Scoring low 160s, can I get to 170s by June? and more questions!

Reissie73

Hi fellow 7sagers, I'm currently scoring low 160s and I really desperately want to get into the 170s, have been working at this for around 9 months, and I'm just worried I still won't be able to make it by June 23rd. (that's my date since I'm taking it in France) I usually don't finish the LGs on time but the ones I do -0 or max -2. LR I usually miss 3 with timing even though I get around -5 including the missed ones usually, and RC it depends, when I'm focused I almost finish and when it's difficult one is left and that really hits my score. I have all the PTs I just don't know what to do right now, maybe focusing on LGs would help the most? How do I improve my RC and LR timing?? My focus could be the main problem, it's so difficult to keep it consistently!

Also do you guys think doing 5 sections is really important to prepare for the final test or doing 4 sections is good enough and the extra adrenaline should make up for the 5th one...? I took the Dec test and didn't have too much trouble focusing, but was faaar from my goal score so I dunno.

Also anybody else taken it abroad? anything scary I should know about?

nathanieljschwartz

i took it abroad and had a better experience then in the states it was super chilled and the Procters were great

testfromaway

I would practice with 5 sections. Practice the way you intend to perform-- you'll be training your brain against mental fatigue and leaving less up to chance that way.

Leah M B

As for 4 or 5 section tests, most people will say do 5 sections. I will however admit that I pretty much exclusively did 4 section PTs leading up to taking the LSAT in December. I think I did 1 or 2 5-section tests. I did find it a little exhausting on test day and think I maybe should have practiced that more, but my theory was that it's not that much longer and I focused on accuracy instead of endurance. It was honestly more that by the time we got to the writing portion, I felt like my brain was totally fried and I definitely wasn't going to be writing my best. But as we all know, that's not scored anyway and everyone is doing that section exhausted, so schools don't expect it to be your best work. All that to say, you really can go either way. Do whatever works best for you.

As for improving timing on RC and LR, those are tricky. For me, messing around with my notations on RC helped. I had started doing a lot of underlining and notating. I decided to try going minimal with it instead and that actually seemed to improve both my comprehension and speed. I think there are just so many ways to tackle RC that you just have to play around with different methods until you find something that works. I now make very minimal notations but do a quick (like 3 words or less) summary beside each paragraph. That helped my timing a lot.

For LR, there are a few different types of drills you could try. One is a confidence drill - basically take 1 timed section and try going through it as fast as possible. Basically don't think, just answer. Fast fast fast. It sort of tests your gut instincts. I think a lot of time speed problems in LR come from not trusting yourself and overthinking it. Rushing through a section will show you how good your gut is. Some people also practice doing LR sections with shortened time - 30 minutes or less. I like the strategy of trying to complete the first 10-15 questions averaging 1 min per Q. So, shouldn't be taking more than 10 minutes for the first 10, and then expand to 15 minutes for 15 Qs. The questions do tend to get harder through the section so learning not to dwell on easier ones is important. Some people will advocate a skipping strategy as well. Figure out what types of questions are time sucks for you and practice skipping them and coming back later. That whole coconut theory from JY. Go for the low hanging fruit first.

If you haven't watched this webinar yet, I highly highly recommend it: https://7sage.com/webinar/post-core-curriculum-study-strategies/

It gives you tips on how to progress through your studies as well as different drills to try.

Reissie73

Thanks so much @"Leah M B"-- super sound advice, I will try to get in some 5 section tests anyway just for practice, but not stress too much about it.

You're right about the notating part, I think I'm the same way as you because last two RCs I did I tried that method of just writing a few words by each paragraph and not furiously trying to categorize and mark up accordingly, I did so much better. I feel like going through it faster keeps your short term memory fresher to go into the questions too.

As for LR I will definitely try that! Thanks a lot for the tips. By the way do you have any tips about coming back to questions? Do you manage to get back to them? for me I never seem to do much on them after even if I skip 5, maybe it stresses me out too much to stop and flip back through the pages when the timer is on.

