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Another Thank You Post!

GuillaumeGuillaume Alum Member
edited February 2019 in General 652 karma

I got my LSAT score today, and writing another thank you post! 7Sage really works if you combine it with hard work and dedication.

I haven't participated in the discussion forums much but I have read a lot of your posts. During my studies what kept me going was hearing people's struggles and success stories. Today I'm sharing mine. The LSAT didn't come naturally to me. My first diagnostic four years ago was somewhere in the low 150's. I studied for 4 months and gave up, deciding that I would pursue a career in Accounting instead. While my chosen profession gave me lots of room to grow and provided a comfortable salary, I always had this feeling that I wasn't satisfied and something was missing. I felt like I had given up on my dream.

When I turned 27, I asked myself if I would be happy being an accountant until I retired; the answer was a resounding "NO". So I made a promise to myself that that year I would take the LSAT. I gave myself a year to study thinking I'll have lots of time. In reality, it took more than a year to do this while holding a full-time job that can at times be demanding. The journey was also not as linear as I thought. There were many times where I thought I had good grasp of the test only to have another weak area come out of the woodwork.

For those of you wondering what my process was after the CC, I fool-proofed logic games using Pacifico's method on PTs 1-35 then started doing timed PTs once a week and blind-reviewing. This only got me so far because my issue was timing - I had difficulty getting to all of the questions in 35 minutes, especially for LG and LR. So I focused on honing my skills on these two sections by developing habits that I know would help me get through the questions faster. For LG, I split the gameboard whenever possible. Even if I didn't have all the worlds figured out, being able to focus on just one or two sub gameboards helped immensely. I also did "if" questions first and left MBT/MBF/CBT questions to the end. There are also situations where you just need to crunch out a world fast and it's better to just do it rather than stare at the question for a minute trying to find an "easy way out". For LR, I learned to recognize when to skip questions. This sounds way simpler than it actually is. I had to do over 10 PTs before I had a good sense when a question was just taking too long and it was better to skip. I also drilled specific types of questions that constantly tripped me up and wrote detailed responses to the logic behind the right answer and the logic behind why the wrong answers were wrong.

By November 2018 I felt like I was ready. I was PT'ing in the 165-168 range. When I took the November exam it felt great, everything went smoothly and I thought it was a pretty easy test. So when I got a 164 I was devastated. I felt like I had been deceived because the test felt so easy. I reviewed my responses and realized I got a lot of easy questions wrong. I'm not sure if it was nerves or if I was just careless. For the next two months I kept on doing timed sections and fine-tuning those test-taking habits.

When I sat for the January 2019 test, it felt worse than November. Despite all my efforts I felt really rushed and one experimental RC (which I thought was real) really crushed me. I ended up not finishing the LG section and one LR section, blindly guessing on three questions. I was ready to cancel my score because I was sure I did worse but I kept reminding myself that the admissions committee only looks at your highest score. So even if I did do worse, I still had a 164. I got the email this morning on my way to work and I had to resist immediately opening it until I got to my office. I was shocked to see my score of 169! Out of the 27 PT's I took in the past year I only scored above 168 on four of them. And considering I missed three questions, I was not expecting this.

I credit my improvement on a few factors. The long study period definitely helped. As others have mentioned, this test is like a marathon. You cannot cram for it. I found doing one PT a week and reviewing for 1-2 hours every day helped solidify the logic to a point where I don't need to think about it much. Practice is key, especially with logic games. Do as many as you can as often and consistently as possible. I found even taking a one or two week break significantly affected my performance. Reading comprehension was always my strongest section so I didn't focus too much on this as I started off getting on average 3-4 questions wrong.

Lastly, my advice is to have faith. The path to progress is not always linear and that's okay. Find what works for you and makes you improve. I know how devastating it can be to study so much and work so hard only to get the same score or do worse than before, but each wrong answer is a chance for you to do better. If you change your outlook and frame of mind it can pay dividends.

I wish the best of luck to all future LSAT students and prospective lawyers. I'll be (hopefully) heading to my top-choice law school in Canada this September and want to thank 7Sage and this community for being supportive throughout this whole process. Even though I studied alone, it never really felt that way because of all of you. Thank you.

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