Farewell for now!

thomasthelawengine

Got my scores back and actually scored better than any of my PTs to date - a 179. I've prepped full time since June, so had about two and a half months of study time. I took every PT 60+ and nearly solved every single logic game publicly available during that time.

So I'm going to pivot towards focusing on my app materials for the time being.

Shoutout to the super friendly folks on the forum as well as the explanation videos, test taking UI and analytics 7sage makes available.

I don't know if I'm qualified to give tips, but here's my 2 cents

1. Logic Games are all practice. You have to drill them till they "click." Once they click, they're all actually pretty similar to each other. Yes, even the crazy mauve dinosaur game will click eventually. It may never become trivial, but it will start to make sense.

2. Use the analytics feature on Logical Reasoning. Seriously. It saves so. much. time. This was the most useful feature on 7Sage for me. It isolates what question/difficulty combinations trip me up regularly. You can filter the results to only include most recent X tests, which will make the analysis more representative of your recent performance.

For example, I saw in the analytics section in my final run-up to the test that I consistently made errors in difficult (4-5 bubble) Weaken, Parallel Flaw, and Necessary Assumption questions. So I replaced PTs with focused drills on those types of questions & difficulty only. The Problem Set feature is very nifty for this. And about 100 questions per type later, I began seeing significant improvement.

1. RC is hard. It really is. I found trying really hard to stay interested and engaged in the actual subject material help scores a lot. Additionally, when a question asks something specific, look for it in the text. Like actually find the words. This habit helped me nail a few questions.

Happy to answer questions if interested. May come back to return the favor by helping folks with harder questions.

Best of luck all!

overthistest

Congratulations! I am really happy to see this post and your kind words to others. You are a rockstar!!
I am pretty good at LG but can you suggest any insanely hard games for me to try? Maybe ones that are similar to the test you took or ones you think would be helpful to master?

thomasthelawengine

@overthistest said:
Congratulations! I am really happy to see this post and your kind words to others. You are a rockstar!!
I am pretty good at LG but can you suggest any insanely hard games for me to try? Maybe ones that are similar to the test you took or ones you think would be helpful to master?

hey!

My actual test (makeup August 21) was actually really straightforward and on the easy side.

But for harder tests try:
- Dinosaur toys (PT 57 game 3)
- Flowers (PT 88 game 3)

But on a test strategy note, I'd focus more on perfecting easy-moderate games. I feel like putting in the time to learn reall hard edge case games is not a good use of time versus perfecting hard LR questions. If a test throws you an impossible game, you can always retake!

lsat2016

@thomasthelawengine

how much time, on average, you take approximately to read the passage and to do its questions respectively on RC?
how much time on average for first 15 q and total section on LR?

how do you do handle the difficulty of computer-LG versus paper, as you have to diagram on paper for each AC and then look up to computer?

thomasthelawengine

@lsat2016 said:
@thomasthelawengine

how much time, on average, you take approximately to read the passage and to do its questions respectively on RC?
how much time on average for first 15 q and total section on LR?

how do you do handle the difficulty of computer-LG versus paper, as you have to diagram on paper for each AC and then look up to computer?

These are actually all excellent questions, and specifically issues I had to deal with myself.

1. RC times: I'd say about 6 minutes reading and 2-3 minutes solving questions. The key here is to get the easy questions really fast via process of elimination. I also did not skip questions or passages because my goal was to get them all right.

2. LR times: During PTs I drilled till I could solve the first 15 in the 15 minutes. This means I was blitzing through easier questions at 45 seconds or less, which is definitely doable while maintaining good accuracy. Drilling is king. That leaves 2 minutes per question for the last 10 which tend to be much harder. On the actual test I was a little slower than my drills because the harder Qs were distributed more evenly throughout the test.

