Hi All,

I got my February score back, and I'm nothing but ecstatic about it. I went from 160 in December to 171 in February. I owe a lot to this community. I didn't post much on here but I creeped, and I used a lot of the (free) 7sage materials. I feel like if I can help even one person get motivated and get the score they want, then this thread was worth writing. I have a description below of my LSAT experience and then some advice for anyone who wants it. Are you tired of egotistical high scorers giving advice? Then skip this thread. I was so tired of reading about ivy league wannabe's scoring 170+ whining about how bad they were doing/did that I totally feel your pain and I don't judge you for not wanting to hear about it. For the TLDR just read the itemized points and take what you want or ignore if you think it's stupid!

I applied to the Air Force 2.5 years ago, and it has been a slow process. After passing all the selection criteria, but going months of waiting and not getting called, I needed a backup in my life (I'm still waiting as of writing this post). The LSAT seemed like a good thing to put in my back pocket, and admission to some law schools wouldn't hurt if the time came. I had an older version of the Powerscore books sitting around, and I pulled them out (I didn't know what 7sage was). Starting on October 1st, I spent about 3 weeks deep in all 3 books reading them and taking notes and studying them carefully. Although I did some travelling during this time (Las Vegas and Tofino B.C.), I was spending at least 4-5 hours a day studying, with a day or two off a week. The only exam I had written prior to this was about 2 years earlier and I got about 50% of the questions right, putting me somewhere around the 30th percentile, although that's just a guess. After my power-score studying, I wrote my first exam and got a 161. I then focused on practicing from November until December just doing older practice exams. My highest PT was 167, the night before my December exam, and my lowest was a 161 (minus a weird outlier 156 where I got so frustrated in a logic game that I gave up). I wrote the December exam and it ended in tragedy. I scored a 160, below my average PT of 163, and it was the lowest practice test of ANY practice test I had done.

I became kind of bummed so I re-registered for February, and didn't start studying until January 3rd, giving me about a month to prepare. My mind was back in the cockpit of a fighter jet not in a Dean's office. What had butchered my December score was a weak logic games, so while I kept telling myself I would do full PT's and stuff, I never really did I kinda just practiced logic games over and over again until even in a super hard one I could keep my cool and minimize lost points. I sort of used the 7sage foolproof method for logic games, but less rigorously. The truth is that while I put in some good time, I wasn't a crazy aspiring lawyer, and I didn't put in insane time. I put in the work, and combined with a decent aptitude for the exam, did okay. Especially prior to my February exam, I was doing almost exclusively logic games, and spent most of my time working and in the gym. Maybe 1-3 hours a day, 3-4 days a week or something like that.

Before the February exam, I intentionally didn't look at an exam for 5 days prior to the test. I sat down and wrote on February 12th, and it went fine. I assumed I did a 165, since my highest PT hadn't got much higher (169), and I didn't really put in much extra work other than reducing variability on Logic Games. I got my score back yesterday, and I just about collapsed when I saw a 171. Now, this is a good score, but it's not like a 176 or 177 or something. I'm not an LSAT genius. I moved 11 LSAT points and 18 percentile points from my previous real sit down. Now I'll probably get into the law schools I applied to, and maybe next year just for Sh*ts and giggles I'll apply to some ivy schools and see what happens, but I'm not some crazy SJW or involved in every single issue in the world like I was in high school, so I'm not sure I'm Ivy material. So that's my story, and if you relate at all, or care about what I learned, I have some scattered advice below. Take what makes sense and leave what doesn't. This is a great community of people, and even though people who score high always sound a little bit egotistical when they talk, it really comes from a place of knowing that in the past we were sitting with lower scores, reading about other people who were doing better than us, and it's difficult to qualify why your help might be valuable to someone without first saying that you actually do well on the test.

In no particular order:

Be a killer. This exam is NOT about how many questions you get right. It's about how many questions you get right COMPARED TO THE PERSON SITTING NEXT TO YOU. This is an exam about percentiles not raw scores. If the question you're reading is easy, it's easy for the next person too. Answer the question faster and better, take every edge you possibly can at all times. Powerscore says it well, ATTACK the questions, no matter how confident you are, and move on.

