools if you boost their lsat median ive heard.
i got a 180 in my last practice test (generally my br was 179/8 since i took most of my PTs right before bed excpet that last one). what helped was breaking down the question on my own using the explanations as guidance. i found that if i didnt understand the explanation, it was becuase i was not putting the effort into following it. i would write down what the instructer was saying and translating into my own words. if that still didnt work, i looked at the comments to see if anyone else put it differently in a way i could get it.
Whoever you worked more closely with that can speak to your abilities. I chose my team lead and an attorney i work with a lot because my departments gone thru 2 managers and 4 supervisors in 3 years lol so they dont know me for as long or as well, and aren't directly involved with the work i produce for cases.
oh supportive husbands! we should listen to them more 😂 yes be proud of yourself!! good luck you got this! theres a beautiful light on the other side of the tunnel, even if it's hard to see from here :)
@Adam yeah i agree that must be a factor. i think it may also be part of remote tests and tests with issues needing to be straightened out before they can uniformly release them all.
why does lsat not immediately release results tbh 😭 congrats to you!! hoping we all get good scores
i got up and out, grabbed my snack in front of the proctor, they signed me out, and i went to the bathroom. then i came back and ate my snack. walked back in, checked a bunch of boxes confirming i didn't do anything wrong, and continued.
some testing centers may make you sign yourself in and out which is annoying.
and you need to have your ID on you
you need to actually brute force yourself into writing something out. writing is a process of thinking. youll understand through writing. thinking abstractly doesn't help as much
Thank you for organizing this ! I've had a bunch of random questions since forever and the only sources answering them I did not really trust
@JacobBaska, who is an admissions stategy expert, replied to a similar question I had in this thread: https://7sage.com/discussion/62041/is-submitting-my-umich-app-with-a-169-even-though-i-m-scheduled-for-another-lsat-ok
It's a perspective statement at this point so honestly it doesn't harm you to write about something formative to you! People may think being an upper class ethnic or religous majority is "normal" but its as much of an outlier experience as any. Only mass media assumes its default. Do try pulling from something that matters to you and how you see the world though and tie it into the work story you wanna talk about to be on topic though. Like "Because of X experience or identity, I learned Y, and thats how it impacted experience Z (something that shows it in action)"