3. LG games on a computer. This was why I switched to laptop screen + touchpad instead of a monitor (I use an ultrawide on a mount) + mouse. Having my notepad as close as I could to the screen was extremely helpful as I could minimize eye movement which tends to consume time and interrupt thought processes. Making the switch significantly improved LG times for me. But the bottom line is that you should be doing your thinking/inferring on the scrarch paper and using the screen only for 1) reading the game to write down rules 2) reading individual questions, and 3) picking and answer choice.

lsat2016

@thomasthelawengine said:
These are actually all excellent questions, and specifically issues I had to deal with myself.

1. RC times: I'd say about 6 minutes reading and 2-3 minutes solving questions. The key here is to get the easy questions really fast via process of elimination. I also did not skip questions or passages because my goal was to get them all right.

2. LR times: During PTs I drilled till I could solve the first 15 in the 15 minutes. This means I was blitzing through easier questions at 45 seconds or less, which is definitely doable while maintaining good accuracy. Drilling is king. That leaves 2 minutes per question for the last 10 which tend to be much harder. On the actual test I was a little slower than my drills because the harder Qs were distributed more evenly throughout the test.

3. LG games on a computer. This was why I switched to laptop screen + touchpad instead of a monitor (I use an ultrawide on a mount) + mouse. Having my notepad as close as I could to the screen was extremely helpful as I could minimize eye movement which tends to consume time and interrupt thought processes. Making the switch significantly improved LG times for me. But the bottom line is that you should be doing your thinking/inferring on the scrarch paper and using the screen only for 1) reading the game to write down rules 2) reading individual questions, and 3) picking and answer choice.

Re RC, good to know your approach. 2-3 mins for 6-8 questions is blazing. it's like 20 secs per q. is that correct? how are you able to read an average q and all ACs let alone process and lookup the passage within 20 secs?
even if one retains a lot of info from passage, there are at least 3-4 qs per passage that you have to look back to passage for or think more than just a few seconds on. plus sometimes questions require you to think (or re-assess your initial understanding of passage about some subtle points), which can easily take half or even a minute. how do you go through qs so fast?
were you natural at RC from the beginning or had difficulty with timing during prep or on testday?

Re LG, what you mean by "laptop screen + touchpad", do you mean just laptop without external keyboard or monitor? what does touchpad mean?

Karsa Orlong

Hey, can you expand a bit more on your LR strategy? I've done about a dozen PTs (65-75, 82, 88) so I have a decent amount of material for the analytics function on here. How should I approach correcting my weaknesses? Create problem sets with the questions I got wrong by type and drill them? What about older, untouched PTs? For example someone suggested I should drill my weak question types from PTs 1 - 40 ish even though I haven't tried the LR sections on any of them yet. I fear spoiling a valuable resource by doing this. I'm writing for the first time in November.

thomasthelawengine

@lsat2016 said:

@thomasthelawengine said:
These are actually all excellent questions, and specifically issues I had to deal with myself.

1. RC times: I'd say about 6 minutes reading and 2-3 minutes solving questions. The key here is to get the easy questions really fast via process of elimination. I also did not skip questions or passages because my goal was to get them all right.

2. LR times: During PTs I drilled till I could solve the first 15 in the 15 minutes. This means I was blitzing through easier questions at 45 seconds or less, which is definitely doable while maintaining good accuracy. Drilling is king. That leaves 2 minutes per question for the last 10 which tend to be much harder. On the actual test I was a little slower than my drills because the harder Qs were distributed more evenly throughout the test.

3. LG games on a computer. This was why I switched to laptop screen + touchpad instead of a monitor (I use an ultrawide on a mount) + mouse. Having my notepad as close as I could to the screen was extremely helpful as I could minimize eye movement which tends to consume time and interrupt thought processes. Making the switch significantly improved LG times for me. But the bottom line is that you should be doing your thinking/inferring on the scrarch paper and using the screen only for 1) reading the game to write down rules 2) reading individual questions, and 3) picking and answer choice.

