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Hi everyone,

We are going to put these office hours on hold as we prepare for the new season. If you want them to continue, leave a comment, and we may restart them in June!

📌 Questions? We've got answers. @"selene.steelman" and I are happy to talk to you about law school admissions in our remote office hours every Wednesday at 9 p.m. ET.

🐣 New: Selene and I will start with a short discussion of a timely topic—law school financial aid, wait lists, etc.—before we open it up to your questions.

🍪 Topic: This Wednesday, we'll talk about how to pick a law school.

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34

On my most recent, and best pt, i did -5 both LRs, -5 RC and -10 LG. Second time getting that 161 3rd in the low 160, average is 157. I am aiming for 165 or bust and feel im super close. Thinkin trying to get that LG to -5 would be the best way to focus next two weeks? Drill the weakest LR categories and same for LG? Thoughts? Any encouragement?

0

Hello!

So RC is consistently my worst section. Do y'all have any life-changing RC tips that really helped you raise your score or changed the way you approached the passages? I'm getting anywhere from 6-8 wrong per RC section. I'd really looove to get down to just -4, so affording myself one question wrong per passage. Well I'd love to get down to -0 but ya know, 2 weeks left and all so I'm trying to be realistic. I have trouble connecting the ideas sometimes and then when the words get more unknown and the concepts more complex and confusing I just get lost (like in science passages..) I'm doing the low res summaries for each paragraph but I find that just mainly helps me with knowing the main point/structure of the passage. When it comes to the inference questions or anything that asks me to operate on a concept I struggle more.

Any help would be greatly appreciated :)

Thank you for your time!

3

I have a rough draft for my PS and I was hoping someone could please read it for me, offer suggestions, or anything. If you want, we could even swap them and I would love to read yours as well. Let me know please!

0

7Sage’s first lesson in the core curriculum is: the LSAT is hard. I recently reread this lesson and wanted to add some thoughts: especially for people who might not have gotten the score they desired from the most recent administration of the exam or who are currently struggling to hit their goals.

An elite score on the LSAT has the potential to be worth $100,000 in scholarship money. This is a ton of money. To give some perspective: the average winner of an episode of Jeopardy wins about $12,000. Years of memorizing facts and figures ranging from everything from state capitals, flags, quotes from literature, pop culture references and even physics comes down to 21 minutes of rapid fire questions and an average award of $12,000. A person who wins Jeopardy has undoubtably spent years-decades even- collecting knowledge and fashioning skills for that moment.

What’s worse is that if that person wants to win what an elite LSAT score can provide them: they have to win 8 times in a row, this against 8 different pairs of equally qualified, equally hungry people who have been preparing equally hard for the next 21 minutes.

For what it’s worth, Uncle Sam will then take roughly 25% of their earnings. Which means the person who wants to win the equivalent of what an elite LSAT score can afford them must win about 11 straight games against a total of 22 other equally qualified, equally hungry people who have been studying a lifetime for the next 21 minutes!

So what we have here when we draw these parallels, is a reassertion that what an elite school can afford us is quite amazing and therefore it shouldn’t be surprising that the LSAT is hard. More specifically: that an elite score on the LSAT is hard. But, inch by inch progress can come and with the right study schedule, discipline and a supportive community: progress will come.

But, when you’re in the thick of RC or LG drilling or cracking necessary assumption question patterns, don’t get down if your score is not increasing quickly or linearly, for many test takers, it will be a laborious process. This thing is supposed to be hard and sometimes we lose sight of that, especially on the internet, where it seems like everyone has a high score. I think given some perspective on what an elite score can provide a test taker, it’s really no surprise: the LSAT is hard! Hang in there!

David

https://classic.7sage.com/lesson/the-lsat-is-hard/

22

I am having serious neck and upper back pain from studying for LSAT. I am studying 4-5 hours per day, and it is really affecting my performance.

Has anybody had this problem? If yes, what did you do ?

0

Does anyone recommend fool proofing games one at a time, and not moving to a new game until having mastered the game you're working on? Or, alternatively, is it better to work on a set of, say, three or four at a time?

0

I have an adequate understanding of the material. I am relentless in my reviews of my LR sections. When I see a question I have a clear strategy. My issue is getting through the questions quickly enough. I neglect about 2 questions in each LR section, though not completely, but I end up having 30 seconds for each. It is just not enough.

Any tips? I am sure there are plenty of people that encounter this issue. I do not have a natural affinity for speed reading. It is killing me that two the difference between -5 and -3 in a section is just due to speed.

2

I feel like I've been studying for the Nov LSAT for years!

I need to re-group and give the last 2 weeks all I have, but I can't seem to get myself mentally back to where I need to be.