Start early. This exam is in the truest sense a marathon and not a sprint. Learning the exam takes time. I'd rather do 10 practice test over 3 months than to do 20 practice tests in one. This stuff is more like taking edibles than ripping the bong, it takes a while to hit you.

Your brain gets tired. I saw CONSISTENTLY that when I took a week off from a long period of hard studying, I would come back that day and score 5 or more points higher than my previous test. The LSAT is an intelligence (intelligence about a particular way of thinking) test not a knowledge test (the MCAT is the opposite in this respect, every extra bit of stuff you can memorize helps). Every single exam has different questions, and your brain needs to be stretchy to adapt and understand the material. So, take the time to load KNOWLEDGE into your brain (LG games strategies, LR and RC question types, test strategies, etc. etc.), and then take time to give your brain a chance to soak it in so that when you hit that full length practice test, it has every ounce of INTELLIGENCE in it. You'll feel it; after a few days off all the questions seem easier. For those mechanically inclined, studying and PT'ing back to back is like filling your high performance engine with 87 octane. The engine knocks, gets less power and might blow up. But give it a few days rest and you're giving it 94 octane and the perfect tune.

Nail the logic games. The LG section is probably the only one where you can have 0 aptitude for it, but still do amazingly well. The 7sage method works well. Do a a LG games section, and then give it a day and do it again the next day, and the next, and the next until you really understand it. Once it's perfect put it on the back burner, then come back to it some time later and nail it to remember the tricks and to boost your confidence. Nailing the logic games and then guessing on the rest of the exam will give you a 140. Nailing the LG and then getting only 50% right on the other questions puts you in the 63ish percentile. The video explanations on this site are THE BOMB so use them.

Analyze your mistakes. Analyze. Your. Mistakes. Or as millennials do, Analyze (clap emoji) Your (clap emoji) Mistakes (clap emoji). I didn't use the blind review method. I'm pretty lazy, and going back and analyzing questions I'm not even sure I got wrong was tedious and annoying. I would do this: Write a Practice test and grade it. Cry about my score (I'm a 6' 250 lb dude) and have a snack so I can't remember what the right answers to the wrong questions were. For LR I would re-do all of my wrong questions. I would write down the question type/category (which helps me on harder questions so I can use systemic approaches when necessary), then I would write down why I chose the wrong answer, then select what I thought was the right answer and explain why I thought it was right. I would do this for all of them and check the answers again, and hopefully they were all right. If not, same thing again. The key is to really take time to think about WHY you got it wrong, and understand PERFECTLY why you were such an idiot for not getting it right the first time. You want to feel stupid after this process. For the RC I would start reading the passages again, then stop because RC sucks A** and I'll never get better at it. I would review the wrong questions and the right answers just to get a feel for it, which probably helped my score a little, but I spent very little time on this. For logic games, I would do them over and over again until I got it right, then use the approach above^(4.) to do it well. Honestly, the best thing I did was spend more time understanding why I got questions wrong, and less time actually writing practice exams. If you have a good work ethic unlike yours truly, using this method religiously on all the PT's is going to net you an objectively awesome score.

Put your phone in a different room when you study.

Get a job that lets you focus. I drove Uber. I like shooting the sh*t with people and driving my car (I have a 4.97 driver rating heck ya I ball hard NBD). I'd work enough to pay the bills whenever I wanted, went to the gym as much as I wanted and then pretended to study more than I actually studied for the rest of the day.

If you don't have the luxury of living at home and working part time like I did, try and change that. If you cant, spend less time doing stupid stuff that's not making your score better, but leave enough time to have fun.

Do not, under any circumstances, study for this exam if you are easily discouraged or if you're not really sure you want it.

