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Scores getting worse
I've been studying since January. I took a test before I jumped into the Power Score books and got a 160. I felt great! I worked through all three PS books, taking a test every week or so. My average from about 12 tests only moved to a 162, and I only got between 165-169 four times. Never hit my goal, 170. So, I reread the logic reasoning bible. And then again. Still nothing. I turn to 7Sage, and have worked through the entire syllabus in about three weeks. My score right before started 7Sage was 166. I took one a week throughout the course, and got worse and worse. 162. 161. Today, 160. I'm back where I started. I take the test on Saturday and I feel like I've done all this studying for nothing. Any advice? Ideal school is Vandy.
Also, I usually miss 0 (1-2 at most) in the games, 5-7 on each LR, and about 8-11 on reading. And don't suggest Spreeder, because it didn't help either 
Comments
I think you need to take a day or two off. If you went through the CC in three weeks (general consensus seems like it usually takes a couple of months) then you likely 1) are burnt out and/or 2) that wasn't enough time to really digest the materials and internalize the methods. Did you speed up the videos a whole bunch? Did you take notes over the lessons and do practice sets? Most people don't see a big improvement right after the CC because you have to practice a lot. If you've never hit your goal score, it's unlikely that you'll hit it on test day. If a 170 is important for you/your goals ( your goal score for Vandy should depend on your GPA), then you should probably postpone the test.
I'm definitely not going to postpone. Sometimes I'll take 2 in one week and get a 161 then a 168. It almost feels like luck of the draw. I only got the $180 7Sage package, so it didn't give me tons of practice questions. I totally understand the anatomy of the questions. It's just I always get down to two similar answers on the ones I miss and pick incorrectly. The answers just trip me up an dI get so frazzled that I can't think straight. I think I struggle most on RC because it's the least explicit- I hate inferring what the author might possibly maybe probably agree with. It's stuff like that that drives me up the wall. I'm going to take the weekend off and just do light studying this week before the test, then nothing after the test. If I get under a 165, I'll buckle down in October and take it again in November.
My GPA is a 3.93 (on CAS too) and I've already graduated. I know people who have gotten into Vandy with a lower GPA and even a 162. I worry less about getting in and more about scholarships. My family wouldn't be eligible for need-based, but my parents already said I'm on my own for this one. Anything under 50% tuition is going to put me in more debt than I'm comfortable with, and I've yet to hear a truly convincing argument that a $150k COA is worth it if it isn't from HYS basically.
IMHO, three weeks (or 15 days) is definitely not enough time to process the CC to any meaningful degree. I think you may need to reassess your conception of what engagement with the CC is if you want to truly benefit from it.
Either way, good luck with your test and application cycle.
What's your BR score?
I also think, even with the Starter package, 3 weeks for the CC is way to fast. You ideally don't want to be taking any PTs until you finish the CC, focusing only on the material and drills while going through it. You might be burned out, too.
But let's say your BR score is in the 170s (which, imo, means that you know the foundations/material well enough), then you might need to change how you go through each section, and it might not be as much an issue with knowledge. In my case, breaking through the lower 160s into the higher 160s and eventually 170s mostly had to do with strategy rather than my knowledge of the material. How much time do you have at the end of your LR section? Do you have a skipping strategy? When do you decide to bail on a question (for the time being)? Do you have a system of marking questions you want to come back to ASAP, versus ones you're doubtful on but can afford to not come back to? Also, is there a specific question type that seems to throw you off? Have you tried confidence drills?
If you haven't yet, I highly recommend watching these webinars:
-https://7sage.com/webinar/post-core-curriculum-study-strategies/
-https://7sage.com/webinar/skip-it/
For RC, do you have an exit strategy -- when do you decide that a question isn't worth spending any more time on? Like LR, is there a certain question type that you get stuck on or miss often (for me analogy questions tend to be time-sinks and I'm more likely to get them wrong than any other questions type in the section). Also, yeah, I'm highly doubtful that speed-reading is effective, honestly. Either way, if you're a native English speaker you should be able to get through the RC section fine with your normal reading speed. I'm a pretty slow reader, too.
I wrote in detail about my RC strategy, if you're interested (I'm tired of copy-pasting it, haha): https://7sage.com/discussion/#/discussion/comment/113384
Edit: If you're taking the September test, it's honestly a bit late to implement all of this or change your strategy a great deal. I realize you don't want to delay September, but you'll still be applying early if you just take November (though I'm not sure about ED for any schools).
