7Sage Long-jumpers: How can I jump 5-9 points?

Tim Hortons

I recently took my first PT after 4 months of intensive CCing and had an increase of 13 points. This took me by surprise since I was stupidly convinced that I wouldn't improve at all (props to J.Y. and the 7Sage community for all your help, btw). This said, while I'm stoked about my increase, I'm not yet quite where I want to be score-wise.

Here's the facts:
-- I have 3 months before I take the November LSAT
-- I wish to improve by 5 points at minimum, the ideal being a 9 point increase (perhaps this is reaching, but one can dream!)

My questions:
(1) Do you think a 5-9 point increase is possible within a 3 month time-span?
(2) What are some techniques that've allowed y'all to make your score gains?

All advice is appreciated!

Leah M B

First of all, congrats!! That is a rare accomplishment. Most people actually don't improve much or maybe a few points by the end of the cc. It can take a while to learn how to implement what you learned. But it sounds like the material really stuck with you! That's awesome.

Would you mind sharing a few details? Your diagnostic and your score after the cc, and your section break down (how many you missed in each). It'd be helpful to help lay out a plan for you.

I think 5-9 points is possible in 3 months, depending on where you're at. For people who start in the 140s, just learning the basics will result in a good jump. As your score gets higher, each point gets harder to come by. That's part of the reason most people plateau in the upper 160s. But since you made such a big jump after the cc, I'm guessing that your fundamentals can still use some shaping up. That'll mean bigger score gains. It will be tough though and you will need to be disciplined, but I do think that's likely a reasonable goal.

Foolproofing logic games is very, very helpful. You probably don't have enough time to get through the whole bundle that 7sage uses (LGs from PTs 1-35), but any foolproofing you do will help you. I liked to skip around and work on different game types when foolproofing, so you can tweak it to what works best for you.

Also, there are a lot of different ways to approach RC. I always suggest playing around with how you notate things. I was going way too slow so tried making very few notations (I basically only write a 1-3 word summary by each paragraph) and that not only improved my speed but also accuracy. Something about forcing you to rely on memory and look at the overall structure so you know where to find your answers. But play around with it and see what works for you.

Also, learning to skip questions is critical. I've never been very good with that with LR, but for example - in LG, when I recognized that the rule substitution questions were dragging me way down, I learned to skip those immediately and move on. If I have time at the end, I'll come back. That automatically boosted my LG average by about 2 or 3 questions. Learning how not to waste time on difficult questions is a super important skill.

OK, I think those are all my general tips. Let us know your scores if you're comfortable with that and it could help to have a more tailored plan on how to tackle things.

Tim Hortons

@"Leah M B" Sorry for not getting back to you sooner! Thank you immensely for your very detailed and helpful post -- really appreciate it!

My original score was a 143, but I brought myself up to a 156 with a BR score of 165. I also just recently completed my second PT and got a 161 with a 165 BR score again. My weakest area is LR (--6 to -10 max per section), followed by RC (-5 to -7) and I can definitely say I'm pretty decent on LG with -2 at max.

Your approach for RC is something that I try to do at the moment: keeping notation to 2-3 words at most. However, I think what happens is that I tend to spend a little too long on the first three passages, leaving me with less than 5 minutes on the last one, and that's where I tend to lose my points.

For LG, I fool-proofed logic games a ton before I started PTing. If anything, the points I lose on this section are attributed to oversights on my part of some crucial rule or implicit assumption. Definitely very self-aware of my abilities in this section.

As for LR, I find this section to be incredibly daunting. I think it comes down to me not having enough time to see every question as I'm often scrambling for time and end up missing between 5-6 questions.

My BR score is completely attributed to LR. When I BR in this section, I tend to second guess my gut instincts and switch my ACs, talking myself out of the correct AC that I chose the first time around. This, as you may guess, is SUPER frustrating.

I suppose typing this out has put into perspective that I must focus my efforts on improving LR first. However, I have no idea where to start. Do you have any suggestions for this? What were your approaches to improving LR?

NotMyName

Dude. You can score a 170 based on those numbers. I would recommend skipping this cycle and working with a 7 sage tutor to nail down LR.

Is that something you are open to?

Tim Hortons

@NotMyName, haha, you're hyping me way up. When you say "skip this cycle", do you mean putting off my November write for next year?

NotMyName

It’s highly likely. How recent were the the tests those numbers were based on? -5 to -7 RC tells me you can get LR down to -4 or less as long as you’re disciplined enough to develop a timing strategy.

Skipping the cycle means applying for fall of 2020 instead of 2019. Of course you wouldn’t know if this were necessary until November; maybe you can get to 170 by then. What is your GPA? If you’re a splitter (gpa below 25th percentile of your target schools) then you should almost certainly skip this cycle.

Tim Hortons

@NotMyName: The PT I scored 156 on was from 5 days ago, the PT I scored 161 on was from yesterday (for which I BR'd all day today). And golly, a -4 would be a dream, honestly. On that note, are there any timing strategies you've found particularly helpful?

Ahh, see I was hoping to get back to the grind by Fall of 2019, hence why I felt impelled to only defer my September write to November. I suppose 2020 wouldn't be too bad, but I'm somewhat hopeful that, given where I'm at with my early PT scores, I could have a good chance at getting into my 3rd or 4th choice law school with a hella lotta elbow grease. My GPA is a 3.6 on the 4.0 scale/a 3.8 on the 4.3 scale. Up here in Canada, the schools I have my heart set on consider a 3.3 (4.0)/3.6 (4.3) GPA competitive and a minimum of 160 on the LSAT to be considered. Thoughts?

NotMyName

Let's take this offline. I'll DM ya.