1 Month to go. What's your study strategy and where are you in the course?

Charlesroy100

Pretty much one month left to go before D-Day and my motto is "One PT a day keeps the low scores away (Hopefully.)" I've completed 67% of the course which lands me right before starting grouping games. RC is saved for last, although I may just go ahead and finish LG and RC simultaneously.

I originally scored 154 on the baseline PT 3 months ago.

Right now I'm roughly missing about -6 on LR and -8 on LG and ~9 on RC.

I'll take PT59 tomorrow morning to set a baseline for November and hopefully see improvements from there each day. My Goal is to get at least above a 165. Hopefully that's realistic.

After the December 2nd test, I'm planning on writing the Personal Statement while I wait for the score. Resume is already done. I'll apply to schools immediately after I receive the Dec score.

Does anyone have any suggestions for improvement? Am I dropping the ball somewhere?

akistotle

@Charlesroy100 said:
Pretty much one month left to go before D-Day and my motto is "One PT a day keeps the low scores away (Hopefully.)"

Does this mean you are taking one PT a day? If so, that's waaaaaaaay too much. Do you have time to BR properly?

Right now I'm roughly missing about -6 on LR and -8 on LG and ~9 on RC.

I think you should focus on improving LG. With fool-proofing, you can go -0 on LG.

My Goal is to get at least above a 165. Hopefully that's realistic.

To get a 165, you can miss around 15 questions. So if you go -0 on LG, you can totally achieve your goal.

yeshesvini

am in the exact same boat!!!

PT a day for me too...let's nudge each other along....

I am also training the brain to live the day in 35 min slots with the pomodoro timers...using marinara as chrome extension and focus journal for Microsoft edge....

am also planning to start taking PT's at 830 am to get into the groove with the time of the day for the test....

best of luck!!

cheerios
vini

Alex

@Charlesroy100 said:
Pretty much one month left to go before D-Day and my motto is "One PT a day keeps the low scores away (Hopefully.)" I've completed 67% of the course which lands me right before starting grouping games. RC is saved for last, although I may just go ahead and finish LG and RC simultaneously.

I originally scored 154 on the baseline PT 3 months ago.

Right now I'm roughly missing about -6 on LR and -8 on LG and ~9 on RC.

I'll take PT59 tomorrow morning to set a baseline for November and hopefully see improvements from there each day. My Goal is to get at least above a 165. Hopefully that's realistic.

After the December 2nd test, I'm planning on writing the Personal Statement while I wait for the score. Resume is already done. I'll apply to schools immediately after I receive the Dec score.

Does anyone have any suggestions for improvement? Am I dropping the ball somewhere?

If you're doing a test a day, when are you blind reviewing and addressing the information you learn from the PTs? Although it may sound a bit counter intuitive, taking PT after PT is probably one of the most inefficient ways of improving your score.

Review is much more important than just grinding out PTs, which, without a bunch of accompanying review, is an enormous use of time and effort. The purpose of a PT is to get a snapshot of your weaknesses, so that you can spend time working on those weaknesses and hammering out your technique. Most of your improvement will not happen while you're PTing, it will happen when you review and drill things that, in your review, you find out needs work. If you spend all your time PTing you won't see nearly as big an improvement as if you spent much of that time reviewing.

You also should aim to complete the course first. There's no point in continually testing yourself if you haven't even learned all of the fundamentals yet. Besides, I have a good feeling that once you finish the CC and get better with games that you'll be hitting your 165 target score.

Best of luck!

Maddie D.

Can't believe it's only a month out already! I will also just chime in and say you'd be better served to do one or two tests a week and really, really get into your weaknesses by blind reviewing. Blind reviewing and foolproofing have been absolutely instrumental in my studies and I'm sure many more can attest to that. Such a high number of PTs per week would probably better serve someone who is just nailing down their strategy, but even then, I'd say any opportunity to thoroughly blind review each PT is one that should be taken no matter what you're scoring. Just a matter of quality over quantity, I guess. And I second Alex's comment about finishing the CC. Can't build a house without a solid foundation. Best of luck!

inactive

Yikes. One PT a day is going to lead to burnout real fast. You want to do 2-3 PTs a week.

jennybbbbb

I am in the same boat as you, but I plan on doing 2 PT's a week. My score right now is a 157, hoping to improve to 165 by December.

I am -5 for LG right now, so I am going to fool proof the games and aim for -0.

I wouldn't recommend doing a PT a day, honestly do one to two PT's a week and focus on your weaknesses. I plan on drilling down different question types in between my PT's and really try to identify my weaknesses by doing BR.

PT's are more about endurance than anything so I feel like doing one a day might not help you at this point, but maybe down the road perhaps once your BR score is higher than your target score.

Good luck!

__emsss__

Before the Sept LSAT, I was doing 3-4 PTs a week for about a month along with blind reviews and drills. I felt like I was really getting the hang of things with an average of 170. Due to my intensive undergraduate major, I wasn't particularly daunted by the ~8 hr/day I spent studying and figured that I could handle it. However, ~9 days before the test, I found that I was missing easy questions and forgetting basic ideas during my PTs, and I began PTing with scores all over the place (I even hit 164 which threw me for a loop because my diagnostic was 161 and I hadn't hit under 168 since). I panicked (of course) and moved into studying upwards of 10 hr/day. By the time the test came around, I was completely burnt out and ended up scoring a 167 (and accidentally bubbled in the first 2 questions of LR wrong - who does that?!). Anyways, for the Dec test, I am taking a different approach by studying 2-6 hr/d, doing 1-2 PT/wk, and taking a day or two off studying each week. After two weeks back in this study zone, I'm averaging 172 and feel way better than I did in September. So in summary, with a month left until the test, you absolutely need to slow down and take a breather in order to avoid burn out. Trust me - it's not worth it, even though it feels like the best way to do things. Don't make the same mistake that I did!!

Leah M B

Brain fatigue is real, man! I haven't been doing nearly that much work but went through a phase where I was getting worse on LR and after taking about 3 days off and re-joining normal life for a bit, came back way stronger. Really just 1 PT per week is enough, 2 max I think. You should be doing BR, where you're going over all the questions and really digging into why you missed the ones you get wrong. That's the only real way to improve - figuring out how to correct errors.

Love the dedication though, you're definitely putting a lot of work in and that's great! Just be careful not to overdo it; the brain can only handle so much.