Take Your Time

alexroark5

A couple days ago I scored a 174 on PT 64 using the LSAT proctor app. My average over the last 5 has been a 172.5. About 10 months ago my cold diagnostic was a discouraging 153. I've hit the books hard since then and have thoroughly reviewed all three powerscore bibles, the manhattan books, velocity's online course, the lsat trainer, and most recently (thank goodness) 7sage which has been an absolute savior for me on the LG section especially. I have studied for almost a full year now. I was originally going to sit for this past June, and decided I was still making improvements, so I postponed to Sept, at which point I felt I still had room to improve and postponed to Dec only to feel the same way. I am finally going to sit for the Feb exam as my room for improvement, although still possible, is at this point, marginal. Also, I'm fully aware that I will have to sit out a cycle but I think my patience will be rewarded on test day (knock on wood). My point I think is twofold:

1. You don't have to be a genius to do well on this exam, you just need average intellect with serious determination to put in the hours, and to understand HOW to study.

2. Don't rush the process, wait until you feel ready to sit for the exam. I can honestly say that at this point I feel adequately prepared to take this exam, whereas just a couple months ago (after 8 months of studying) I was not.

Good luck to everyone!

ENTJ

What an amazing story! You definitely put in the investment and seriousness the test entails. I'm sure you'll be rewarded with unquantifiable dividends. There's nothing else that can really replace a superb lsat score like a 174.

If you don't mind, can you cull out what really worked for you and what didn't work with all the multitude of resources you had at your disposal? Thanks!

pjanderson5

Incredible, thanks for giving me hope. I love the 7sage community

alexroark5

You know, it wasn't that things weren't working for me, they were, I was getting better, and I was getting better relatively steadily just from continuing to engage with the material. I think it just took me longer than a lot of people to really get a solid command of the material and the tasks I was being asked to do.

3 things that I learned were really important in LG. These three things are what turned LG around for me after months and months of mediocrity at the section.

1. know when rules trigger and when rules fail (its time in the bank)
2. be organized so you can apply your rules systematically (its time in the bank and helps you avoid paralysis (which is also time in the bank)
3. when there are apparently no inferences left to make, take stock of what's left and attempt to answer the question

consistent organized speed

for anyone else out there who is struggling with games, these three things really put the whole thing together for me. Maybe they are already insanely obvious to most people!

alexroark5

Also if you can get really comfortable with conditional logic, its time in the bank on EVERY (just about) conditional logic question that comes up (relative to most students). And thats something that pretty much every one can control (gaining fluidity with CL)

ENTJ

@alexroark5: Thanks for the input!

aaabbbccc

Alex, thank you so much for sharing your great experience! Can I ask you several questions though? Since you have studied for about ten months now, did you have to reuse PTs? If you did, do you think reusing them is helpful? And also, how many hours do you usually spend on LSAT a day?
Thank you so so much for your help!

RM112015

I could not agree more with your two points. Determination and patience really do win out in the end. I started with an even more discouraging 146 after having read the Powerscore Bibles. However, after some persistent studying, I not only managed to get a 161 for the first time in months earlier this week, but I managed to get a 168 earlier today after taking another PT. I was beyond ecstatic.
No doubt, my score's meteoric rise can be attributed to precisely what you describe: determination and patience. I will now be aiming to consistently score in this range, and hopefully reach my new target score of a 170. Baby steps.

alexroark5

Congrats realmadrid keep up the great work! You'll get there!

abc, yes I absolutely have revisited old PTs (old passages, lr questions, and definitely games. However, it wasn't out of necessity, I still have more than 15 PTs I haven't seen. I plan to take about 6 more between now and test day, and that way I'll have some new ones in case I need to retake.

Revisiting LR questions is key. I revisited several PTs and just used three different colored highlighters to distinguish useless information, premises, and conclusions. I would just study the structure of LR questions over and over again. After a while you'll start to see the same patterns. So yes, using old PTs is immensely useful.

I would say I spend 5-6 hours a day studying

aaabbbccc

Alex, thank you so much for your response! You will do great on the February one!

