2 weeks away, people!!!!! Let’s do this!

LSATurday, Nov 21st at 8PM ET: PT73

Click here to join this conversation: https://join.skype.com/tA67DTS6xgqW

Please click the link and comment if you plan on participating.

Note:

I was conditionally approved for an LSAC fee waiver, sent all the documents 2 weeks ago....now they want a tax transcript from the IRS. I don't want to wait anymore - what is the fastest way to withdraw the fee waiver request so my account is not on hold anymore??

I've studied for the LSAT for the past 8 months and have written the LSAT before so it won't be my first (or even second) sitting. I've been writing a PT most, if not every, weekend for as long as I remember. I'm scoring in a range on my timed PTs that if I were to get the average of those scores on test day I could close this chapter of my life and be happy (again, if I score closer to my BR scores I'll be even happier!).

Despite all this and feeling confident I have some nerves that are starting to build as we inch closer to the exam. I find that meditation (love that 24 minute one on the site) is helping a lot but still sometimes late at night my mind begins to wander. Anyone else feeling the same?

Maybe when that happens I should go for a midnight jog.

Hi everyone, with the December LSAT swiftly approaching I thought it would be good to start a discussion on your personal choice for game day breakfast. I've noticed if I have a breakfast primarily of carbs for example that I feel sluggish and less focused. I seem to perform better on my PTs when I have something more substantial like an egg, or bacon, egg and cheese sandwich. Pacifico has won me over with the bulletproof coffee as well, not sure if I perform better or not but it certainly does seem to help me feel better and more focused. What are your favorite breakfast foods before a PT, or the actual LSAT?

I have been studying for the LSAT for a few months now and my score has tremendously improved. I am now scoring on average 165 consistently on prep tests, but what holds my score back is my reading comp section. I usually always score the lowest on RC. On my last prep test I took, I missed 2 in LG, 2/3 in LR, but missed 8 in RC, so it is really hindering my overall score. I am consistently having trouble with the humanities and social science passages in RC. I do not like those subjects and have had virtually zero practice since high school (I'm a Finance major). I have been practicing more on RC and trying to review, but I just don't know what I can do to help my score. I watched the webinar that was posted previously on the discussing and I am going to try her tips, but I just feel like I always second guess myself and narrow it down to two answers, but in the moment of the test I choose the incorrect answer. Any ideas on what I can do to try to work on my reading or any other tips? I am going to try to notate differently because I do find myself going back a lot and not being able to find anything because I underline everything as I read.

So for questions like question 11 on PT 71(Game 2) where the question is If _____ happens then for how many of the other "pieces" is their position fully determined do you count pieces that are established by a general rule? I watched the video explanation and J.Y. counted it but he didn't give it any comment. I usually do but for some reason I did not on this game. Basically if the initial rules say "X" must be here and then a question stimulus says if "Y" is in this spot, for how many of the other pieces is their position determined you count "X" even though it was already established before the question added a new piece of information? The piece in question here is "G" for this game.

Just wanted to thank @"J.Y. Ping" and 7sage again!

I got into Berkeley Law and I'm sure my LSAT score made a big difference. I wouldn't have scored in the 99th percentile if it wasn't for 7sage.

Thank you 7Sage!

Can someone name a few games that require a lot of brute force. These seems to be the one that trip me up the most during LG sections and I want to drill them before the Dec. exam.

I didn't circle this during BR, and I am really struggling to justify D over B. Here is my breakdown:

This is a weaken/descriptive flaw question.

Sites are needed for disposal of this thing (whatever it is). However, the approach you want would hurt the fishing business. Evidence of this is a petition that was signed by over 20,000 people opposing your approach and favoring this other approach (sand capped pits).

What I am looking for: I think the argument is pretty simple enough to understand. Is the petition really evidence that the other guy's approach would actually hurt the fishing business? What if all the people who signed the petition were corporate shills or fisherman lobbyists? Also, the argument implies that the other approach (sand capped pits) would not hurt the fishing business. We know nothing about this other approach.

Answer A: The author doesn't straw man the editor. The author is using evidence to support his claim (even though it is weak evidence).

Answer B: This is what I picked, and I was 100% confident. Doesn't the argument do this? Doesn't the argument just throw in this random other approach (sand capped pits) without establishing that it could work? We have no evidence that it actually fits the needs of disposing the spoils. Viable means "capable of working successfully; feasible." The idea of "one indication" to me introduces evidence/premise for the conclusion. Wouldn't the "indication"/evidence/support given be completely irrelevant if their proposed alternate approach wasn't viable?

Answer C: The author doesn't indicate what his interests are.

Answer D: I am having a very tough time understanding how this one is correct. I eliminated this over the word "testimony." How is signing a petition testimony? According to Google, testimony means "a formal written or spoken statement, especially one given in a court of law." A petition is "a formal written request, typically one signed by many people, appealing to authority with respect to a particular cause." How are these two the same thing? Specifically, the idea that a "written statement" is the same thing as a "written request" seems extremely dubious to me. If the word "testimony" were replaced with "appeal," then I could better understand what this was going for. Testimony seems such a bad synonym for what the evidence actually is in the argument.