Re RC, good to know your approach. 2-3 mins for 6-8 questions is blazing. it's like 20 secs per q. is that correct? how are you able to read an average q and all ACs let alone process and lookup the passage within 20 secs?
even if one retains a lot of info from passage, there are at least 3-4 qs per passage that you have to look back to passage for or think more than just a few seconds on. plus sometimes questions require you to think (or re-assess your initial understanding of passage about some subtle points), which can easily take half or even a minute. how do you go through qs so fast?
were you natural at RC from the beginning or had difficulty with timing during prep or on testday?

Re LG, what you mean by "laptop screen + touchpad", do you mean just laptop without external keyboard or monitor? what does touchpad mean?

I definitely started off faster than most. My cold diagnostic was a 169 and RC was my strongest section from day 1.

Personally, the key to speed is to take a structural view of the passage to better retain information on where in the passage specific fact-bits appeared. For example if a passage starts talking about Freud, then moves onto his disciples, then his critics, I'd take a mental note (or a physical one for harder passages) of that flow so I could refer quicker.

Also, a lot of ACs on RC are just nonsense statements designed to eat your time. Retaining enough info on the overall content and flow of the text enabled me to quickly ignore them after a glance. This saves so much time.

I'm not going to lie - it's hard, and theres always going to be some luck factor involved too.

Laptop+Touchpad is just that. Not using anything other than the actual laptop to take the exam. Central vision > Peripheral vision > Turning your head to read. Minimize movement to maintain focus.

thomasthelawengine

@"Karsa Orlong" said:
Hey, can you expand a bit more on your LR strategy? I've done about a dozen PTs (65-75, 82, 88) so I have a decent amount of material for the analytics function on here. How should I approach correcting my weaknesses? Create problem sets with the questions I got wrong by type and drill them? What about older, untouched PTs? For example someone suggested I should drill my weak question types from PTs 1 - 40 ish even though I haven't tried the LR sections on any of them yet. I fear spoiling a valuable resource by doing this. I'm writing for the first time in November.

Hello!

I drilled as you described. Using analytics to isolate question types that I got wrong most.

I created problem sets with PT 1-35. I saw the drills as being more valuable than taking really old PTs under timed conditions.

Something else I did was return to the harder Qs I got wrong on PTs I took a while ago, just to see if I had learned anything since then. After just taking more PTs, I was still getting a good chunk of them wrong, which improved significantly after concentrated drilling.

initium novum

Congratulations!

"I definitely started off faster than most. My cold diagnostic was a 169 and RC was my strongest section from day 1."

Enough said. Your a genius! LOL

thomasthelawengine

@"initium novum" said:
Congratulations!

"I definitely started off faster than most. My cold diagnostic was a 169 and RC was my strongest section from day 1."

Enough said. Your a genius! LOL

I have to disagree! :P I also prepped the GRE since early this year so I had a bit of a critical reading background. I also am non-fiction reader, have some WE that required analysis and reading, and studied poli-sci in college so I started RC with a leg up.

My LR began at around a -5~6 and LG was -7ish so noting too impressive back then.

lsat2016

@thomasthelawengine said:

I definitely started off faster than most. My cold diagnostic was a 169 and RC was my strongest section from day 1.

Personally, the key to speed is to take a structural view of the passage to better retain information on where in the passage specific fact-bits appeared. For example if a passage starts talking about Freud, then moves onto his disciples, then his critics, I'd take a mental note (or a physical one for harder passages) of that flow so I could refer quicker.

Also, a lot of ACs on RC are just nonsense statements designed to eat your time. Retaining enough info on the overall content and flow of the text enabled me to quickly ignore them after a glance. This saves so much time.

I'm not going to lie - it's hard, and theres always going to be some luck factor involved too.

