For Everyone Who Feels Like They Have "Maxed Out" Their Score...

LoraxMan

http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2012/08/22/intense-prep-for-law-school-admissions-test-alters-brain-structure/

As someone who feels like they are "stuck in test prep limbo" and can't manage to raise their score through additional study, it was reassuring to read this article. There is a science to LSAT study and at least some researchers have found evidence it improves brain activity in lasting ways for the better.

I'd be interested to know other peoples' experience, have you plateaued or even gone backwards in your scores, and how have you gotten your scores back up and/or reached your target?

Dr. Yamata

I think sometimes people get too caught up in the theory. A perfect example is on Monday when I started diagramming the formal logic for this question.. and as it turns out.. it only wanted the conclusion! Also, being formulaic about attacking conclusions in weaken rather than the relationship of the premise to conclusion, stuff like that. I think that accounts for a large amount of score dips from the initial. There's also the occasional X-Factor like a weird game that completely throws off your score..

rblackshear

awesome article.

nicole.hopkins

DUDE. This tho. So nice to finally have a way to understand why these plateaus happen (and why they keep getting higher but slowly). It's just my brain downloading updates and then installing new circuitry ...

blah170blah

@nicole.hopkins I LOVE the imagery

pritisharma

Great !!! no wonder I feel the world around me has dumbed-down for some time now :-)

Petrichor

I think this is sort of like weight training, in the beginning you tend to make a lot of improvement in the initial stages, like increasing the weight by 5 pounds each session; but after a while it may take you months to increase the weight even by 1 pound and sometimes you can't even lift what you used to. Overtime the max is still increasing, albeit slowly.

nicole.hopkins

@Petrichor said:
I think this is sort of like weight training, in the beginning you tend to make a lot of improvement in the initial stages, like increasing the weight by 5 pounds each session; but after a while it may take you months to increase the weight even by 1 pound and sometimes you can't even lift what you used to. Overtime the max is still increasing, albeit slowly.

I appreciate this extension of the weight training analogy. I've never gotten to the point where I was really lifting heavy (let's call that the 165+ range), let alone into the Kris Gethin et al range (we'll call that consistent 173+).

Weight loss work the same way—at first when your body is first being shocked into shedding pounds, you often lose big (Biggest Loser early weeks, people lose like 20 lbs sometimes): some is water, some is fat, some is muscle. As time goes on your body becomes more efficient (and as you develop better hydration habits, the body does not hold onto water); once you get into a healthy BMI range weight loss often slows because there's no real reason for the body to give up that fat, especially for women. So you have to switch it up and trick the body, etc.