Answer E: No third option? We don't care. We only care about the two options in the argument.

I know that there are recommendations about length here on 7sage, and that there are vague guidelines in other places. However, I want to know how long the personal statement was that you actually submitted as part of your application? I'm having trouble getting mine down to the recommended length (~850 words), and am thinking about turning in a longer essay. Thoughts?

I cannot make heads are tails of this argument/figure out what it is talking about. I had no idea what any of the answer choices were doing since I couldn't understand the argument. Can someone break it down for me? This is my best paraphrase (which isn't much):

After an oil spill, rehab centers were set up to clean the oil off sea otters. The effort wasn't worth it. This is where I just flat out can't figure out what is going on. What is the rest of the argument trying to even say?

Hi guys! Just a quick question, as I am personally struggling with making the decision of taking Dec exam or postpone till June. As the whole world tells you to "just take it," idk if i "just" wanna take it...

Lets say I score a 160-162 this dec (no where near my goal)

Retake in June, and get in the upper 160s, say 167-169 range.

Would the admissions be dubious about such a jump? Is that something I have to explain or is that a given that I worked my butt off? Idk, there seems to be a lot of talk about not wanting to "scar" your records with a lower score, vs getting a much higher one later...

Any thoughts?

thanks guys :)

So I took the LSAT in October and underperformed terribly, let's say in the 145-150 range, and I plan on retaking the test in December. On my PT's, I'm still not at where I want to be but I don't really want to, nor have the option to, really wait another full cycle before applying.

Also, I was an engineering major at UCI and graduated with a not so stellar GPA. However, at my current job, I'm gaining lots of experience--ranging from project management to quality control, another neat thing is I'm filing for a trademark to get my company's name and logo registered on the USPTO website << this is fantastic because I want to go to law school for Intellectual Property.

Now my question is, given my relatively lower gpa and not so stellar LSAT score (hoping to crush it this time around but knowing the LSAT, ya know...), what would you guys say are my chances of getting into a school with a pretty solid IP program?

Questions, comments, advice highly appreciated. :)

UPDATE: Site and app are back up again! Luckily everything went smoothly, so the total downtime was less than an hour :)

We are moving the site to new servers very soon on Thursday, November 19. This will affect both the site and the App.

We are taking the site down starting at 11:30pm Eastern (8:30pm Pacific) time. ​We hope to have the site back up within a few hours, but it may take longer, so please expect it to be down until the next morning.:(

The good news is: based on our testing, the site should be faster after the move :)

Sorry for the inconvenience during the move!

If you are still unable to access the site the next morning (Friday, November 20), please clear your DNS Cache (https://documentation.cpanel.net/display/CKB/How+To+Clear+Your+DNS+Cache). If that doesn't help, please send us an email.

So this is a slight spin off of a different post reading RC. On Sunday I had a huge score drop from my high of 162 back down to 150. My clean copy BR was 176.

The break down was -7/-8 on LR -15 on LG and -14 on RC. LG I completely understood the score drop, a couple of bi-conditionals I wasn't familiar with and caused me to freeze. I BR and I feel fairly confident that if I see these issues again I will know what to do.

However, this is actually reflective of an overall trend I am seeing here. I've seen my LR improve significantly and I am fairly consistent w/ -7/8 and this was certainly and LG outlier and I'm usually seeing -3 or so. But I have just not seen RC improve, and it's stayed roughly -10 since day one. My diagnostic had me at -8 which would have put me at pretty decent shape for test day in Dec.

So far it's been either accuracy or speed. If I go for accuracy, I'm down -13/14. If I'm going for speed I've seen -10. As the PT have progressed I feel like both have steadily gotten worse and I can't tell whether the sections are just actually more difficult or my strategy is getting more and more off-base. Any ideas how to shore this up in the next couple of weeks?

Hey guys,

For a while now I have been working through the earlier PT's 21-38, concentrating on accuracy and applying the proper methodology to the questions. I recently discovered that I was unable to purchase PT's 39-48 because they are unavailable in the form of the 10 PT's. I decided to purchase PT's 48, 49, 50, 51 and I already have 52-75. I sat down to do timed sections with PT 48 and everything just seems way different from the PT's I have been practicing with; Questions are asked different, and the games in this test were weird, and I could not identify what type of games they were. Is it like this for all the newer tests and it is just something which I need to get familiar with, or is this test just weird? When I took the 07 PT the games were not this weird, so I am not sure what is going on.

Hello All:

Quick preface:

1. I am taking the Dec. 2015 LSAT.

2. I started at 132

3. average PT score is 152/154

4. Target Score: ANYTHING over 160. Must apply this cycle for a reason in which i can't disclose (too personal), and although i wish it was, it is by no means flexible (i'll give ya a small hint... Uncle Sam isn't too happy with the delayed student visa).