For LG I need a lot of work too, since I usually miss at least half the last game. The fool proofing method just seems to take a lot of time that I'm not sure I have!

Also heard that you lose your progress if you don't practice test at least twice a week, would anyone have experience with that?
I want to focus on LG a lot without losing my progress in the other sections- esp LR

Seeking Perfection

I doubt that you will lose progress by practice testing less. I think most prople practice test once a week. If you want to keep getting twice as many tests in and work on endurance, you could do what I did and take two 4 section practice tests back to back with the break inbetween the two tests instead of after 3 sections. This saves some time since the actual practice testing only eats up a big chunk of one day instead of multiple days.

Foolproofing does take time. Improvement on the test always does. However, logic games is usually cobsidered the easiest section to improve on and foolproofing is the fastest way to improve on it.

Some people swear by the skipping strategies for LR. You definitely have to get used to the skipping strategy and do it enough times to get past the panic reaction to flipping through the pages for it to pay off though. I never found it that helpful so it doesn't help everyone.

I think with RC the writing something next to each paragraph is a good strategy. I didn't find it neccessary to actually write something, but memorizing what each paragraph did for the argument certainly helped me get through the questions faster. Writing it for a while forces you to do this, but I found that it was even quicker to do the memorizing, but not actually write anything after I got in the habit.

Leah M B

@Reissies73 said:
Thanks so much @"Leah M B"-- super sound advice, I will try to get in some 5 section tests anyway just for practice, but not stress too much about it.

You're right about the notating part, I think I'm the same way as you because last two RCs I did I tried that method of just writing a few words by each paragraph and not furiously trying to categorize and mark up accordingly, I did so much better. I feel like going through it faster keeps your short term memory fresher to go into the questions too.

As for LR I will definitely try that! Thanks a lot for the tips. By the way do you have any tips about coming back to questions? Do you manage to get back to them? for me I never seem to do much on them after even if I skip 5, maybe it stresses me out too much to stop and flip back through the pages when the timer is on.

For LG I need a lot of work too, since I usually miss at least half the last game. The fool proofing method just seems to take a lot of time that I'm not sure I have!

Also heard that you lose your progress if you don't practice test at least twice a week, would anyone have experience with that?
I want to focus on LG a lot without losing my progress in the other sections- esp LR

I don't have much advice on the skipping in LR. Honestly, I don't do it much. But I have seen people say it works really well for them. I will occasionally skip 1 and sometimes end up not having time to come back and just fill in a guess. Or what does happen sometimes is getting to the last page or so and realizing I'm short on time. So, I'll prioritize. Parallel flaw and parallel reasoning questions are always suuuuper long just for reading so I'll skip those and go for the ones with a short stimulus and ACs. And then bounce around as I have time on the last 5 questions or so.

By missing half the Qs in the last LG, do you mean because you are running out of time? I will say the one time that skipping has dramatically helped me was in LG. I realized that I took forever on any rule substitution questions and that would leave me with not enough time for the final game. I started skipping over any rule sub questions and suddenly I went from going -4/-5 to averaging around -2. Those are easy to remember where you skipped the Qs though since they are pretty much always the last question of any game. Foolproofing does take a lot of time and I never truly did it properly. I would basically FP random games here and there between doing other things. I did it just to the point that it got me pretty solid on them. I was short on time so that worked for me, but everyone is different. I'm working on doing true FPing now for games 1-35 and it sure does take a while haha.

And I thoroughly disagree with that bit about PTing twice a week. Absolutely not true IMO. Most people around here, myself included, PT once a week. PTs should really just be a gauge of how you are progressing. An occasional check in to see if your score is improving. I think PTing twice per week is absolute maximum you should do, and I don't think most people should do that even. Burn out is real and taking that many PTs is really exhausting. I do think timed sections are very valuable. So, I maybe covered 2 PTs worth of material in a given week, but only 1 full timed PT. I think the real progress happens when you review your work, so that should be given the most emphasis. Whether it's drills, timed sections, or BRing a full PT, a deep review of your answers, what you got wrong, and the correct answers is how you grow in understanding the test.

