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Saturday, Dec 3, 2016

The Wait

So now that test day has come and gone, so have all of our anxieties.

Right?

Well, no. https://media.giphy.com/media/lNMyVfxjfzIJO/giphy.gif Now we've got a brutal wait before test scores come out. You'll estimate how you did on each section, put it all together, and come up with a score range you think you're likely to have achieved. And then you'll toss that out the window and run the whole process over again. One moment you'll be thinking optimistically, the next you'll be certain that you did even worse than you could possibly have imagined. https://media.giphy.com/media/1FMaabePDEfgk/giphy.gif I'd tell you not to do this, but you will anyway. So just know that you're being dramatic! It's normal, everyone else is doing it, and you're almost certainly wrong. Regardless, it's done with and dwelling on it won't change anything anyway. So, do as little of that as you can manage. Another thing to not drive yourself crazy with: Constantly checking and refreshing LSAC. https://media.giphy.com/media/tei52cyY5mroA/giphy.gif Scores will come when they come. You will get an email the moment your scores post, and the email will contain your score. Assuming you have some kind of notification settings on your phone, this means that the exact moment you have access to your score, you will be notified. So let's all try to be like a bunch of little Fonzies here. And what's Fonzie like?

So, some things to do during the wait instead of freaking out:

Applications! Get those things ready to fire off! When the scores get published, schools are going to get a wave of apps and if you can be ready to be on the front end of that, all the better. So be prepared!https://media.giphy.com/media/13HBDT4QSTpveU/giphy.gif

Friends. Remember those people from before the LSAT that you used to do things with? See what those guys are up to.

https://media.giphy.com/media/sdrYL2r9dYhpu/giphy.gif

Read. I read the whole Harry Potter series during my wait. It really helped. But you do you. What's your thing? Read all the Star Wars books or Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire or The Complete Works of Shakespeare or your favorite smutty romance novels. https://media1.giphy.com/media/l0MYtRl33WaN4HGBq/200.gif#19

Netflix. Like reading, but better! https://media2.giphy.com/media/nwleaG1TObWsE/200.gif#0

Netflix and chill. Like Netflix, but better! https://media2.giphy.com/media/lZDb2PNgLXdoA/200.gif#2

Hobbies. What are some of the things you used to enjoy doing? Do those things. Personally, I like brewing beer, camping, writing, video games, keeping up with new music, etc. Done with LSAT, I was free for the first time in a long time to engage with the things I enjoy. https://media.giphy.com/media/SE95wexIfovzq/giphy.gif

Treat yo Self. You deserve it. That one thing on your Amazon wish list that's been calling you for months now? https://media1.giphy.com/media/V9zqL1ZILNTmE/200.gif#7 That really nice bottle of wine you've been saving for an occasion? https://media3.giphy.com/media/8fn9oF6IPZoEE/200.gif#11 That really nice pair of jeans that really makes your ass look fantastic? https://media0.giphy.com/media/13SDiAmoCH2nw4/200.gif#73

So there's plenty to keep yourself occupied, but of course, your pending score will inevitably force itself to the front of your mind from time to time. And when it does, we have been there/are right there with you. So do try to be cool, but when you can't, we'll freak out and speculate with you. We're here.

40

What are your guys' thoughts on drilling PTs 1-10 for anything other than LG? I just drilled one of the LR sections out of PT 5 and it seemed to me to have a pretty different feel than even a PT in the later teens. Curious as to the general consensus.

I picked PT 5 randomly because I was trying to leave the PTs after 34 whole and the CC appeared to draw more heavily from the early 30s/20s.

0

Probably not a great time to post this considering everyone just wrote the LSAT but I just started studying (have been using the bibles) and I'm really just .. overwhelmed. LR really isn't too bad for me at all luckily. I'm certainly no master yet but it doesn't seem like a different language and I feel like that's a section I have a lot of potential in! BUT LG is literally breaking my heart

1

I've seen a few others who shared opinion that Game 4 was killer, but the rest of the test balanced out to about average.

I realized this morning that, in theory, even with -5 on the final game, you could hit almost any goal short of 180 on the overall test. Focus on the easy RC, LR, or whatever you found easier or no more difficult than you expected and believe that it will carry you to your goal, whether that be 155 or 175.

