My 143 -> 172 June LSAT Journey!

sammmm93

Hi all!

First off, I want to say thank you to the 7sage community and the various tutors that have helped me along the way, @Mike_Ross @"Heart Shaped Box" , and @BinghamtonDave . All of them have been invaluable in the process of “taking down” this test! Couldn’t ask for more.

I imagine some of you might wanna know how I got here. Allow me to explain.

Well, it started in July 2019 with a Testmasters course (terrible decision I know) and consisted of about 2 years of actual studying. To say that it’s been a rollercoaster of emotions would be an understatement. Since undergrad was fairly easy, I thought I’d study for 3-4 months and ace this test like usual. Boi was I wrong!!!!

It was difficult, I felt incompetent, & I wanted to give up. But, (I know, cliche) I persisted. I drew motivation from various posts here which pushed me to continue. Simultaneously, I began to search for other sources for help. The most useful for me were:

The Loophole by Ellen Cassidy
Khan Academy
Manhattan Prep's forum

I'll explain what from each of those sources were most helpful, starting with The Loophole.

While the book doesn't necessarily offer anything novel in terms of LSAT "theory", it did have 2 aspects that I found super beneficial. The first being how the book teaches you to find the assumptions in an argument. I struggled with this a lot before reading the book. It asks you to find the loophole (the thing that would ruin the argument) by asking "what if...this bad thing is true?" For whatever reason, asking "what if" after reading an argument helped me get to the assumptions easier. Eventually, I stopped having to do this as I imagine I internalized it and assumptions were just so apparent then.

The second element of the book and probably most beneficial to my studies was the translation drill. At its core, the drill asks you to read a stimulus once and then write out what it said w/o going back. This does two things: it improves your memory but more importantly, for me, it examines whether you actually understand what you're reading and it turned out I didn't. In my experience, it was a combination of reading too fast, nerves, and not being focused that were isrupting my comprehension. I had to force myself to slow down and to focus on the subject and verb predicate (I also tried to visualize as I read). The nerves went away with successful repetition.

Khan Academy

I was thoroughly pleased with their RC strategies. The most important thing to success in RC is that you understand the function of paragraphs with respect to the others and the function of sentences with respect to other sentences. The former is pretty straight forward so I'll just explain what I mean by the latter. Sometimes you'll come across a sentence within a paragraph that seems to not fit within the given paragraph that it's in. But, the thing is, it absolutely fits. You just didn't understand its function in relation to the rest of the paragraph. This is by design to confuse you. Your goal is to connect the dots to the other sentences.

KA advocates that you think of why the author included something, which is really just asking what the function of something is.

Manhattan Prep Forums

I'm not sure this needs any explaining. Whenever I felt I still didn't quite understand an LR question after watching a 7sage explanation vid and perusing the comments, I would go straight to their forums. Great written explanations there.

Those are the highlights of my journey. Of course, lots of drilling and BR and thoroughly examining my weaknesses on spreadsheets.

If anyone has any questions, feel free to message me!

And before I go, I just want to say to anyone barely starting off or if you've been at it for a while that it's normal to feel overwhelmed or discouraged. Remember, progress is not linear. You're capable. And with diligent study, you can reach your goal score!

brindae1-1

Thanks for sharing your journey! This was very helpful. Best of luck to you!

goforbroke

Congrats @sammmm93! And I'm so sorry to hear about your dad. But it seems like you are very resilient and I wish you all the success in the future!

And thank you so much for highlighting some other resources and WHY you found them helpful. Those two things you mentioned about the Loophole Method is what I found most helpful too (rest of the book I didn't particularly care for / didn't find it very helpful). Will have to check out KA too.

jordongavaldon90

Very inspirational post. Thank you for sharing, best of luck to you!

AJamal22

Congrats and thank you for sharing your journey. These are some great general tips. Do you have any specific methods that led you to see improvement in your LR? I'm currently sitting at -4 to -7 consistently and havent been able to knock it lower. I have read the loophole but I need to revisit the concepts, as you mentioned. Do you remember something "clicking" as you went about doing more problem sets? Did you ever focus on certain LR question types or did you use a wrong question journal to track all the questions you got wrong? Thanks.

LSATking

Legendary story. Sorry for your loss. Best of luck with your law school journey

fancysummer

Thanks for sharing your story and I'm sorry for your loss.
I just have one question. Did you study full-time for 2 years?

elliekay

Incredible story, thank you for sharing.
Just wanted to say I'm truly sorry for your loss.

I wish you nothing but the best with all your future endeavours!

Glutton for the LSAT

Congratulations. Thanks for being open about your personal experiences, and my condolences to you and your family after losing your dad. I hope you're feeling better.

sammmm93

Thank you to everyone for the comments! I appreciate it greatly. I'm definitely in a better place now, though ofc it has its ups and downs.

Congrats and thank you for sharing your journey. These are some great general tips. Do you have any specific methods that led you to see improvement in your LR? I'm currently sitting at -4 to -7 consistently and havent been able to knock it lower. I have read the loophole but I need to revisit the concepts, as you mentioned. Do you remember something "clicking" as you went about doing more problem sets? Did you ever focus on certain LR question types or did you use a wrong question journal to track all the questions you got wrong? Thanks.

@AJamal22 doing the translation drill was really what helped me most as I was finally understanding what I was reading, which is imperative to this test. I can't really point to anything that made stuff "click." When I first started studying I did sets by Q type but eventually didn't feel that was needed anymore. I used a wrong Q journal toward the 2nd half of my studies and occasionally, if a pattern emerged, would drill by type. You should ensure that you rarely miss a question on 1-10 and that you get to Q11 in around 12-14 mins. Well those are the goals I gave myself and they could work for you. Practicing drilling Qs 1-10 with those parameters really helped me get comfortable with moving quickly on early Qs.

Thanks for sharing your story and I'm sorry for your loss.
I just have one question. Did you study full-time for 2 years?

@fancysummer I studied full time for about a year and a couple months. I guess if there's a silver lining to the pandemic it was that UI helped me study full time.

Mike_Ross

My guy! Congrats again!!!!! Excited for your admissions cycle!!

bklynxxx

Thank you for sharing your story. I've been studying for a year and took a problem set yesterday that didn't go well and I struggled to be kind to myself. It's encouraging to know that keeping at it can lead to the outcome we're envisioning. Congratulations!!