Do NOT, under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, listen to the stupid people here who whine about ridiculously high scores and claim that they achieved this with minimal work (i've been half guilty of both sides of this in the past and even now). These people, I've determined, are liars or extreme outliers, and much more likely to be the former than the later. Don't believe anyone who says they scored more than 165 on their first exam with no studying.

So to end, this is my unsolicited contribution to you folks at 7sage. Take it or leave it. Hopefully instead of law i'm flying mach two somewhere, but if not i'll see you guys in class. Good luck to all of you, and feel free to comment what you think of my strategy.

I just discovered a school I want to apply to but I’m a bit pst their priority deadline. It was March 1 and today is March 9. What should I do? Their regular/ full stop deadline is a few months away but of course I plan on submitting this ASAP. What does applying past priority mean?

A question on an app has simply asked: "Did you take an LSAT preparatory class?" Do I answer yes? Seeing as I purchased the starter package and studied for the test using the CC, prep tests, etc.

Unfortunately today I was informed that LSAC lost my in the mail (they blame UPS). I now have to retake it on March 17. All the schools I applied to know the situation, will receive an official letter from LSAC explaining what happened I am writing an addendum explaining what happened and the psychological/mental ramifications of having to prepare for the test for months, only to have it lost, and then have to reprepare myself in one week.

My question for the 7Sage community and @JY if you are there, is how do you think I should go about studying going forward? I studied for a little over three months, went through the entire 7sage curriculum, and have taken all of the PTs in the 80s and 70s as well as some random full tests/passages/games/questions from pre-70. What do you guys think I should go going forward? It's been a few weeks of course since I have looked at any material. Should I find a brand new old test that I have not done anything from? Should I review core concepts? Should I re-do a test I already took in the 70s/80s since they are "newer" and more similar to the current tests? I do not want to burn myself out in the small time frame I have but also want to make sure I can remember as much as I can. Any advice would be appreciated.

I'm planning to write the June exam, with September / December exam dates available to me should I need to improve. So far, I've used the core curriculum study schedule planner to guide me through the core curriculum until one week from my June test date - is this enough? From reading through others' posts, it looks as though I should be PTing quite a bit after the core curriculum has wrapped up - I've been fool-proofing the logic games as I go. Thanks!

Hey guys,

I'm curious to see how other 7sagers have broken out of the low 160s. To give you an idea of where I'm at, I'm averaging about -6 per section on LR, -5 on LGs, and -5 on RC for an avg of 161 the ten most recent. With more drilling, I think I can get the LGs down close to -0. However, I'm really struggling to get my LR score to the point where a 170 is possible. I'm making 2-3 dumb mistakes per 50 questions, and then missing most of the harder questions (doesn't really matter what type they are). Timing is still an issue for me, although I'm getting through the first 10 in ten minutes or so. Any specific drills/techniques on escaping the 160s would be much appreciated, thanks!

excuse typos. my phone is annoying.

I’m a URM. AA Female.

3.5

“170”

I really want HLS. Maybe Stanford but I don’t wanna go to Cali & Yale is a funny joke with my numbers - but that would be nice too.

I’m confused because when I ask or search forums for people chancing URMs with my combo of numbers & sometimes lower #s closer to 3.2/165, 90% of respondents are like - “ENJOY HARVARD YOU’RE IN THERE FOR SURE!!!!!”

But then the lsn & other online calculator predictors will show the chance of URM with those same #s being in the 20% acceptance range. I get that the generators have smaller samples, usually like 5 applicants & so they get to their 20% with like 3 rejected, 1 waitlist 1 admit. but still.....

The confidence of respondents vs what these #s show makes me complete unsure of what to expect....

I guess I’m asking you guys some questions. So:

Why do people seem to think my #s and AA URM stat is a gimme at Harvard despite LSN & other # generators seeming to show otherwise.

Besides the obvious short answer of “softs” - when we have two applicants, both AA female / URM, both 170, both 3.5 - but one is rejected and the other accepted : what kind of softs are compelling enough? If my numbers ARE fine and it comes down to my softs - what kinds of things will push my borderline #s into being a lock at HLS???

