Self-study
If anyone feels dejected by their current slow pace at LG, I am here to tell you it will get better. Below, I share how I went from -8 to -0 in three months on my LG section, which will hopefully inspire/help you out.
The Beginning: Before I get into the specifics, I think it's important to address the mental shift I went through a couple weeks after my diagnostic. After missing 8 questions on my first PT, I thought that correctly answering 23 questions in 35 minutes was simply impossible. But then I showed the problems to my partner, and he whizzed through the games. I was gob smacked, impressed, and proud! I was also, admittedly, insecure about my own lack of skill.
My first mistake was comparing my weakness to someone else's strength. In the back of my head, I thought things like "How will I ever do well in law school if these dumb puzzles are giving me so much grief?" The LSAT made me feel like I lacked this shiny quality of intelligence that someone could only be born with. Studying felt like a waste of time. Every missed question felt like a thorn in my foot. So, for a couple of weeks, I danced around the topics I was worst at, focusing on areas of less priority. Obviously, this method wasn't yielding any results, and I felt frustrated with my lack of progress.
But then I read a post on Reddit that changed my entire approach. It said that improving your score requires ignoring your sense of pride and/or shame. I cannot overemphasize how important it was to hear someone telling me to get my head out of my ass. If you're in the same place of insecurity that I was, I'm here to tell you to snap the heck out of it. You. Can. Do. It. The LSAT is a SKILL that can be sharpened, not a measure of innate talent or intelligence that some people either have or don't have. Do. Not. Give. Up. Improvement took me three months, but there is no shame in it taking longer than that! The LSAT isn't going anywhere. Quit taking it personally. Buckle down and focus on what you're bad at.
Here's how I did it:
April - May: After realizing that I was being silly, I bought the Logic Games Powerscore Bible, which was helpful, but not perfect. It definitely familiarized me with all the different types of games and provided a LOT of drills and explanations that improved my accuracy, but I was NOT fast enough. If I were recommending it to someone, I would say that it was probably a good place to start. However, I probably gained the most improvement from listening to multiple test-prep sites explain games in different ways and picking the methods that worked best for me. After about four weeks of going through PowerScore and using a lot of its drills, I took another practice test and got -4 because I ran out of time and had to guess on a handful.
June: I had to take a break from studying for a few weeks for personal reasons, but I came back around June 20th.
Late June - July: When I took my first PT after returning, I was SOO rusty. After a few days of doing more LG drills from Powerscore again, though, I noticed my skills returning to their previous level. However, I was consistently still running out of time on the LG section. So, I drilled at least 2 hours a day for a week using Khan Academy because I thought maybe a different platform would be beneficial, but it didn't seem to be helping too much. I was STILL averaging -3/-4 on each LG section.
July: That's when I sought out 7sage. I felt like I needed a COMPLETELY different approach to the LG than what the Powerscore Bible had given me. If you also used that book, you'll know it told you to write down Not Laws when possible. Because I had gotten 15/23 on my diagnostic test, I assumed that I had to follow the Powerscore Bible religiously (pun intended) and hadn't even considered deviating from its instructions.
However, I feel like writing Not Laws slowed me down considerably. For some reason, JY giving me permission in one of the first LG videos to NOT write the Not Laws was exactly what I needed. After a week on 7Sage and giving up on my Not Law notations, I've noticed serious speed improvement and achieved my first perfect LG section yesterday!!
Final takeaways? As you can see, progress isn't always linear or predictable. Try multiple platforms and see what explanations work best for you, combining them if you want. Be kind to yourself at the beginning. You're learning a new skill, not testing an innate quality. And lastly, practice practice practice. Don't shy away from the difficult stuff if you want to actually improve.
