Non-traditional student, need guidance on where to start

phosita_phoeatah

TL/DR version: should I keep going with the study material I presently have and start the 7Sage course at a later time or do I switch over completely and just follow the 7Sage course plans. Also, recommendation as to when to take the first PT? Lastly, given the vast quantity of materials of the 7Sage course, suggestions on efficient note taking?

I believe I fall into the category of a "non-traditional" student, as I am middle-aged and possess graduate degrees (in the sciences). I work full-time but have rather flexible hours and have planned 9-12 months (and perhaps more) for when to take the test for the first time. Currently planning on doing 15-20 hours of studying/week, which would be ~750-1,000 hours.

I actually contemplated taking the LSAT about a decade ago. As a nearly-broke grad student who had a good grasp of propositional logic (did very well on the final exam of that class), I thought I could probably rely only on the books from PowerScore and get it done on my own; how wrong I was! A lack of studying time pretty much exposed that foray as the pipe dream it was. A decade plus of lived experience later, I'm a bit more reserved about my abilities but can actually afford to shell out for a class without batting an eye.

Alas, here I am, wondering if I should continue to self-study (without a concrete schedule) from PowerScore and switch over to the full-hog 7Sage program after I've reviewed all the PowerScore books, or if I should just switch to 7Sage tout de suite. In favor of the former approach is that this has been mentioned elsewhere (using PowerScore to gain initial familiarity and 7Sage to hone in on the details). In favor of the latter is that it would free me up from planning my own syllabus. I guess one thing I want to know if what are some strengths of the PowerScore material not found in the 7Sage material?

Lastly, three things. One as mentioned above is on when I should take my first PT. Back in my last foray a decade ago, I could actually get through two LGs (and the entire section would take me ~55-60 minutes to complete). At the present, some LGs might take me 25 minutes to complete, and I thought it was a waste to go through a PT and it would be better to wait until I'm more familiar with the content. But perhaps I really ought to attempt one first in the next few weeks?

Next, with the vast quantity of instruction material, what is the recommendation on how much notes to take? For instance, some of the topics in the free preview section seem pretty self-explanatory, and I'm inclined not to take special amount of notes. Am I short changing myself here?

Finally, speed on the LGs. After how many hours of studying and reviewing could I reasonably expect to do a particular game in ~11 minutes? Am I looking at 100 hours or perhaps something more?

TE CSC 2021

Well, you asked a lot here. Let me try to answer some of it. First, you should take your first PrepTest right now so that you can establish a baseline for your performance and also get enough initial exposure to give more context to the things you'll learn in whatever curriculum (7sage/PowerScore, etc.) you choose to use. I think you'll find many different approaches for how to mix and match materials, but the essential truth is that every successful study path involves two stages: learning the test and then mastering the test. Learning the test requires guidance (usually some "professional" source, but not always), but mastering the test is all about you in intensive self-study over a substantial period of time. It's important to realize that the only meaningful outcome with LSAT studying is getting enough answers correct that you get your goal score. So, to your question of should you switch, the answer is simple--are you getting, or are you on track to get, enough answers to hit your goal score? If the answer to that is no over a significant period, then it's time to change it up.

I don't think there's a rule as to how many notes you should be taking, since notes serve two purposes: they provide an easily-referenced distillation of concepts and they help with memory, so you should take as many notes on the material as you need to in order to understand and memorize the material so that you can use it on the test.

5Fennel LSAT

I think having multiple study resources would not be detrimental to your efforts. In my experience, the 7sage curriculum has been significant in my own improvements and I find it to highly valuable. I have not tried Powerscore but I am sure it is a valuable resource as well. No need to be exclusive to one or the other. One resource's method or explanation may resonate with you more than the other.

It seems like you have some experience with the LSAT already, so I don't believe it would be a waste for you to take a PT, especially if it allows you to identify where your strengths and weaknesses are at this time so that you can focus your areas of study. In the 7sage curriculum the diagnostic PT is located about 5 hours into the whole course.

