Postponed the LSAT, now what?

sc1293

Hello. I took a two month, in-person course at Blueprint for the September exam but decided that I hadn't reached my personal LSAT ceiling just yet. I'm familiar with most of the concepts, but now am a bit lost as to how I should make use of the remaining 10 weeks to improve my score from low to mid 160s (163-165) to high 160s or 170. Should I focus on timed exams? Stick to the study schedule generated by 7Sage? Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks!

Raychul123

If you have finished the CC, I think the next step for you would be to take a timed exam every week or so and to blind review your exams in between. Once you have noticed patterns in where you have weaknesses, review the CC on those concepts in between taking your practice exams. For example, when I was studying, I did this and I noticed that conditional sequencing games were a weakness of mine. I reviewed the CC for those games as well as reviewed the Power Score LG bible sections relevant to that game type and I was able to get my missed questions on those games down to 0 before taking my exam. I also did this for parallel reasoning questions and well as weakening questions.

samantha.ashley92

I agree with @Raychul123. Also, have you foolproofed LG? That would be a great thing to do.

Ohnoeshalpme

There is no general prescription for LSAT prep. You have to focus on your strengths and weaknesses when preparing a study schedule. What sections are you strong in? Where are you the weakest? What problems within sections have you noticed? How are you on timing? What is your BR? Answering these questions will give you a better opportunity for feedback and for designing your next steps.

Cant Get Right

@Ohnoeshalpme said:
There is no general prescription for LSAT prep. You have to focus on your strengths and weaknesses when preparing a study schedule. What sections are you strong in? Where are you the weakest? What problems within sections have you noticed? How are you on timing? What is your BR? Answering these questions will give you a better opportunity for feedback and for designing your next steps.

This right here.

You've got to diagnose your performance. What are the things holding you back and preventing you from breaking out from your current range? Those are the things you need to address, and addressing different problems requires different exercises.

sc1293

@Raychul123 @samantha.ashley92 @Ohnoeshalpme @CantGetRight. Thanks so much! I generally struggle with time on all sections. I score around -8/10 for LR; -5/6 for RC and my weakness would be LG (it really ranges from -3 to -10 depending on the game). I've bought and gone over the Powerscore LG Bible but I still struggle with time on games. Any suggestions on how to deal with timing? Without time constraints, I score around 169-170s.

Cant Get Right

@sc1293 said:
Any suggestions on how to deal with timing?

First of all, please do not use Powerscore methodologies for LG. It's by far the worst I've come across and I've seen it all. You've got 7Sage, which is far and away the best, so I'd recommend sticking with JY.

The first step towards addressing timing is to be able to objectively evaluate it. How can you address it if you can't identify your specific errors. The best, easiest, and as far as I know only way to do this is to record your timed takes so that you can break the times down afterwards. Watch the footage afterwards with a stopwatch and enter in the times on a spreadsheet. This will get you started. Once you have the data, you'll need to identify and develop solutions for your time management errors. This should grow into a fully formed time management strategy which will allow you to get the most points for your abilities for your time.

tekken1225

@"Cant Get Right" said:

@sc1293 said:
Any suggestions on how to deal with timing?

First of all, please do not use Powerscore methodologies for LG. It's by far the worst I've come across and I've seen it all. You've got 7Sage, which is far and away the best, so I'd recommend sticking with JY.

Hey @"Cant Get Right" why do you say Powerscore LG methods are the worst? I've heard some good things about the LG Bible, and the reviews online are all good.

I was thinking of buying the book for some additional strategy and practice. Is this not a good idea?

Cant Get Right

@tekken1225 said:
Hey @"Cant Get Right" why do you say Powerscore LG methods are the worst? I've heard some good things about the LG Bible, and the reviews online are all good.

I was thinking of buying the book for some additional strategy and practice. Is this not a good idea?

Yeah, the online reviews led me to Powerscore when I first started out too. To their credit, I actually think the LR Bible is pretty solid (as far as the books go). The LG Bible is just such a different story though. Rather than teach the underlying, universal mechanics, they focus on classifying games into something like over a dozen exact subtypes. This breaks the universal principles into many unique ones which is particularly problematic for grouping games. I also take issue with a lot of their representations which I think reflect on a broad lack of understanding of the importance of representing information in an intuitive, efficient, and useful way.

Most people are going to find the 7Sage approach much more intuitive and develop to a much higher level much more quickly than they would with Powerscore.

sc1293

@"Cant Get Right" said:

@tekken1225 said:
Hey @"Cant Get Right" why do you say Powerscore LG methods are the worst? I've heard some good things about the LG Bible, and the reviews online are all good.

I was thinking of buying the book for some additional strategy and practice. Is this not a good idea?

Yeah, the online reviews led me to Powerscore when I first started out too. To their credit, I actually think the LR Bible is pretty solid (as far as the books go). The LG Bible is just such a different story though. Rather than teach the underlying, universal mechanics, they focus on classifying games into something like over a dozen exact subtypes. This breaks the universal principles into many unique ones which is particularly problematic for grouping games. I also take issue with a lot of their representations which I think reflect on a broad lack of understanding of the importance of representing information in an intuitive, efficient, and useful way.

Most people are going to find the 7Sage approach much more intuitive and develop to a much higher level much more quickly than they would with Powerscore.

Thank you, will start by reviewing JY's videos on LGs! Really appreciate your insights!!

Leah M B

@"Cant Get Right" said:

@tekken1225 said:
Hey @"Cant Get Right" why do you say Powerscore LG methods are the worst? I've heard some good things about the LG Bible, and the reviews online are all good.

I was thinking of buying the book for some additional strategy and practice. Is this not a good idea?

Yeah, the online reviews led me to Powerscore when I first started out too. To their credit, I actually think the LR Bible is pretty solid (as far as the books go). The LG Bible is just such a different story though. Rather than teach the underlying, universal mechanics, they focus on classifying games into something like over a dozen exact subtypes. This breaks the universal principles into many unique ones which is particularly problematic for grouping games. I also take issue with a lot of their representations which I think reflect on a broad lack of understanding of the importance of representing information in an intuitive, efficient, and useful way.

Most people are going to find the 7Sage approach much more intuitive and develop to a much higher level much more quickly than they would with Powerscore.

I too first started with the bibles after reading reviews and seeing them universally recommended as the best self-study books. I was sort of ok with games on my own before studying. Wasn't totally lost. But after reading the LG bible, I was even more confused. I would somehow end up with a page full of random inferences and I could not figure out for the life of me how they connected with each other and how to properly apply them. I saw at least one other person say the same thing. Their strategy encourages you writing out every single inference you can come up with and then go to the game. That maybe sounds good, but when you just have like 30 little inferences written out, it's way too confusing to keep track of. And it didn't really teach you how to put the inferences together into one string. After switching to 7sage, JY's approach taught me how to really use the inferences, and keep it short so that you only write down what you need to know.