Hi all,

So I just finished with the core curriculum, and took my first post-curriculum simulated exam. I scored much higher than my diagnostic (thanks 7sage!) but I'm still around ~8-9 points away from my target score. My current schedule is to take 2-3 timed exams per week each week until the June exam, where I plan to sit for my first LSAT.

When I take simulated exams, I usually spend the whole day taking & blind reviewing the exam. I understand that part of the blind review process, but what I don't understand is what I am supposed to be doing on my days off when I am not taking PTs.

My weakest section is logic games (-6+), and I'm currently working on fool-proofing the games from PTs 1-35, which seems to be the recommended course of action from this forum.

But, other than blind reviewing my PT and reviewing the core curriculum, what should I be doing to improve LR and RC? Just drill timed sections? Or should I be focusing on question type? I've done all of the problem sets on the CC.

Those of you who are done with the CC, what do you guys do on days where you want to study but don't have time for a full PT?

I am very interested in attending UCI Law and wanted to see if anyone could give me an approximation of the likeliness of an acceptance. I took the December LSAT and got a 161. Retook in February and absolutely BOMBED with a 158.

My GPA is 3.45 and I am a URM if that makes any difference. I'm between the schools 25th and 50th percentile, but closer to the 25th.

Receiving back my February score was a shock and disappointment, especially because I was PTing consistently in the 166-169. And now, I'm just left unsure of what to expect and where I stand.

Any input would be appreciated.

Hey guys, we're posting on behalf of a 7Sager. They're wondering the following:

Which package do you recommend that I sign up for to take the June LSAT?

Any advice or questions for this 7Sager?

Is anyone else having an issue waiting for LSAC to process a transcript? My undergrad submitted my transcripts via the electronic exchange over a week ago but it's still not showing on LSAC.

Hey all, I'm beginning to brain storm my personal statement topics. I am having an internal debate. I am 45 years old and spent 25 years in the military (active duty Marine infantryman). My resume that will accompany my apps obviously will reflect a huge amount of military jobs / assignments. I am questioning whether or not to write a PS that focuses on a military scene / setting or to branch out into some other aspect of my life. If I go with "other", the topic would likely be related to my running / triathlon hobby (How you tell the Ironman / marathoner at a party? Don't worry, he'll tell you) or something related to recent volunteer service (youth coaching). With any of the above options, I feel I can make it personal / unique and demonstrate something about me and my personality.

Option A - Military (the softball / most expected option): Go with what you know. Obviously, I identify with the military and even in retirement, feel it is a large part of who I am. The most likely PS from this would be my first command experience outside my career field in which I grew by learning to work with those of varied occupational backgrounds and experiences.

Option B - Athletic or Coaching option: Personal growth through perseverance and commitment to a goal, plus learning some sacrifices aren't worth it (loss of family time vs time / physical training required for certain athletic goals) or lessons from a youth girls basketball / track coach.

I am leaning heavily towards option A, but do I run the risk of painting myself as "the military guy"? Is that even a bad thing to be worried about? I don't have a "Moses came down from the mountain and said you shall be a lawyer" story, so none of my options will really focus on the legal profession.

I have to write a character and fitness addendum along with my application, and I was wondering if anyone could please provider some feedback? If you can, I would greatly appreciate it!

I have applied to several law schools, and I was wondering if they would consider the fact that I am an international student when thinking about waitlists. if classes start, say, in August, I cannot be waitlisted until July, as I would not have time to process my student visa. Do you think schools have that in mind?

.

Can someone please explain the difference, if any, between pure sequencing and linear or ordering games?

What are things that can make my application stronger.

I used 7Sage for all my studying. The community and the curriculum is awesome and helped me earn a top 10% score. I was able to secure a full ride from a strong regional T1 (UF) - this was my goal and I am happy to accomplish it.

You all are great here and this has to be the most supportive law related forum I have found on the internet.

I plan to stick around and I am sure you all will go on to do great things!

Thanks for everything 7Sage.