Exact same thing happened for my LR and LG sections! I did the powerscore books, improved from 160 starting point to 165. Then I did the 7sage course in about a month, and from the few pts I did I kept getting 162ish. I decided to put the tests on a pause since they were making me feel worse, and just focus on the blind review for a couple of weeks. I tried to really dissect each question and figure out why I chose the wrong answers, redo them, teach the material to my husband, and figure out which questions I should have skipped. After that 2 week PT break, I started scoring more consistently in the 168ish.
Personally, I think I had two problems. At first, my intuition worked better than my half ass attempts at using the lawgic - once I practiced that, and made less mapping mistakes, I was able to do better than my initial intuition.
Secondly, the 7sage CC teaches you methods that just take a long time to do right. During PTs, I lost my sense of urgency and went too slowly to finish everything with the correct method. My BR is 175ish thanks to the accuracy of the methods, but getting faster at it is where you need more time and practice to perfect. I think you probably can absorb all the material in 3 weeks, but you really need to put in the time and practice the drills every week to actively use everything during a test. Although, to be clear, my goal is 170 and I have yet to hit it (so who knows how valuable any of my comments are).
are your lower scores on the later tests? A lot of people noticed a drop in LR scores once they got into the PT's in the mid 60's and 70s. Logic tends to get a little softer on those which can definitely be a challenge at first. There's a few posts about it on the forums and Powerscore's June/July crystal ball webinar breaks down the subtle changes that happened in LR really well.
People say that RC got harder too. I noticed my scores drop slightly in RC on the newer tests but its hard to nail down exactly why - excepting the introduction of comparative reading the shift wasn't quite as perceptible as it was in LR.
If you’re not willing to postpone, I don’t think there’s much you can do in one week except hope for that good luck of the draw.
I appreciate all the feedback. I don’t want to defer but I’m not opposed to retaking in November. And yes, my scores were dipping on PTs 72-75. It felt like the gaps in logic or correct answer choices got more subtle. I’d say half the LR questions I miss are from guesses (I almost always have to guess on the last LR question, last 2 if it’s a 26 section, and usually 2-3 on RC) or glossing over something stupid but maybe not obvious. I find my scores depend on section order a little, too. If I start with an average LR and then have games, I’m in a good mood and less brain dead. If I start with reading, it bums me out and I can’t shake it because I know I did poorly. The best I’ve done on reading was -4.
I'd review the core lessons on MSS/validity if you can, and pay special attention to the strength of validity being requested in the question stem. I find on later tests there are a few questions that hinge on whether the stem says "most justifies" "most strengthens" vs. simply "justifies"
Don't take my word for it though, Powerscore does a better job of breaking it down:
https://blog.powerscore.com/lsat/the-lsat-crystal-ball-webinar-predicting-the-june-and-july-lsats
Also, FWIW, pt 74 was my lowest ever pt apart from my diagnostic. It's the first test I took among the newer ones. After being in the mid 170s for 3 PT's straight (44, 45, 47), pt 74 knocked me back down to 164. The newer game formats threw me for a loop as well.
Good luck!
Part of your reasoning for not delaying seems to be that since your PT scores range from 161-168, you're hoping for a lucky day (168). But you should consider your PT avg excluding older tests (60s and below) and think about whether or not you'd be happy w the upper bound of that range and know that you will ultimately be far more likely to score the average (or lower) for that range than the upper bound.
Taking the test before one's ready to hit one's goal score is a bad idea. Folks should either lower their goal score and reconsider their applications/scholarships based on that, or keep studying.
Your score isn’t improving bc you went through the entire core curriculum in 6 weeks which isn’t humanly possible so you must have been skimming/skipping. If you somehow did manage to skip through the entirety of the cc in that time, then you weren’t taking the time to process any info. The info which you did process may actually be lowering your score bc you are trying to adjust to a new mode of thinking.
Also that must have been exhausting to go through the CC so fast so you’re burnt out.
Your score also may be lowering with the newer tests.
I would only recommend someone to take the LSAT when they’re not quite ready if their average is like 2 points from their target score and if they have been seeing an upward trend in the past few PTs which have been at/near their target.
If your goal is a 170 and you’ve never hit it why would you take the lsat now?
and you don’t need a 170 to get into Vanderbilt. Maybe realign your thinking moving forward that you need a high 160s score and you’ll feel less stressed.