2

For this particular problem, I see how the author is making the link between stress and the way people approach and think about their problems. The correct answer choice states that refusing to think about something troubling contributes to stress, which captures this idea. However, I'm wondering why the relationship couldn't be reversed, with the refusal to think being a result rather than the cause of stress. Even after BR and reviewing the explanation, I understood that there was being link between those two concepts but didn't fully understand the direction of that causal link because the stimulus was so odd.

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-70-section-4-question-10/

0

~80% of the test takers at my test center had their cell phone. Outside the testing room, a lot of people were playing on their phones. After we entered the room, the proctors told us to "turn our phones off during the test".. The desks even had "Turn phone off" stickers on them. Yet we all signed admission tickets certifying that we didn't bring our phone to the test.

Pretty frustrating to see -- per the rules, I did not bring my phone, but it would have been nice to have it during the break

1

Hello!

I was wondering if anyone has an experience that can shed some light on how I should move forward regarding how LSAC deals with issues that occur during testing.

Everything was running smoothly until about 8 minutes remaining in the first section. Someone who was signed up for the LSAT showed up around 9:15 am (late), claiming they were in a car accident and were told they could not write the test.

He responded poorly and consequently went on his phone right outside the testing room door screaming and directing insults and taunts at our proctor, obviously trying to intentionally sabotage/distract those writing. This went on for about 3 minutes and the proctors repeatedly told him to leave the testing area, keep his voice down, etc. Eventually he even opened the door and starting directly screaming into the room. At this point almost every test writer yelled at him to leave as well. Timer was still running at this point.

Things then escalated even further at the 5 minute warning, where he ran into the testing room and began screaming and videotaping everyone with his phone. He moved between everybody screaming loudly that he should be allowed to write and that he was being mistreated. He even grabbed a few peoples watches while they were writing and many times directly challenged various test takers, getting in their faces. This continued for about a minute, at which point the proctor paused the timer (at 3 mins 58 seconds).

Eventually security came, but he ran away only to come back into the room a few minutes later. At least at this point the timer had been paused. It then took another 10 mins or so to ensure the disruption was totally over and then another 15 mins for our proctor to call LSAC to see how to move forward. Ultimately they told him to resume where we left off (31 min mark) despite his pleas to rewind the clock to the 27 min point (or 8 mins remaining).

Aside from the obvious distraction and large loss of time, this large break also made the remaining questions difficult, especially those who had RC first. I essentially had to re-read and answer the questions for the final RC passage in 4 mins, given the distraction occurred when I was only halfway through the passage.

Would there be any benefit for me to call and complain? I am assuming they do not alter score as a result of external circumstances? I do not wish to cancel/get a refund, but would they potentially grant me free admission to the February test?

Tl;dr: Somone who was late for the LSAT ran into the classroom we were writing, screaming and videotaping people and cost us 4 mins of test writing. What should I do?

1

19 months

365 days logged into 7sage

40 preptests

8 study buddies

3 kaplan textbooks

3 actual LSATs

1 cancelled score

1 powerscore textbook

1 lsat trainer textbook

1 7sage party in Toronto

It's finally over. Thank you 7sage, you've been awesome.

9

I am not going to lie, I could see it going either way. I went with my first choice every single time, without making sure that it wasn't a trap answer. I am usually pretty good at getting around the Trap answer but you never know. The logic games definitely screwed me over and reading comprehension wasn't hard but I ran out of time on the last four questions

1

Hey guys,

I've been on 7Sage for quite some time now but I don't post that often. Here's my background: I started studying for the LSAT in the summer of 2014 with a Blueprint classroom course. It was not helpful for me and I continued to study after the course but not consistently. I found 7Sage in fall of 2015 and went through the curriculum. It was helpful but I still didn't feel ready to take the exam. Between April 2016 until now I have been studying consistently. I even took a 6 week leave from work to study full time prior to yesterday's test. I have a 3.9 GPA from a great school. My goal score was 165+ for yesterday's test. I have been PTing in the mid-160s and BRing in the 170s.

Yesterday started off great. I felt good about the first three sections (LR-RC-LR). However, like many others on here, I had some serious issues with LG yesterday. LG was my 4th section. I completely choked on games 3 and 4 and unfortunately carried that anxiety and stress into my last LR section which has turned out not to be experimental. Needless to say it was extremely hard to focus in that last section and I had to guess on more questions than I normally would need to. I am seriously considering canceling my score. I know most schools take the highest score, but I can't stand the thought of having a low score on my record. I am completely devastated.

What should I do? I am not even sure how to study moving forward now that these oddball games are becoming the new "norm".