Hey guys, I'll be starting law school this fall and would like to enroll in a law school prep course. The three I've heard of are in the title. Does anyone have experience with any of these prep courses? If not, does anyone recommend a different prep course? I'm rather new to the law prep course business so any help is appreciated. I've also come across a handful of people on 7Sage using one or two of these courses so please enlighten us with details!

I've also attached an optional poll below.

I confidently chose D but after seeing that E is the correct answer, I can somewhat understand why. My issue is with trying to explain why D is wrong. I took D to mean that the fed gov's expenditures (i.e. allocations) for soil conversation in various states were inequitable. I thought this was main point based on the last sentence.

E's wording was too strong for me to choose it over D. I suppose the argument is actually saying that the fed gov just isn't spending enough money on soil conservation period.. primarily the author takes issue with the amount spent on nationwide conservation program. The author's not concerned with some states getting more conservation money than others, they're just upset that Florida gets $100,000 for soil conservation while the nat'l programs only get $50,000 for instance.. right?

Can anyone provide their thoughts or reasoning?

Hi Everyone,

I still didn't do well on my Feb 2018 LSAT, but I am not giving up, so I decided to wreck the foundation and start all over again.

I have taken the LSAT three times already, and here are the stats:

September 2017: 142

December 2017: 150

February 2018: 146

Sectional scores, lets said they are all under 15.

I admit, due to work, family matters, and all other...excuses, I am not fully engaged in my study, which created these devastating results. As Adam Hawks once said in my other post, "Because law school is still a meat grinder and will chew you up and spit you out a different person, please understand what the LSAT represents and how it will apply to you in your studies." Now I understand what he means.

Back to the subject, I am working full time Monday to Friday, and I have family obligations, so the maximum study time for me is 20 hours per week. My target score is between160 to 165.

Therefore, should I still aim for the June 2018 LSAT? Or I should aim for a later test day like September 2018?

Thank you!

Like many of you, I got my LSAT score back yesterday. I got a 160, which I was pleasantly surprised to get as I had bombed LG (my first section) and even though I felt confident about my other sections, I really thought LG would bring me down. Now that I’ve gotten my score back, I so wish I had performed to my normal capabilities on LG as I know that my score would’ve been that much better and we all know every point counts. What’s your “what if?” moment? Also, congratulations to those who achieved the score they wanted and for those who didn’t, keep at it (I know I’ll continue studying as well!)

Hey all, so I'm finally starting to hear back from schools which is awesome. The not so awesome part is so far they have ALL been waitlists. I'm sort of unsure how to handle this position haha...

I know all about LOCI's and stuff like that, but waitlists keep me in purgatory, some even warn that I might be stuck on them until August. So I'm starting to worry about what this means for my planning/decision making.

I'm also worried about sending LOCI's to the schools, getting taken off the waitlist, and then having another school take me off their waitlist that I'd rather attend, then what do I do? Am I bound to attend the schools if they remove me from the WL? Even if I'm not, I don't want to take the spot for another potential admit.

The jury is still out on most of my schools, but with 3 WL's and counting I'm beginning to see new dilemmas arise. Any advice on how to handle multiple waitlists?

Question type: Explain

Premise:

Conclusion:

I chose (B) thinking that the silencer will "share" the power with appliance. I realized that was just an assumption I made. It would actually not explain why the new silencing device will make lower electricity consumption because they are both using same power supply.

Anyways, I don't see why (A) is a correct answer. I'm not sure where to know that the motor's efficiency = electricity consumption

Hey all,

I've already read Powerscore's LR Bible and the LR section from LSAT Trainer. Should I still go over the entirety of CC? I feel like a lot of it overlaps.

If I shouldn't, any ways on how to be strategic on how to utilize CC - given I've already gone over LR bible and LSAT trainer?

CC is a ton of material - i'm just trying to be the most efficient and effective with my time and studying.

Currently getting around -8 wrong in LR per test - kinda scattered throughout question types but I see I've been struggling with harder questions (difficulty level 4/5), weaken/strengthen Q's, some SA questions.

Many thanks.