I feel like my family doesn't want to talk about it with me anymore because it has been such an all consuming thing in our house for so long, and so I am left to internalize all my stress and sleepless anxiety alone.

Sorry to be such a downer, I'm just exhausted.

Has anyone else out there felt anything similar? The weird thing is that my numbers are okay and I really do want this goal for myself, so I don't know why I'm falling apart right at the 5 yard line.

Anyway, any advise or encouragement would be appreciated. Thank you all for being there for me in the short time I've spent with the 7sage community. It has been incredible. You guys are great.

1

So I have been seeing a trend in my PT's about Logic Games for Replacement Rule Questions. Let's just say no matter what I do, I never get them right. And also find that those questions, for me at least, are time consuming. Can you guys share some tips or tricks which can help me get the answer correct and in less time?

Thanks!

0

Hi everyone,

I'm excited to post one of the best personal statements I've ever worked on! This essay flies in the face of a lot of PS advice you might find in the wild, including ours. It centers on a childhood incident and talks about the author's depression. It doesn't even really tell a story. Nevertheless, I think it's PHENOMENAL, and admissions committees agreed: the author wound up going to Stanford.

If you've been tuning in to the podcast, this is the essay that I reference in the latest episode.

Check it out if you need inspiration: https://classic.7sage.com/admissions/lesson/ps-depression/

3

Hi!

If you've ever tested in a hotel, do you have any recommendations/stories of experience? I'm thinking about staying at the hotel the night before, even though I only live about fifteen minutes away. Have any of you stayed in the hotel where you were testing before?

0

I’be been attending performing arts schools my whole life and I asked my principal teacher to write me a LOR. She agreed, but she has never written a LOR for law school applicants before. She wants me to write a letter myself with the content I need first, and then go to see her and finish the letter together. My problem is I’m not sure what to write either.

Based on my research, law schools would prefer letters from professors who teach classes with a emphasis on verbal reasoning/writing, but the conservatory (a T5) I attended put great emphasis on performance , and the few writing related classes I took were only one semester length classes. I doubt those professors remember me since I’ve been out of school for a few years, and I don’t think they know me well enough to write me a in-depth letter. what do you guys think? I’d appreciate any suggestions! Thank you in advance:)

0

Please wait until you've informed me of your admissions decision before sending me additional scholarship applications from your official [Name of School] Law Admissions email account. The mere sight of an email from you in my inbox causes my heart to stop and my brain to freeze.

0

Hi everyone,

I've been meaning to post about my September administration for some time but I've been too busy studying/traumatized. With November's test coming up, however, I figured I would share my story a) as a distraction from stress studying and b) to make sure no one else does what I did in September.

I took my September test at USF in San Francisco. My roommate, the protagonist in this story, agreed to drive me to the test center in the early morning. I lived in the Mission District of San Francisco, which is a solid 15-17 minute drive away from the test center, and so I decided to get to the test center about forty-five minutes early. I solidly packed my ziplock bag, printed my admissions ticket, and got to USF about forty minutes before the test started. My roommate Bryan drove off with my iPhone (I wrote down his number on a piece of paper and planned to call him on a friendly stranger's phone after I got out of the test), and I decided to calm my nerves across the law school at the cathedral that loomed over the campus on an enormous hill. As my Catholic concentration began to break during my third Hail Mary, I glanced at my ziplock bag and mentally went down the checklist of the things I wanted to have with me in the test center. Beef jerky - check. Water bottle - check. Apple - check. NYT article to read before the test - check. Admission ticket - ...fuck.

I had forgotten my admission ticket in my roommate's car. By the time I realized, there was only twenty minutes left before the test center closed its doors. I began to panic. I ran out of the cathedral and hysterically began asking undergraduates around campus for their phones to call my roommate. In my crazed paranoia, I didn't even think about asking someone to use a printer at USF's library. I needed that admission ticket - it was the only way in. Finally, a Good Samaritan (who I must have terrified by my hysteria) lent me her phone, and I was able to reach my friend. He was home, in the Mission, fifteen minutes away from campus. It was 8:17. I asked him to do whatever he could to get to me, but at that point I was resigned to sit for November.

My friend drove a silver Acura and the law school was situated at an intersection at the top of a massive hill, where one could clearly see each car driving up from its base. Every silver car I saw for those excruciating minutes made my heart rise to my throat only to feel crushing disappointment when it turned out to be yet another San Francisco Prius/Tesla. 8:27. 8:28. 8:29. Those last sixty seconds between 8:29 and 8:30 were the most draining sixty seconds I ever felt between eight months of studying. 8:30. 8:31. It was over. Then, suddenly, I saw a silver car gunning up the hill. I sprinted in its direction, and like a quarterback handing off the football to a running back in the end zone, I grabbed my admission ticket and ran back up the hill to the front of the law school. 8:32. I was the last person in line, and by some miracle, was let into my test room. I had forgotten all my meditation techniques, my negation techniques, my focus on looking for the word "any," etc. All I cared about was that I had gotten into the test center, and although I bombed my first section (my heart rate was through the roof), I was glad I had the opportunity to sit for September.