5. Any tips would be greatly appreciated!

EDIT: "The online tutor that gave me this RC advice was NOT @nicole.hopkins . His name is D*****

I was on a Skype tutoring session earlier this week with a tutor i met from Reddit, his name is D****, and the tutor advised me to slow down and attempt less questions, and work on accuracy... i'm still trying to find my sweet spot.

On the RC section, instead of attempting all 4 passages, I only attempted 2 and worked on accuracy. It felt kind of weird, but based on the last 2 PT's iv'e taken and employed this strategy, It looks good so far.. only missed 2 on this PT (PT67)

On the LG section, I didn't slow down.. you either know it or you don't. i came out -4 because they were all time sinks.

On both LR sections, i attempted as many as i could, but slowed down a bit and tried to internalize every single word i read. Again, it feels a little weird not gunning for the whole section, but i did as many as i could, as fast as i could, just 20 miles-per hour slower, also making sure I was hitting at the minimum 17

Here's the breakdown:

Section 1 (RC) - 13/27 (-14). Did the first 2 passages only. got -2 on all questions attempted. the rest were guesses, and i only got 1 guess right.

Section 2 (LR1) - 11/25 (-14)- Guessed 6 (-6), -8 for questions attempted. -8 = -2 Sufficient assumption, -1weaken, -2flaw, -1 Disagree (crazy one!), -1 Main Conc. , -1 Most strongly supported.

**all questions skipped were in the end except for #17 (parallel)

Section 3 (LG) - 18/22 (-4) 2 questions were those "rule substitute" prompt (takes too long, guessed and moved on) and the other 2 were diagram errors. will fix that.

Section 4 (LR2)- 16/26 (-10) -6 were guesses and -4 were incorrect ones: -1 Main Conc., -2 Resolve, -1 Sufficient Assumption.

by the way... my BR's are still not going over 160. What is REALLY weird is that when i drill sections or drill sets, i go between -4 and -8, which is what i wish i was.

Thank you for taking the time to help a fellow 7sager out.

for all taking the Dec LSAT, I'd wish you good luck... BUT WE DON'T NEED IT! we are going to crush it!

Soooo I just took the PT with the dinosaur game and it's freaking me out because I'm worried I'll face something this crazy on the real thing. Do you guys have any advice on preparing for hybrids?

Hello,

I am having trouble with getting video explanations for certain LR questions. It only allows me to see "Jy video explantion" of him actually working on the problem, and there's no volume to hear the explanation? Please fix this problem ASAP. Thank you

For some reason, my search box for the discussion page is gone :(

Has anyone else really had trouble with finding certain PT questions on the discussion board? I'll have a specific question, but I'll try searching it via the suggested format, just the PT, the question, etc. and more times than not nothing comes up, even though I KNOW THERE ARE QUESTIONS ABOUT PT 75 ON HERE. It seems very impractical. I generally will have to post my own discussion about it, and I hate to do that if there is a perfectly good explanation out there, already written by someone, and then have someone waste their time re-explaining it.It just doesn't seem to be a good format.

Am I missing something? I think it would be a really great addition to have an area where the specific PT's are discussed, and then the questions/sections pre-listed, similar to Manhattan Prep maybe, but obviously with a 7Sage spin. I really hate having to go to another website with less-than-stellar explanations when the community here is filled with brilliant minds and 7Sagers... I love this community and consider myself quite loyal. Just my two cents. What does anyone else think?

(P.S. can anyone supply a link to PT 75.1.11?)

Happy Wednesday everyone, hope studying is rollling along!

PT 72, also known as

Tonight at Group BR!

Wednesday, Nov 18th at 8PM ET: PT72

Click here to join this conversation: https://join.skype.com/wGTZaVjudu5m

Please click the link and comment if you plan on participating.

Note:

I also want to work on more grouping games like pt 68 g3. Thanks!

Sometimes when I'm doing the games, I take too long to decide when to split the game boards. Any rule of thumb? Thanks!

I'm trying to figure out the best way to prepare for the LSAT between now and December. Now, I feel as if I'm doing BR wrong. My BR scores and my PT scores are very close. On the last test I did, there was a difference of just one point (for reference I'm PTing in the low/mid-170s).

But one thing that the BR process has taught me is that I make a lot of confidence errors due to misreading and timing pressure. I'm considering BRing the entire test to address this, but my gut tells me that that would be a poor use of time because it seems like I would be better off actively practicing to improve timing instead of going over 20+ questions to find that I missed one due to forgetting that it included the word "except." The only thing I seem to be learning is that I need to read more carefully?

With that said, though, I do BR the LG section in its entirety, because I'm not -0 in LG. I'm getting there but...

Also, since December is rapidly approaching, I feel as if I should emphasize going through more PTs instead of BR, but going through PTs quickly seems to be looked down upon by the LSAT experts here, so before I went through with my atypical plan of quickly progressing through PTs while continuing to BR as I already am, I thought I would double check with all of the wise people here.