Reissie73

@"Leah M B" Yeah, for LR I usually do the same thing as you I think. I just have to pick up the speed, because recently (before it wasn't usually like that) always end up short on time.

And yes on LG I don't have enough time to finish the last half of the game usually, but the ones I do I get all right or maybe -1. I guess I could just need more practice?

You're right, full-timed PTing is exhausting... do you count the scores from your timed sections taken together for any given exam then?

One problem I have in BRing is knowing which questions to go back to in LR since I often don't have the time or mind to circle the ones I'm not sure about during the time. I don't want to waste time and it definitely takes a lot of patience to review more than ten. I usually just look over the 10 last problems, and circled one here and there. but I usually just write a couple notes next to the question in the test with a different color pen, not on a notepad or anything.

Also I have no idea how to BR RC, JY didn't seem to mention too many specifics about it either, so... I usually just look at which ones were wrong and look for it in the passage or something. My results are so random in RC... sometimes it's great and sometimes it's reeeeally bad.

Are you aiming for 170s? Did you have a major score difference in your regular testing and the actual exam you took?

Leah M B

@Reissies73 Gotcha. I was the same way with LG and for me, learning to skip the rule substitution questions is what got me into good territory with them. I think it's also important if you get to the last game and know you are short on time, not to panic and try to do it too fast. You're better off relaxing and doing the game properly and only getting to 1 or 2 questions than trying to rush your set up and getting them all wrong. Practice not freaking out if you get to the last game at the 5 minute warning haha. And this is where foolproofing comes in handy, it's important to just work on getting the fundamentals down so you can do the games all within the target times.

I think it's important too to learn to circle questions while you're doing the game so you know which LR Q's to BR. It's definitely not natural so it takes some learning. What helped me with timing in LR too is frequently I would end up narrowing down the answer to 2 choices and not being totally sure, and I realized that I was spending way too much time in that situation. If I have it narrowed down to 2, pick the one I'm leaning toward, circle the question, and move on. If I have time to come back, then I will. A good portion of the time though in those situations, my gut answer was correct and I was wasting time on them for nothing. Learn not to dwell. It also really doesn't take much time at all to just scribble a quick circle or mark. That's really really important for BR so you start to see which questions you have trouble with and can BR it properly. It's also important because if you do BR the way JY teaches, you only review the Q's that you circled (meaning, questions you weren't sure about). I feel like I learn just as much (or more) by seeing which questions I was totally confident on but were wrong haha.

BR for RC is really just the same as anything else. Personally, I hate it haha. Maybe why I'm still so bad at RC! It's for sure my weakness. Just like anything else, you should be circling any questions you aren't sure about, then go back and review the circled Q's. I hate it because it requires reading the passage again and I just can't stand doing RC, let alone twice lol. But it's a necessary evil I suppose.

What I did is go through timed sections individually and then when I had a completed test's worth I would save them in analytics and add in a note that it was "taken in parts". So I could have the benefit of analytics but know that those tests weren't done in 1 sitting. The tests done that way all seemed to be right in the same trend as my full PTs, so I don't feel like it skewed anything.

Originally, I was only hoping to crack 165 to have a sure shot at the best local school. And then as I kept studying and improving, I started raising my sights and became interested in applying to T14. But I was more focused on timeline. December was the last shot to take the LSAT and still be able to apply without being too late for the cycle. I was PTing on average around 167 and ended up with a 168 on test day, so I was right in the zone of what my PTs were. Now I've pushed back a year and am retaking, and would reaaaally like to squeeze out those 2 extra points to make it into the 170s, so... we'll see!

Reissie73

Thanks for your advice and taking the time to reply @"Leah M B"!

Yeah, I kind of knew I should probably be doing that with RC but since it was such a pain... lol I guess you also don't see the results of all of that as quickly as compared to LR where it seems more black and white.

Gonna see how things go with this!

Well kudos to you on your test score! I hope you can get into the 170s, and congrats on how far you've come- I hope to hit 170s in just a month and a half. seems a bit out of reach, but I guess one step at a time >.<