Regarding notes, I personally find it most useful to write detailed notes for any question that I am not 100% certain on the correctness of the answer choices so that I can get an understanding of my thought process. For example, consider writing clearly how each answer choice is right or wrong. If I picked an incorrect answer choice, I will note what my thought process was that led me to that choice, and how should I analyze the problem correctly. I personally don't recommend taking detailed notes on lessons, as those processes should really be ingrained in the brain and nobody will be consulting notes on test day.

For improving LG speed, I can't say exactly how long it will take you. 7sage lessons recommend repetition for a particular game and I agree with this strategy. Repeating a game until the inferences and strategies become clear to me and solving the questions feels automatic. If a game initially takes you 30 minutes, repeating it with the optimal strategy in the video might take you 20 minutes. Another repetition in 15, and then 10 minutes and maybe even faster. Consider picking a basket of 5-10 games to repeat (on rotation so you don't start memorizing answers) until they are at this level of clarity and familiarity. The strategies and processes you identify and hone during repetition will carry over to the other games of the same type. Let's say a repetition progression for any one game will be 40+30+20+15+10+5= 120 minutes. 2 hours per game multiplied by 50 games (should be more than sufficient to cover all the different game types) would result in practice time in the order of 100 hours.

TakingOnTheBeast-1

Take the first PT now.
Ditch powerscore and move over here asap. The analytics section alone will help you improve - something I don't think powerscore can touch.
Go slowly through the entire core curriculum. Do not rush it. Notes or no notes, absorb the material. You'll return to it to refine areas for improvement that are specific to you.
Use the tests as your prep and use the analytics.
Do an LG section every day.
And make friends here. Everyone is helpful.
You can do this.

phosita_phoeatah

Thanks for the helpful suggestions, everyone. I have schedule my first PT for tomorrow (took today off from any preparation, just to help with my own sanity a tad).

The reason why I heard about 7sage in the first place is that I found the explanation in PowerScore for a particular LG (Dec 1996, Game #2) to be inadequate, whereas I chanced upon 7Sage's explanation of the same LG on youtube and found it a lot more useful.

And thanks to vb000000 for the back-of-the-envelope calculation. I understand that I may well need more time to gain that level of proficiency, but it's at least good to get a ballpark sense of things.

phosita_phoeatah

A bump of the thread, and two follow-up questions. Now that I have taken a PrepTest and performed blind review, what's the recommendation on when to redo the LG sections that I have done thus far (both from the PrepTest and from the LG-related stuff I did while using PowerScore). Specifically, the instruction from JY is to give anything with which one is uncertain at least 6-7 redos, and what is the recommended time period over which the redos should take place?

Next, the algorithm-generated study schedule has me taking the next PrepTestall the way at the end of October (actually, two of them in the same week). Is there any harm for scheduling one of these in early September and another in early October?

Longer version below.

I took the June 2007 PrepTest in the pencil & paper format (I'm a luddite by nature) and have an initial baseline score of 153 and a current "aptitude"is 162. I completed only two of the LG puzzles, and the two I didn't complete took 15 minutes and 30 minutes. Saving grace is that had one wrong upon completing blind review, but it'll be quite the tall order to reduce the time needed to finish all four section.

I'm somewhat miffed about the RC section, as I likely would have done better had I chose to do passage No. 4 and just blind guessed on the Qs associated with passage No. 3 (5/5 on the former, and finished on time; vs 4/8 on the latter, with the longer time needed depriving me time to even glance at passage No. 4). There's a lesson for the future, right off the bat.

The LR section was more "meh", but at least speed would not appear to be an issue once I get familiar with the section.

philsmith1314

It took me about 2 months of casual studying (maybe 10 hours a week, max) to get logic games under 9 minutes/game. I also started with zero knowledge of formal logic and basically worked through the LG section of the Kaplan Prep book. Given your prior experience with formal logic, I'd expect you'd be able to master logic games much faster than I did. Like other people have said, get very comfortable with the rules and becoming proficient in conditional logic and work through some games without a time limit, repeating the games every few days so you begin to make inferences quicker.