0

Before the test was handed out, the lady to the right of me was sneezing. The lady to the left of me had some tissue and was reaching over me to hand to her. I simply took it from her and gave it to the lady to the right of me and the next thing you know a proctor comes up to me saying"There can be no communication between test takers. This is your final warning. If it happens again, you will be dismissed." I told her that I didn't say anything and just gave her tissue. Then she asks,"Do you want to be dismissed?" I didn't respond and the test was handed out. My nerves from that incident were wracking during the first section and I believe i totally bombed section one. Anyways, as the test progressed I began to calm down and believe that I did well for the remaning 4 sections. Still, I believed I significantly underperformed for section one. I will be retesting I February and wanted tips for best controlling nerves. I normally don't get anxiety on standardized test but something different happened today.

0

I mean, I guess I get it. But I've had a terrible time trying to get an accurate gauge of where I fall on the application spectrum. I've even found that current law school students and those recently graduated from law schools are disinclined to share their number. Is it just super tacky for me to ask? I've never shied away from sharing my score on the Dec 2015 test and I doubt I'll be hesitant to share my score from this one if I'm asked. Just wondering how others feel about giving out the actual number.

0

Hey guys so I just took the DEC LSAT and my goal was to hit 165+. I didn't get sleep the night before at all (I don't really know why this happened...) so i went in today thinking I'm pretty screwed... But it ended up being not so bad apart from losing a bit of concentration during Section 3, which may have very well been the experimental section, and the last game. I felt like the test went good enough to where i might have hit my goal. However, since i won't know if thats the case or not, i was planning on completing my law schools apps by the time the scores get released and then deciding whether or not i want to keep studying for a FEB retake. Now, my question is, is this a good idea? Or is taking off 3 weeks to wait for the results and work on my apps too long of a break from the LSAT in case I would have to retake?

0

This is my second sitting for the LSAT.... i have been killing myself for 5-6 months now averaging -3 on LG -5 to -4 on LR and well RC -9 -13 ... I wasn't prepared my first time around completely underestimated the test...but i couldn't sleep the night before.. and scored very bad.... second time coming now and again i couldn't sleep last night tossing turning from 10 to 3 am then maybe got 2 hours of shut eye ... and went to the test like i was so disoriented and sleep deprived that i could hardly figure the word adjacent on the second LG .... I'm in a nightmare ... this is not what was supposed to happen ...

0

Hey y'all! So I'm retaking in September of 2017. The last time I took in December 2015. I've been studying since Augustus of 2016. Back then, I really should not have tested as I was weak in all three sections. Now, LG I want to take slowly as I master them. However, I really think I'm getting a bit too far behind since I been doing and redoing the LG intro lessons again and again for like two to three weeks now. I was wondering if it would be ok if I moved on in the curriculum for the LR and RC sections and just kept coming back to the lg lessons, basically moving a lot slower on just LG? Or is there intention in the way the curriculum was scheduled and I should just stick to it no matter how long it takes for me to get LG? I know that the fundamental concepts behind each section is the same so I should really be alright no matter which way I go, but I'm also a full time teacher so it's getting harder and harder to schedule time to study and I don't want to fall so behind that I don't even get to the other LR types and RC practices.

Also fir what it's worth from advice on this board I went ahead and purchased the lsat trainer! I'm hoping to start working through that to complement 7Sage soon!

Thanks in advance!

0

This is long, rambly story of going from about a -14 on RC to -4 on RC because I stopped being stubborn.

So a couple of days ago I had a substantial RC meltdown. Basically a whole bunch of events transpired that more or less showed me what I needed to do to help my RC. Here are the events that kind of resulted in me learning how to do RC more efficiently.

Until about four days ago, out of the practice tests I have completed, I had maybe gotten 2/4 passages completed on RC (Averaging about 12-15 minutes per passage – no joke). Even when I tried to do J.Y.’s memory method I would just sit there thinking “I just can’t do it, J.Y.! I’m just not smart enough!” (if you don’t think J.Y. is omniscient, you’re doing the course wrong).

Then, I did one passage and got ¾ passages done on a prep-test with one sneaky line reference question completed in the last passage. I heralded as a huge success thinking, okay. This means I’m getting faster at reading.

Correlation vs. Causation anyone?

After doing some R.C. drills (at my same obnoxiously slow pace), this was quickly disproved.

Then I just started experiencing dread at the myth that people can’t get higher on RC easily (or even at all, as some will tell you). And here I was, doing my drills, sometimes spending up to ten minutes just reading the darn thing.