Laptop+Touchpad is just that. Not using anything other than the actual laptop to take the exam. Central vision > Peripheral vision > Turning your head to read. Minimize movement to maintain focus.

nice. so does it mean that you sometimes don't go through all ACs on RC? to be sure, is it correct you take just ~20sec "on average" per RC q? I assume you ~6mins to read and 2-3min to do q per passage is something you kind of noted using the practice test.

i was wondering if you as someone who is good at RC somewhat naturally do feel the pressure of timer and stress when taking the test and doing rc section, like if you too feel a tinge of "fear" that you may not be complete the section, or may be are picking wrong choices, or feel internally "boy this was tough, i was legit lost at times during the section" or "can't make sense of this and time's running out"? would be good to know internal thoughts of a top scorer during rc.

lsat2016

@thomasthelawengine said:
Laptop+Touchpad is just that. Not using anything other than the actual laptop to take the exam.

you mean click on answer choice using laptop keyboard or is the laptop screen itself is touchpad? some laptop screens are not touchpad.
i think the biggest issue with digital is switching between 1) pencil and mouse, and 2) moving eyes back and forth far from where the question/passage is to diagram or write. like you mentioned "central vision", it helps if all things (both writing on scratch paper and viewing the lsat question) can be in one eye-view (not having to move eyes or turn head), but hard to do.

thomasthelawengine

@lsat2016 said:

@thomasthelawengine said:

I definitely started off faster than most. My cold diagnostic was a 169 and RC was my strongest section from day 1.

Personally, the key to speed is to take a structural view of the passage to better retain information on where in the passage specific fact-bits appeared. For example if a passage starts talking about Freud, then moves onto his disciples, then his critics, I'd take a mental note (or a physical one for harder passages) of that flow so I could refer quicker.

Also, a lot of ACs on RC are just nonsense statements designed to eat your time. Retaining enough info on the overall content and flow of the text enabled me to quickly ignore them after a glance. This saves so much time.

I'm not going to lie - it's hard, and theres always going to be some luck factor involved too.

Laptop+Touchpad is just that. Not using anything other than the actual laptop to take the exam. Central vision > Peripheral vision > Turning your head to read. Minimize movement to maintain focus.

nice. so does it mean that you sometimes don't go through all ACs on RC? to be sure, is it correct you take just ~20sec "on average" per RC q? I assume you ~6mins to read and 2-3min to do q per passage is something you kind of noted using the practice test.

i was wondering if you as someone who is good at RC somewhat naturally do feel the pressure of timer and stress when taking the test and doing rc section, like if you too feel a tinge of "fear" that you may not be complete the section, or may be are picking wrong choices, or feel internally "boy this was tough, i was legit lost at times during the section" or "can't make sense of this and time's running out"? would be good to know internal thoughts of a top scorer during rc.

I've had PT RC sections where the last passage involved some real fast skim + guesswork, especially when the passage deals with some obscure philosophy/literature. And note that time per question varies a lot. Some will take a full minute, some less. Same goes for passages. Some easier single passages I'll be done in 4:30~5 minutes. Difficult legal dual passages? more like 7 minutes. Averages are deceiving.

Time pressure and its effects are an inherent part of taking any difficult exam - of course I worried! What did help me then was reminding myself to keep moving whenever I felt that way. No time to waste worrying if there are still some untouched questions that may be easy to get right.

thomasthelawengine

@lsat2016 said:

@thomasthelawengine said:
Laptop+Touchpad is just that. Not using anything other than the actual laptop to take the exam.

you mean click on answer choice using laptop keyboard or is the laptop screen itself is touchpad? some laptop screens are not touchpad.
i think the biggest issue with digital is switching between 1) pencil and mouse, and 2) moving eyes back and forth far from where the question/passage is to diagram or write. like you mentioned "central vision", it helps if all things (both writing on scratch paper and viewing the lsat question) can be in one eye-view (not having to move eyes or turn head), but hard to do.

I will click because I don't own a touchscreen laptop. Still much better than alternating between mouse/UW monitor and paper. This was especially salient for me because I use a bulky ergonomic mouse which I need to look at to grab without clicking something by mistake.