I think the cheapest course has the same amount of CC as the most expensive course. I took time off work to study full time, and the CC took me more than a month. That included at least 5-8 hours of solid actual studying time, with an hour or two of meditation and reflection each day. I can't imagine anyone finishing the CC faster than that. As others have said before, you need time to absorb the material too. As @mizbanis , and @"Habeas Porpoise" said, the methods of 7sage take a lot more finesse than the rather brute-force or gotcha methods from powerscore (I also started with powerscore and have gone back to it after trying 7sage to compare). You have to first understand how to properly do BR before you can understand your weaknesses, and you have to first understand your weaknesses before you can start improving.
You probably have a decent foundation already, and instead of focusing too hard on the CC, perhaps try mastering the BR method, and start identifying your weaknesses and do targeted practice. If you were a boat, CC would be like a new overall layer of outer haul made of plywood. If you have a gaping weakness, this new layer won't be able to withstand the pressure and will collapse. Doing BR and identifying the gaping hole will help you patch up the things that need help most. For me, that was NA, Flaw Identification, Hard Law passages, and Tricky in-out games. This advice is all for the november test, of course. There's nothing to be done for the September one at this point.
Yeah, I'm going to agree with the general consensus here, which is that your brain cannot fully process the CC in under a month. It's like cramming for your first crazy biochem exam and then expecting to remember everything on the final. Anyway, every PT is different-- especially when jumping from 50s to 60s, 60s to 70s, etc. I don't mean to be super negative here, but most people score 3 points lower on test day than they score on PTs. So if you're not at your target score while PTing, it's unlikely that you will hit it when you test. Why not delay until November? You can still apply in the same cycle.
As someone who lives in Nashville and knows quite a bit about Vanderbilt students, you probably don't want to get into Vandy being a high-GPA splitter. Many students are on hard stimulants, so unless you plan on joining in on that, you'll be disadvantaged from the start. (Not judging, just saying.) You'll want to get in with the confidence that you can compete with the other students and come out on top. Law school class rank matters, and there aren't many legal opportunities around here unless you want to work for Genesco (Journey's Shoes), Nissan, or the government.
Since you're deadset on not delaying and not going back and taking your time with CC, which is not advised, but ultimately is your decision to make; the only advice I can give is how to make sure you do hit in the upper bound of your PT scores for November.
So, I would suggest going through your PTs and analyzing each of them as sections. For example, what was different about that 169 from other PTs? Was LR easier, RC perhaps, or LG? Did you use skipping strategies? Were your habits clear and good. You need to figure out what about these tests (as sections not tests as a whole) were favorable conditions to you.
You then need to analyze the recent PTs, the ones where you got in the lower end of 160 and figure out why. I think I read that these were the PTs in the 70s so if that's the case then LG (your strength) wasn't too difficult, it was LR and RC that tripped you up. The LR in the 80s is not easier than the 70s, so you need to figure out how to deal with those harder and more subtle LR questions. I believe RC in the 70s was much more difficult than it usually is, so perhaps your scores will bump up a bit again in the 80s.
You need to analyze, either by yourself or with a tutor, what kind of stuff is a weakness and causes you to score a 160 as opposed to a 168 and drill like crazy to ensure a score that is in your upper bounds on test day. Do you BR at all? BR isn't just beneficial for knowing your potential but also for you to figure out weakneses and to drill them. PT-ing is just a benchmark, the real gains happen in drills and BR.
While I agree that you are also probably slightly burnt out, I think it'd be a disservice to yourself to simply conclude that burn out alone is what caused these lower test scores. Good luck on Saturday!
You probably should take a week off. When you do the test maybe focus on slowing down? I don't know since you're not set on delaying to having that soul searching moment we all have when we study for this reasoning beast.
The test is just a test, but I also believe it reflects how we approach failure or what to do when things aren't going your way. I've run around the house saying "I'm a failure and I'm only destined for Cooley law and I'll be the next Cohen." Then I take a few days off again and go at it. But you only gave us your quantitative results when we may need to know your state of mind more so.
My goodness how did you ever get through the entire CC in three weeks?
Let me give this one a go. Law School Transparency have an employment score for each school. Harvard ranks 9th in terms of large firm jobs %s. Most would agree that large firms are where the high paying jobs are; the ones that justify the student debt. Since most agree Harvard is worth 150k of debt, and there are 8 schools that place a higher % of their students in big-law jobs, there are schools other than HYS that are worth 150k debt.
Not saying this is water-tight, but just some food for thought.
Popping in to say Harvard costs over $63k/year. That’s over $180k just for tuition. Need to add in books + rent + living expenses + healthcare. If you’re paying sticker law school is more like a $300k+ debt and most will take out loans so that will accumulate interest. I don’t have an opinion either way but law school doesn’t cost $150k, I wish it did.