We all have it in us to do our best on the LSAT. The hardest part, in my opinion, is applying ALL the techniques learned across all three sections when taking a PT/sitting for the real thing. I know from my own experience on individually timed sections that I have gotten -0 on RC, -0 on LG, and a personal best of -3 on LR which would put me in the 99th percentile. Of course that is just from individual sections and I am a ways away from ever scoring in that range on a full length test. What I do get from this is that I (and everyone really) have the ability to score incredibly well on the LSAT. This test is as mental as it is about being smart. You have to have the mental stamina to get through all six sections with minimal breaks and constantly keeping your momentum up. Mastering your stamina and mental toughness is absolutely crucial for kicking the LSATs ass. We all have it in us!!

Hi everyone,

If you've been following my struggle you will know I got pretty faint of heart recently when I took a timed LR at 30% done with the course and received -11. I just finished up the LR section of the CC (Around the mid 60% of CC) just to see if there was a difference. I got -3. A few of the questions I had seen before and I got a -3. I literally cried in the Starbucks. So the moral of the story is do not give up - YOU CAN AND WILL GET BETTER.

Also, super shout out to everyone who was super encouraging and gave great advice.

I might be losing it. I'm plateauing in the low to mid 160's (162-166) and I'm aiming for a 172+. With only weeks left to go to the September exam, should I postpone to December? Is it even possible for me to see that kind of a score jump in the last few weeks? This would be a retake - I don't want to take it three times, so I would rather postpone than take in September and December (aiming to apply for Fall 2018 cycle).

To give some more background, I have read through all the PowerScore materials twice, have done the LSAT Trainer, used 7Sage materials, and have made/kept a thorough list of LG and LR problems that have stumped me to see the patterns of the ones that I miss.

I'm currently working on foolproofing LG but I feel like when I'm actually presented with the games, I start mentally panicking and spend too little time on the diagram and working out all of the inferences that could help me more easily answer the associated questions.

On LR, I make so many stupid mistakes it's sad...I truly feel that it's my strongest section, the one whose problems I innately "get" the most, but my performance doesn't always reflect that or the hours I've put into it.

I'm not too worried about RC as that's the section I know is hardest to improve in, though am trying to bookmark some of the passages I struggle with the most for review here and there. My performance here can be anywhere from -2 to -6 though.

What am I doing wrong? People who managed large score jumps in the last few weeks, how did you do it?

(Or point me to that resource that does explain it)

I recently purchased the Starter package, almost exclusively for the LG fool-proof method. I am debating a refund though, bc I am not able to see or understand how the benefits come from this method (NOT at all saying it doesn't work, I realize 2 weeks is not enough time to reap the benefits- but that is why I'm inquiring here!).

Everytime JY says to repeat the game + inferences from memory, my mind goes all mushy, bc I don't see how that will help me (THAT much) on test day? I know the games are all pretty similar in structure, etc. (Have been studying for over a year and a half, probably have done abt 3/4 of the games that exist), but I feel like I would benefit from drilling into my mind how each inference came to be, vs. just writing an rule down bc I literally remembered writing it down the last time I did it? JY explicitly says to do straight from memory and NOT based on remembering how each rule kicked in to create that inference. (Seems similar, for ex., to learning the word "lackadaisical" bc my Ex's band name is Lackadaisical, & he is a really lazy person, instead of learning what the actual word means)

I guess I am getting pretty frustrated with the course too bc JY fails to explain this--the "How"--in his videos (at least as far as I've gotten so far. If it's in a certain lesson, pls let me know!!). Also, he doesn't address how to do the LG Questions, either. Do I choose those answers from memory, too ?? Do I read each word in the question stem?? (Same thing with the game set-up, do I read each word there, too, As if it was test day??)

I've just heard so many great things about his videos, strategy, & explanations, and I guess I just had a very different expectation. I would seriously seriously appreciate it if someone could help me out. Would love to get to ~2/3 wrong on LG as so many people here have mentioned here, but my frustration / confusion with the method is really keeping me from being motivated enough to continue with it.

Thanks for listening / reading !!

Hey 7Sagers!

Bringing up a touchy subject here, but I have been told to stay away from PS that talk about how to change the injustice/horrible world through law (in your PS). Does the same apply if you have personally gone through tough circumstances, poverty, or grew up in a country with such?

Further, I have been looking at many example essays (both admitted and rejected students) and it seems to me like many of the ADMITTED students talk about "securing rights and liberties for disadvantaged individuals" or "changing the world through law" aka making the world a better place. Now I realize there are a lot of different factors that can cause these individuals to be accepted, but nonetheless I couldn't help but notice a trend of these essays being admitted, when people are told to stay away from them...

Thoughts?

After being notified of your testing accommodation- Did you start practicing with your new time? I am interested in learning about how people with an accommodated time accounted for this during their prep before the LSAT.