Then things just spiraled out of control; I freaked out and asked the Internet.

In doing so, I found this article, https://lsathacks.com/email-course/reading-comprehension/. I took the reading speed test the article tells you to and I read it at the same speed I’d been reading LSAT questions. Basically the thing just confirmed I was like dial-up internet when it came to reading speed (although of course, my comprehension was super high because I was reading so darn slow).

The speed test told me I was in the "insufficient" category of readers. I thought, “Insufficient? Screw you online reading test! Your website is insufficient. I read Derrida. My Master’s thesis has 250 references -- I had to read all of those. My whole job revolves around editing and making recommendations on doctoral dissertations and master’s theses. There’s no way I’m an insufficient reader… Is there?”

But there was no way I could think to RRE this apparent paradox.

So I resigned myself to believing I had an irretrievably FMOR and gave in to crippling self-doubt, tabbed back to the article, mortified, thinking “save me from this death.” The article said I was probably “subvocalizing” (a word for pronouncing each word as you’re reading) as I was subvocalizing – super meta. It said smart people didn’t do that.

Mortified at the thought that I had been doing this very thing basically most of my life, the article said I should use Spreeder (basically an app that flashes words across the screen at a certain number of WPM and you can use it to increase your number of WPM and so that you can learn not to subvocalize).

So, I loaded some pretty dense material on Spreeder. For ten minutes I spreeded (hmmm… spred? sprud?) at different speeds. After my ten minutes were up, and before I continued with my spreeding like a time-wasting buffoon, I figured I should look in the LSAT forums and see what other people said about Spreeder.

Lo and behold, J.Y. had already chimed in on it (he’s omniscient, remember?):

If you're running out of time on RC, it's not because you can't read the passage fast enough. It's because you're waffling b/t answers. You do that because you don't read well - be it the passage, the question stem, or the answers. Focus on reading well. Focus on reading for structure. Advice on how to read faster targets casual reading. If you've done any RC at all you'll know all too well that the speed limit is not set by how quickly your eyes can move across the page, how many words your eyes can snap in one shot, or whether you're subvocalizing. Rather, the speed limit is set by lack of subject-matter familiarity and the dense grammatical structure.

I thought, “So magic doesn’t exist. Great. I still can’t read well so basically I’m just screwed.”

Then I tentatively tried to look up LSAT RC reading structures (look them up in the forums – there are some really interesting ones). They gave me some insight, but no cheat sheet in the world was going to help with my problem.

Crestfallen, I returned to my RC drills. I tried to use the highlighter method posted up here earlier by @kylereinhard, hoping that the effervescent yellow stain would incite some inner RC warrior like it had for him. Long story short, I took 8 minutes on the stimulus and 4 minutes on the questions. And I got three wrong. Well, a girl can dream. (Not bashing his method. Try this -- maybe it'll work for you).

Crushed, I tried to look for happy stories in the Webinar section of people who did awesome things after being not so awesome. I found Allison Gill Sanford’s webinar https://classic.7sage.com/webinar/lsat-prep-for-170-plus/ and jumped to the part where she talked about RC. In the webinar, she said, “I would spend way too much time up front on the easy passages…” Which was exactly how I felt. Then (and I’m pretty sure it was her who said this, or maybe it was something I saw in the Trainer, which I looked in after listening to her webinar), which basically said we should try to keep our reading rate more or less constant over our different stimuli and then also replicate this in the practice test (obviously with allowances for harder passages).

So I figured, ok. If I am going to succeed at RC maybe I should just try to read at a speed that will just get me there on time. So, there are maybe 440 words per RC section. If you read in 2 minutes, that means 220 words per minute. If you read in three minutes, that’s 146 words per minute. I knew what it felt like to read at both of those speeds because I had spreeded earlier that day – which showed me that I could read, comfortably, at both of those rates.

So, I decided: I’m going to ‘spreed’ the stimuli (not in the Spreeder app, just on the page but at the same rate as I would read had they been in the spreeder set to 220), using J.Y.’s memory method, for one RC section. I grabbed my analog watch and set it to zero, and-ahem-spreeded the passage until 3:30. Then did a 30 second review of structure. Then answered the question until the full 8 minutes was up. Then went onto the next one. And so on.

Results of the first try:

-4 (And this time, not -4 thanks to guesses!) -- obviously a significant difference for me.

