Lessons learned: Giving up on my diagnostic to a 175

Brian_LSAT

I’ve benefited greatly from the 7sage course and community, so I’d like to contribute a few lessons learned from this all-too-often infuriating process.

I did minimal research before going all-in on 7sage in March 2017. The design of the course and the feedback from previous students just clicked instantly, so I didn’t hesitate.

I tried to use the June ‘07 test as a diagnostic, but I found that I was so lost when doing the logic games that I just gave up. I imagine I would have been in the 150s at best at that time.

I went through the vast majority of the CC from March-June before taking my first PT. I scored a 163 on PT 36 (timed, 4 sections). I was aiming for 175+ from the beginning to make up for a relatively low GPA (for top schools at least), so I knew I had a good deal of work ahead of me.

I studied an average of 20 hours per week (2-3 hours per work day and 5-10 hours on the weekend) from July through February. That was a combination of finishing the CC, consulting outside resources, drilling/foolproofing, and timed sections and PTs.

I signed up for the September 2017 exam before I was PTing in my desired range because I thought I would make progress more quickly on games than I did. I was really struggling with games overall, but I ended up doing fine on games and getting MURDERED by RC for a 169.

I learned from that experience and dove right into prep for December. I made a lot of progress, but I was studying right up until test day on top of my full time job and ended up mis-bubbling (probably due to exhaustion) for a 167. I moped for a day before resolving to learn from that experience, too.

I kept on working on my weaknesses and focused more on realistic test-day conditions. My PT average slowly crept up to 174 by February, and after taking the whole week before the exam off from anything LSAT-related I lucked out a bit and scored 175, 1 point above my average.

Here are a few things I learned along the way:

1) Timing is everything

Saying that you can do all the problems but just have trouble with timing is like a sprinter saying they would have won the race if they had just gone a bit faster.

There is plenty of value in doing untimed studying and drills when learning the fundamentals. However, it’s important to transition to strict timed conditions as soon as possible, because how you deal with the time constraint is just as important as how well you understand any of the concepts that are being tested.

2) Priorities

For an 8 month period I put the LSAT before work, family, friends, fitness, and (especially) recreation.

Getting 20 hours of LSAT prep on top of a 40-hour work week and the rest of daily life was not easy. Everything else went into maintenance mode. I guarded my time religiously- no extra assignments at work, one night out with my partner per week, limited time at the gym, no television, and very little of the reading that I typically enjoy.

20 hours of LSAT prep is not the equivalent of a part-time job in terms of energy- it’s much, much more. After a 35-minute logic games section, especially when I was struggling with them more, I would practically be gasping for breath. That level of focus and concentration is required for me to perform at my best, but it’s also extremely draining.

I used toggl, an online time tracker, to track the amount of time I was actually spending on LSAT prep down to the minute. I also tracked other areas of my life so I could see where I could carve out more time for my #1 priority.

3) Slow, steady improvement

I’ve read that the LSAT is as much a test of emotions as it is of intelligence, and that strikes me as true in my case. Putting in hours and hours and hours of prep over weeks and months only to see miniscule improvement (or even regression like when I went from 169 to 167) will make you question your sanity.

Nothing in my life made it reasonable to presume that I would eventually hit 175. I didn’t score that high on the SAT, I did ok in college, and I’ve been out of school for more than a decade. I was just hoping that I could get there, and that took an awful lot of faith.

Rather than get hung up on any particular section or PT, I focused on slow, steady improvement. I took it on faith that if I put in the time and studied the right way, I would get better at the test. I paid particular attention to my PT average over my previous 5 PTs, and the analytics from 7sage made it easy to know where I should be focusing my time (both between LR, LG, and RC and even down to what question types).

4) Perfect practice

I enjoyed the CC and benefited from it greatly. Once I had the basics down, I got the most benefit from taking full, timed sections and, especially, 5-section PTs under test day conditions, followed by Blind Review.

If I could change one thing about my approach, I would have taken more 5-section PTs using the 7sage proctor. Mental (and even physical) fatigue is a real barrier to performing your best on test day, and that didn’t really sink in for me until I was preparing for my 3rd take.

5) Following good advice

I think the teaching methodology employed by 7sage is absolutely fantastic. So many times during my study I chose to accept 7sage’s approach without fully understanding at the time why it was necessary. Blind Review, Foolproofing games, and the focus on language and grammar are 3 good examples.

6) Finding my own way

At the same time, no group course will be perfect for any given individual. I supplemented 7sage’s course with a number of LSAT books, partly because I wanted to add a different learning modality but also to fill in some gaps in my understanding. I don’t know if I should mention those resources here, but they probably made up 10-20% of my study and 7sage the vast majority.

I also went against the typical advice of only signing up for the exam when you’re PTing at or above your goal score. I did so because I wanted to learn from the test experience itself, and also because there is a fairly significant range of scores that are possible at any given level of ability, and there’s always the chance that you’ll score at the top or bottom of that range.

I took the test 3 times. Once I was right on my PT average (169/169), once I was well below it (167/172), and once I was just above it (175/174). It’s possible that I could have hit the mark on my 2nd test, and it’s also possible that I could have missed the mark on my 3rd test. There’s no way to account for every single variable that determines your score on test day, so I chose to give myself more chances and that paid off.

I think I’m also going against conventional wisdom by re-taking the exam for a 4th time in June. Most of what I’ve read online says that being at or above a school’s 75th (as 175 is for every school) is all that matters, but I see a material difference in outcomes for people with my GPA and a 175 vs 176-180, so I’m giving it one more shot. No ragrets and all that.

Well, I’ve got a PT to review so I’ll wrap things up here. Sorry if I rambled a bit, I’m still coming to grips with a life-changing score. Happy to answer any questions. Best of luck to everyone just starting out or still grinding away!

Beast Mode

Thank you Brian, this is great! Good luck, you got this!

jyarmo

Wow this is super encouraging and helpful - many thanks!

studyingandrestudying

Great work! Your determination is inspiring. I really like the sentence about your intuition that if you put in the time and studied the right way, you'd improve.

Seeking Perfection

I like the sprinting example, because I think it also gets at what I felt during the process.

Sure its ridiculous to dismiss not being able to finish in time as just a matter of timing when the time constraint is what makes a lot of the test (especially logic games) hard. On the other hand, you have to be able to walk before you can run and doing games or other problems slowly and accurately is walking. Almost anyone who can walk also will be able to run or jog or something eventually if they can put enough time in. You work up to it by walking longer and a little faster and then when you are more ready you try running for the first time. And after a lot more walking and running you get to where you can run for a while! To stretch our metaphor too far, maybe you get so you can run for 5, 35 minute sections. I think the same is true of the LSAT.

One other thing you mentioned was taking 5 section tests being important to get used to the actual length. I found that for me, especially once I was scoring in the mid170s and higher, a better way to build endurance and get more practice tests in was to take two practice tests back to back. Instead of taking the break after the third section I took my break after the first 4 section test before the next one. If you are worried about PTs you can make one of these tests an old one you are retaking. It takes longer to blind review two tests, but your blind review is probably a lot shorter than it used to be. Once I started doing this I was absolutely confident that fatigue wouldn't factor in to my performance on the real test.

Congratulations on the amazing score! Good luck with the retake!