Any feedback or comments are appreciated. Thank you!

Let me preface this by saying, I am a minority. The purpose of this is in reference to an article I read a couple days ago regarding affirmative action in higher education admissions (not trying to ruffle any political feathers...but if you want to read the article, I attached the link at the bottom).

As a minority, is it true that admission officers prefer certain sub-sects of minorities over others? For example, do they prefer Filipino applicants over Chinese applicants, or Mexican-Americans over Cuban-Americans (as referenced in the article)? And in the case of Asian minorities (hint: I'm Asian), does it help to specify what type of Asian you are, if it will indeed be preferred by the school?

From what I've been reading, it basically doesn't give you any advantage to say that you're simply Asian, but I'm wondering if it actually does help if you specify what type of Asian. Anyone have any experience with this?

Article: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/450088/sessions-investigates-racial-discrimination-affirmative-action-college-admission

I'm finding myself getting -1 or -2 wrong for some of the (LR)... Even though for the majority of the ones I am getting incorrect, I understand the reasoning for the answer choice and why the right one is the correct choice and why the wrong answer choices are incorrect, but I still end up going with the incorrect answer choice... It's almost a letdown because it makes me question my abilities and doing really well on the LSAT. Is it because I may not have as much confidence in myself?

Hi all,

I'm new to the 7sage community, so its my first time posting! I made a big mistake and missed the deadline for the September exam. (It's like a nightmare come true) I'm currently on a 2 month study leave (aug 1 - sept 30) from work. Now I'm taking the December exam. That means I'll be studying full time for 2 months, and then working full time 2 months before my exam.

The thing is, the work I do requires alot of reading and by the end of the day, my brain feels exhausted and I have a hard time studying because my intellectual energy is spent by the end of the day. Does anyone have recommendations on how I can maximize my study time? Currently, I'm doing 2-3 exams per week. My major focus and goal during my FT study period is to meticulously analyze the exams I take to see my weak points.

But once I start working, I might only be able to do one exam per week (on the weekends). Is that enough to keep me going for the 2 month buffer period before the Dec 2 exam?

Any help is appreciated!! Thanks!

http://www.law.com/sites/almstaff/2017/08/07/georgetown-joins-list-of-top-law-schools-using-gre-for-admissions/

Are the MP questions in PT1-35 representative of the MP questions on the newer tests? I know how to find the conclusion and main point, but for some reason I do not seem to get all of them right even though I should when I am drilling. I have done the corresponding problem sets and went over the CC covering MP and how to identify conclusions for the second time.. and I have gotten them all correct so I don't know what's going on.

HELP!

The line graph that tracks our misses by test for each section... there are 2 separate lines for LR... does one of them represent the first LR of each test?

I am asking because I believe the graph is telling me that either the second LR section is consistently more difficult, or, more likely, that I have a conditioning problem. My first LR section seems to be consistently stronger than my second.

After giving the ultimate + package a shot, I just don't think I can justify 750 bucks. I'm trying to canvel.my subscription, but having a hard time getting an answer from @"Dillon A. Wright" Everybody else feel free to ignore this post :)

OMG THIS EXAM.

Okay yes, I get it, it's learnable. But holy shit is there so much to learn. It's like every time you understand something, you realize how much MORE THIS IS TO FREAKING UNDERSTAND. A 170 is possible for anyone...it's just the number of layers you're willing to peel back to get that score....and the months of your life you're willing to commit.

Like I hate it. But I love it because it's addicting. And I'm possibly going insane after the study-marathon I seem to be on.

Okay that's it.

Happy Wednesday :)

Here is a short story:

A man was walking through a circus. As the man walked passed the elephants, he stopped in confusion. The elephants were being held in place by a small rope tied to one back leg. No chains or cages. It was fairly obvious that the elephants could, at any time, break away from their bonds but for some reason, they did not.

He saw a trainer nearby and asked why these animals just stood there and made no attempt to get away. "Well," said the trainer, "when they are very young and much smaller, we used the same size rope to tie them, and, at that age, it's enough to hold them. As they grow up, they are conditioned to believe they cannot break away. They believe that this rope can still hold them - so they never try to break free."

The man was amazed. These animals could at any time break free from their bonds but because they believed they couldn't, they were stuck right where they were. Like the elephants, how many of us go through life hanging onto a belief that we cannot do something, simply because we failed at it before?

Failure is part of learning; we should never give up the struggle in life.

Never give up on your dreams.

The LSAT is your rope - keep pulling, eventually it'll snap.