My September test was about six points below my average and therefore I plan on retaking for November. I attribute the lower score to some personal relationship problems that arose a week before the test and also my self-inflicted meltdown before September. What would I do differently? Probably focus less on making sure my jerky is packed and make sure I secured my admissions ticket.

TLDR: 1) Show up early to your test center. 2) Print more than one admission ticket and staple one on your body.

14

Hi all --

I'm looking for some advice in terms of studying for the LSAT and pacing myself leading up to my upcoming exam.

A little background: I took the February exam this year. I also took a course leading up to it (Test Masters), and while I really liked the course, and I really threw myself into it, I realized after I got my score that maybe cramming all of that information in 3 months wasn't the best for me. When I first took my dry practice test on the first day of class, I got something like a 145. My score definitely improved a ton through the course, and by the time I was taking practice tests independently leading up to the test, I was pretty consistently getting 160s. I also got some 170s too, which was encouraging but seemed too good to be true.

And I was correct. I don't know what happened, well, I kind of do know what happened because logic games are usually my strength and I sort of froze after a very confusing section, plus my reading comprehension stands to be improved....and let's be real, I make silly mistakes in logical reasoning too. I ended up getting a 150, which was pretty disappointing. I definitely put way too much pressure on myself and burnt out on test day.

So, I'm taking another stab at this via 7sage. I just took my practice test and got a 159 (161 BR). I want to take a disclosed test next time around because it really sucked not to know what I got wrong, so, I can't take the test until June. That's a lot of time. I want to use it wisely but also not die/fizzle out. But I'd really like to aim for a 170. Is that insane? Can I do this without losing my mind? As a 26 year old, am I running out of time/waiting too long?

Honestly, this is all so foreign to me because I would theoretically be the first lawyer in my family and I certainly was not surrounded by lawyers growing up or even in college. I work in politics now, so really it's tough to detect sincere advice :)

I hope I don't sound like a complete dummy!

0

hey all

so i've been noticing a trend where for every LR section, there are about 2-4 questions where I'm down to 2 AC's (a wrong AC and the right AC), and I often pick the wrong AC over the right AC.

This is very frustrating because sometimes I feel like I'm just rolling the dice between the 2 AC's (and that I was so close to getting the right AC). Any advice or suggestion to deal with this?

I think perhaps I should just get in a habit of skipping these questions once I'm down to 2 AC's, and then try to come back to them?

The challenge is I often have other questions (like 2 or 3) that I had no idea how to do and I completely skipped that I return to do during round 2, and then don't have enough time to review these questions where I was just down to 2 AC's.

So for priority for Round 2...

Should I

Plan A:

  • First go and redo questions I completely skipped and had no idea how to do?

  • Then go back to questions I was just down to 2 AC's and increase confidence level to pick one?

    • Plan B:

  • First go back to questions I was just down to 2 AC's and increase confidence level to pick one?

  • Then go and redo questions I completely skipped and had no idea how to do?

    • The challenge is that often the 1st step in each plan takes a solid amount of time, and I run out of time to fully do the 2nd step.

    Any advice or suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you.

    0

    hi everyone, what would you suggest are the best study tools to prepare for the LSAT. i am currently using the lsat prep offered by the khan academy online but i’m not sure how effective it is. i plan on retaking the lsat in january

    0

    I subscribed The Economist paper magazines and thought it helped my reading skills. But they don’t have many LSAT-style law articles. Is there any law magazines that are recommended for LSAT extra-curriculum reading? Preferably something that has paper version since I prefer to read on paper and won’t be taking the digital LSAT (hopefully).

    0

    Hey everyone. I work as a paralegal at a family law firm.Yesterday a client left threatening to come back with a gun. I called the police, and they said to call if he actually came back. He did. He rolled by our office slowly and then parked down the street. I saw him get out and then stand on the corner, facing our office, dressed in a black hoody with the hood up and black pants, talking on his phone....emphatically, let’s say. I called the police and they met him on the corner, frisked him and he didn’t have a gun. He’ll be trespassing if he comes back. I guess he was just waiting for us to leave for the day so he could talk.

    Question though: if I get shot, hopefully in the arm or leg, and in a non-fatal fashion, you think mentioning that in my personal statement will give me any boost? I’m set to take the November test and with a good score I’ll be a splitter.

    1

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