Thoughts on how to “study”?

NovLSAT2019

Hello all,

I just wanted to see how everyone ‘studies’ and see if I’m on the ‘right track’. I’m going through the CC for the first time. How do you approach the problem sets? The lessons? Explanations? For example, even though I know why a certain answer is right I watch JY’s explanation to see what I might have overlooked or didn’t think of.

K 440244

When I first went through the CC, I did every other problem set so when I needed to drill questions later, I had some material. During the CC I would sprinkle in a PT 1-35, just to build up some stamina and take tests with questions I have seen before. Once I finished the CC, I focused on taking a PT, blind reviewing, seeing which answers were just wrong, attempting those questions again, then seeing if I got the right answer. Also when reviewing my PTs, I recently started painstakingly writing out my thought process of each answer choice and stimulus during the blind review to see where my reasoning went wrong.

It takes me like 6-8 hours to review each test. It's a lot of work, but I have seen the most improvement from taking, and retaking the same practice exams because it really burns the reasoning, games, and necessary exam skills into my head.

Best of luck on your LSAT journey!

Alex

@BrianSeo said:
Hello all,

I just wanted to see how everyone ‘studies’ and see if I’m on the ‘right track’. I’m going through the CC for the first time. How do you approach the problem sets? The lessons? Explanations? For example, even though I know why a certain answer is right I watch JY’s explanation to see what I might have overlooked or didn’t think of.

Hey BrianSEO,

-I went through the CC in order and treated it like I did any other class in undergrad. That means taking it seriously and working hard for a good grade.

-I did about a third of the problem sets on my first time through the CC. Sometimes more if I was having an issue understanding how to do the question type. I did all question type drilling untimed.

-I watched the explanation for any questions I do not 100% understand. This usually meant watching 80% of the videos. Remember, understanding isn't binary, so just because you got the answer correct doesn't mean you fully understood the question. There's often a lot you can get from watching how JY approaches a question, even if you got it right.

The only thing I'd recommend is taking a few PTs/timed sections here and there while going through the CC. I think it's helpful to keep the big picture in mind and adjust your studying accordingly. If you're learning to to play chess, you can read all the treatises and watch all the Gary Kasparov lessons online you want. But I think playing a few games while learning (and probably getting beaten badly by both the LSAT/other chess players) is an important part of learning.

NovLSAT2019

@"K 440244", Thanks for your helpful input! I approached the questions in a similar way! Although it's very time consuming, it helps to really understand what's going on in the questions and in my head. I make sure to notate the questions I STILL get wrong after the thorough blind review and isolate them on a separate file in order for me to recognize any pattern, if any.

@"Alex Divine", Thanks for the great analogy and yet again very helpful advice my friend. I'm a strong believer of facing something head on in order to learn/get better as well. This post was intended to get a little bit of perspective on how people generally approached the CC and the test itself, given that not everyone seems to approach the curriculum the same way!