Hi. My first post and was just wondering if JY has done anything like a concise summary (cheat sheet .pdf) that distills the initial "plan of attack" for each of the various LR question types. What I mean is, after reading the q-stem and determining q-type, a "go-to" guide for just the first few steps to take on that specific q-type, just so we can get rolling as fast as possible once we know q-type. This would be so helpful for developing and perfecting solid approaches for all of the various q-types, and it could be referred back to while working to improve strategy, reduce time per question, etc. With so many different LR q-types out there, something like this would be... awesome! If such an "LR q-type attack plan" cheat sheet already exists in 7Sage's materials (or elsewhere), please let us know; if one doesn't yet exist, please (JY, if you can hear me) do one for us ASAP. Thanks!

At first, it was quite easy for me to identify and correctly label conditional statements. But, now that I am nearly 60% through with the CC (currently working with flaw questions) and questions are no longer in the "identify" phase, but, rather, have increased into the difficult world of description and analyzation ... I find myself getting tripped up with the direction of my statements (confusing necessity for sufficient, and vice versa). I realize that I need to now slow down my progression with the CC until I am able to really drill this concept in my head. Any suggestions/advice/tips/examples (preferably harder examples) would be greatly appreciated!

Someone please please tell me this is just an anomaly and that everything is going to be okay lol (seriously freaking out here)

I scored a 157 today on PT #69, my lowest score since the second week of May (when I started studying).

When I started studying I was consistently in the low 160s and now I have been consistently scoring in the mid 160s for the past month or so, and so I feel a bit blindsided by this score, especially because I felt confident about the LR sections and I got 16/25 on one and 20/25 on the other. I kind of knew I messed up on the LG section as I ran out of time (which hasn't happened in months). I feel like it may be because I've been super tired this week and I wrote the test after an 8 hour work shift, but it'd be nice to hear some reassurance!

Also, if this happened to you, any advice on where to go from here?

(P.S., I know this is a long and dense post, but there's an opportunity at the bottom for anyone reading this to get paid, so hopefully that's an incentive to read this :P)

Hi guys! I wanted to get some feedback from you smart people on the LR question about brown dwarf stars.

We're asked for an assumption on which the argument depends, so this is a NA and the right answer should strongly undermine if not completely discredit the argument when negated.

The claim is that any star found with no lithium is not a coolest brown dwarf (CBD.)

The support is that all stars except for CBD are hot enough to "destroy lithium completely."

The right answer, A, is that "None of the CBDs have ever been hot enough to destroy lithium."

Formal logic wise, I get CBD ---> Not(Hot enough to destroy lithium)

Negating it, you get that not none (so, some) CBDs have ever been hot enough to destroy lithium.

I don't understand how this even undermines the conclusion, let alone discredits it as we would hope for in a NA. In fact, this sounds perfectly congruent with the argument. The support says that CBDs cannot destroy lithium /completely/, completely being a deliberate word choice that does not appear in the answer. If "completely" had no bearing on the meaning of the text, it wouldn't be included.

Therefore, our negated answer, suggesting that some CBDs have ever been able to destroy lithium in some capacity, does nothing to undermine the claim that a star found without lithium cannot be a CBD.

Maybe in being able to destroy lithium in some capacity, said stars are still not hot enough to destroy lithium content in full. Even if you need to make a small assumption jump for this question, I think the most reasonable assumption is that CBDs being able to destroy lithium by some means does not really even scathe the claim that it can't finish the job. This would be a stretch for a weaken question in my opinion, let alone a necessary assumption.

My other question on the matter regards the rules for dangling modifiers in LSAT texts. In this question, a sentence reads "All stars but the CBDs are hot enough to destroy lithium completely by converting it into helium.

I'm a bit confused about how a dangling modifier would apply here in the absence of context. Does the clause following "destroy lithium" imply that the dwarfs cannot destroy lithium in full, (the process by which happens to be by converting to helium,) or that they cannot accomplish the task exclusively by converting the lithium to helium (implying that in order to complete the task in full, CBDs must destroy it in some other way than converting to helium.)

As a native English speaker, I probably wouldn't even have second thoughts and assume it was the former option, if reading or hearing that sentence. However, as an LSAT student who is actively analyzing precision of language, I find myself confused. I feel like I've seen other situations on the LSAT where failure to consider the precision of language, instead using traditional colloquial interpretations, in fact leads you to the wrong answer. Why is it different in this case? (Assuming there isn't some grammar rule I'm not aware of, which I'd love to discover!)

I realize that there is a degree of "picking the best answer" with LSAT questions, and NAs in particular. With that in mind, I still felt that B was a better, albeit still lacking answer.

Negating B leaves us with the statement that it's not the case that most stars too cool to burn hydrogen (TCBH), (which concretely includes CBDs,) are too cool to destroy lithium completely. This still leaves open a wide range of possibilities for some (but less than 51%) TCHB stars to indeed be able to destroy lithium completely. If we know that this class of star may very well have members capable of destroying lithium completely, and that CBDs are a member of that class, we at least have a hint that maybe some CBDs can destroy lithium completely, undermining his support and damaging the argument consequently.