[Deleted User]

@alex. What do you suggest for logical reasoning? I see improvement as I practice more and more but it really takes me 5-8 minutes to read and go through all the answer choices. I studied since June 2014 hoping to take it in September 2014 but I keep postponing it. I am now getting tired of it and don't have the determination I used to have. I used to study straight from 4am to 10pm now it's a struggle to do 50 questions in one day

alexroark5

Hi Royaimani, 5-8 minutes for one question is too long. You need to spend 30-50 seconds on easy questions and up to a maximum of 2-3 minutes for only the most challenging questions. If I were you I would go over the grammar lessons at the beginning of JY's course. I would get much faster at learning what language indicates a conclusion, and what language indicates support for a conclusion. Go through all the old LR questions you have done and practice getting much much faster at identifying the conclusion and premises. Outside of that I would read ALL the time.

[Deleted User]

@alex you mean 30-50 seconds to read stimulus, answer choices, and answer?
Reading outside of lsat does help, I've never been a reader. I dont know i can become a fast reader by june. I can easily identify conclusion and premises (although sometimes I forget to do so). People keep saying to identify the conclusion but I really don't see the importance of that. Sometimes I answer the questions right and I didn't even identify the conclusion - especially on must be true/inference questions

ddakjiking

@royaimani That's because must be true/inference questions tend not to have conclusions thus you not being able to identify the conclusion. But on just about every other question type, identifying the conclusion + premise is KEY. That allows you to determine the strength of the argument and you go from there based on the question time (i.e flaw, strengthen, weaken, assumption).

I've never been a reader too so that's why I suspect my diagnostic was so low. Now that I'm well into my prep, Alex's suggestions seem reasonable. On the first 10-15 questions, I usually don't spend more than a minute for the entire thing (stem->stim->picking the TCR).

Edit: words above might be poorly written....just finished taking PT 72...

[Deleted User]

@ddakjiking omg how do you become a fast reader?? I wish I could read in 1 minutes the first 10-15 questions. Here is how I do it:
1) read the stimulus
2) untangle the stimulus (paraphrase it)
3) read question type && sometimes try to quickly come up with an answer in my head before going onto the answers (typically do this for assumption questions, but not strengthen, weaken, inference).
4) read every answer choice

I really don't see how a human can do all that in 1 minute...especially someone like me who is a slow reader.

blah170blah

@royaimani: I think steps 2 & 3 are the ones that are really taking a lot of your time, possibly to your detriment.

For step 2, you typically don't have to paraphrase the entire stimulus for assumption questions. You do need to ID the major premise(s) and main conclusion. For inferences, it is useful to paraphrase it but try to keep that in your head -- writing takes time. Also, for both of these steps, try to force yourself to keep your paraphrase and IDs to a 3-4 words max. This forces you to really hone in on the key information, and it's easier to remember.

For step 3, I think it's only really helpful to come up with the answer in your head for flaw/parallel flaw/method of reasoning/principle/disagree/explain questions. For assumption and inference questions, the answers are usually unpredictable so it's not as advantageous to do all that work upfront. Rather, spend time thinking about what assumption the argument is making. That will guide how you identify the right answer choice and eliminate wrong ones.

For step 4, make sure you're only reading through the answer choices once. Otherwise, you're spending too much time rereading answer choices. Be confident in your logic and eliminate accordingly.

Hope that helps!

[Deleted User]

@blah170blah first, nice username lol anything with a 170-180 sounds nice to me.

Thanks for your advice. I think the 3-4 word limit is great. Sounds hard to do because I am alway so detailed about everything and I care a lot about having all the details as well, but I will do what you said and hopefully as time goes by things will workout. I took notes of everything you wrote, I really hope it will help me. I think hiring a tutor to just look at the way I do my logical reasoning might help me as well.

jdawg113

@royaimani reading ur above posts (with ur steps) I would suggest giving reading the stem first a shot since it looks like it may help you with prephasing and not having to stop to think after you've read everything but instead can do it as you're reading the stim. Also do not get so wrapped up in the 10 in 10/15 in 15. Lately (mostly in the 70's) there has been a trend of some harder questions up front a bit distorting the usual flow of difficulty and ultimately throwing that goal out the window leaving a few more easier questions in the back