And since I was actually able to focus on the problems (which I’ve since noticed, thanks to BRs and this method, are more so with the questions than with the actual passage itself), I’m improving on RC now just as if it was LR!

Moral:

If you’re like me and you’re doing RC like a sloth because you basically misunderstand everything everyone says because you are some sort of backwards and self-destructive over-achiever (and/or you’re just inherently defiant to omniscient authorities even when they are one hundred percent correct), then maybe just run over quickly to Spreedster, prove to yourself you can read faster than you are right now, come back, and ‘spreed’ it.

I’m not saying skim it. Just read it at a faster rate. For 3:30 or 4 minutes or less. As J.Y. pointed out earlier, don’t worry about subvocalizing or anything like that right now either. You can become a non-subvocalizing speed reader at a different time if that’s really your passion, but I’m not so sure the RC section is the time for it unless you have like ten years to prepare or something.

Anyways. I hope this is helpful to somebody so that they don’t go through the whole ridiculous situation I just went through.

Keep calm and carry on!

*P.s. Don’t mean to insinuate that the article mentioned above can’t be helpful to some folks! Maybe it is the secret way to victory and I'll just never really know.

10

Please note that the information below will change to reflect the information we get! Contribute if you can via the official December 2016 LSAT discussion (linked at the bottom of this thread) without going into too much detail. If you think something is wrong or should be added, please post in the thread and let me know.

Real Sections:

LG:

-Corporations Trading with Eachother / Building Trading

-Paintings on a Wall / Watercolors & Oils

-Mystery Clues / Chapters in a Book

-Students on a Research Team / Green/Red Teams

RC:

-Great Migration of African Americans from North to South

-Rawls Theory of Justice Differs from Utilitarianism

-Insider Trading

-Brain Scans

LR:

-Poison Ivy & Evolution

-Caterpillars

-Wolves Eating Moose

-Bugs Eating Things That Make Them Taste Bad

-Volunteers Showing up for an Event

-Television Station with Popular / Highly Watched Program

-Alexander the Great's Tomb

-T-Rex

-French Biology

-Winter/Summer Trout

-Water Fee on Roads Rather than Dams / Tax Dollars

-Cat Food

-Iguanas on an Island

-Birds and Their Nests

-18th-Century Church Organ

-Politician

-Leopard Magpie

-Puzzles

-Teenage Morning Driving Accidents / School Start Times

-Those Who Desire to be Kind

-Devaluing Companies

Experimental Sections:

LG:

-Pianist/Violinists Playing Duets

-Doctors Scheduling Days to Work

-Coal Mining Company

RC:

-How Humans Changed as Cooking Progresses

-Fukuyama

LR:

-Smokers, Low Body Weight, Health

-Blaming a Company for Pollution until there was Algae

-Doctors and Handwriting

UNCONFIRMED:

If you can confirm that these are real / experimental, please do so by PMing me or posting in the main thread.

LR:

-Touching Something Blue and Red

-What Year a Book was Written based on it Asking Where He Was

RC:

LG:

This thread is closed for discussion. Official post December LSAT discussion here:

https://classic.7sage.com/discussion/#/discussion/9665/official-december-lsat-discussion-thread

2

Hope everyone has a great night tonight and day tomorrow! Here are my plans:

Tonight:

1. Watch a Harry Potter movie

2. Take a bath

3. Have a half glass of wine (sorry JY, I'm not full giving up my wine)

4. Read Harry Potter

5. Go to bed at 9:30PM

Tomorrow:

1. Get up at 5AM

2. Exercise (but not so much that I need to drink a lot of water)

3. Take a shower/shave/get ready like usual

4. Cook a hearty breakfast of eggs, toast, and greens

5. Have one cup of coffee

6. Warm up with 2 easy LG and half of a LR section

7. Drive to the test center

8. Listen to ABBA's "Dancing Queen" in the parking lot

9. Slay the test

10. Go to my BFF's and pop a bottle of champagne

11. Listen to more ABBA

Good luck everyone! We got this! Or if we don't, then I guess we'll be seeing more of each other at least until Feb ;)

6
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Saturday, Dec 3, 2016

7sage analytics

Sorry if this has been asked before, but is there a way to completely wipe out my 7sage analytics for a "fresh start"? I know you can do it one by one but I'm just so lazy, lol.

0

I'm thinking about retaking some of the 70s pts. Has anyone done retakes? If so how helpful is it and how do you get the most out of it?

0

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