Do I like answer choice B? Definitely not. However, it matches the specific, important diction of the prompt ("destroys completely") whereas A does not, and it gives concrete reason, when negated, to suggest something that directly contradicts and soils the argument. A, when negated, simply refrains from counting out a possibility that would damage the argument, rather than in any way suggesting that the argument is in fact damaged. Knowing that some CBDs have ever been hot enough to destroy lithium at all leaves the possibility that they can destroy it all the way, which we would want to be the case for this answer to be right since that breaks the argument. But, it just as neutrally, it allows for the possibility that they still can't go all the way, which would leave the argument in tact and reaffirm the support from which the conclusion is derived.

TL;DR, I see A suggesting an ambiguity that reads neutrally: If negated, A only weakens the argument by indicating that the opportunity for the argument to be undermined exists, not that it likely does or does not.

B, when negated suggests an ambiguity that, while still concluding nothing, leans towards something that would hurt the argument. Obviously that's a fine distinction that the question doesn't even mean for you to consider, but I don't think it can be avoided if you read the text precisely, and reasonably interpret "destroy completely" and "destroy" as meaning different things. If they meant the same thing, they would say the same thing.

Lastly, any question I ever get wrong on LR is similar to the conundrum I have with this one. I overanalyze the question, but even when I recognize that I'm overanalyzing and need to read a little more simply, I cannot for the life of me figure out when it's appropriate to make which particular little assumptions. If I redid this question 1000 times, I'd think that the logic leap in choice B is more realistic than the choice B counterpart all 1000 times.

Are there any tutors who would be particularly well suited to help me with this very specific challenge? It's frustrating because I literally have no clue what I need to change in order to get these questions write. I'm a native English speaker, born and raised in the midwest United States, and so I don't know what other factors could be causing me to be so clueless when it comes to figuring out which little logic leap/assumption is the right one. If I'm not overlooking some other caveat to this problem, how can the LSAT justify the correct answer if there isn't a concrete reason why their leap is more valid than mine.

If anyone thinks they would be able to help me remedy this conclusion, I'd be more than happy to pay for your time. I'll take help any way I can get it, so don't hesitate to take my money even if you're not a tutor and are a fellow student! Thanks guys :)

Some background- I have been stuck around the same score (+/- 2 points) for quite a while. I took 57 recently and saw a drastic jump in my score. I really want to feel happy as this is the first time I've done this well. I've changed things up a bit in terms of the way I BR, drill, etc. I am, however, concerned that it was a fluke/serious outlier. Full disclosure: I won't be able to take another full PT for a few days and am eager to know if this legit! That's what led to this post.

It looks like one of the BR groups is taking the PT this week. If anyone is willing to share their general impressions of this PT, I would really appreciate it. Difficulty relative to other tests, section to section, etc. I've had a hard time nailing down (even in BR) what exactly I'm struggling with since the type varies quite a bit.

Thanks!

I retook the RC from the June exam yesterday, and still missed 5 (on the actual exam I missed 7, wrecking my score). I've got to say, I am very confused about some of these questions, even upon review and under untimed conditions. Fair to say it's one of the hardest RC sections of all time? I had 2 RC sections on test day, and the experimental one was SO MUCH EASIER.

Is anyone who took the June exam willing to go back and forth about some of these questions?

I am weak at disagree questions. I tend to miss these ones about 50% of the time. I find this weird because when it is agreement I ace it. Does anyone have a strategy for these kinds of questions other than making a Y/N chart to the side? How do you engage with the stimulus, what are you looking for in the AC, how can you tell what specifically they are disagreeing over?

Hi all. So I took pt 43 and got a 172 yesterday. Today I did blind review, and was up to a 176. Idk if it's technically blind review , I just took the test and redid it with more time and finished maybe around 4 hours along my start of the sopranos lol.

Now, I want to see which answers I switched over correctly and incorrectly and break them down into question type and practice those sections with some questions.

Is there anything you guys think I could do better here or is my process okay? And I'm really pleased with the 172 since it was my first actual PT since the June lsat and I'm doing a lot more untimed questions by section type and I think it's paying off. I'm aiming a PT a week whereas before I did like 4 PTs a week (very stupid as I've learned). but idk, I got in the 170s a couple times pting but didn't break 160 on the actual test. I basically did much lower than my PT average and I treated this studying like a full time job. Still do for September? So idk maybe I'm missing something and it was those beers all along. Jk. /rant

Thanks

Hello Fellow 7Sagers,

I am interested to see what your overall thoughts are of the PT. I am even more interested to see what your thoughts are regarding the logical reasoning sections. Thank you.

Anyone have LR question stem flashcards?