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154-176
I just wanted to share my LSAT story as it comes to a close. I took a diagnostic in December and got a 154, and then studied all spring semester with classes going on, I was in the 160's after finishing the core curriculum, and then was in the low 170's, but felt like I was plateauing, especially with reading comp and was not really sure what else I could do on my own. I decided to get a tutoring package, and was paired with Chris Bearne, and he was great. We worked almost entirely on reading comp, and was really helpful in me bringing that down and giving me the ability to get 0-2 wrong on that section when I was 4-6 wrong before. I took the April LSAT, and felt great coming out of it, thinking I might have even got a 180, but I ended up getting a 171. While that is a great score, it was below my PT average of 175 so I decided to retake it. I took the June LSAT and got a 176!
A couple of things that I learned during my journey.
Do what it takes to keep you motivated. The advice generally given is to take your time in the core curriculum, do drills instead of PT's, and extensively blind review everything. I tried to follow that advice, and got through all of the CC, albet was not as thorough as I could have been, but as I transitioned to drills I could not get myself excited to study that way, and would end up not feeling very productive. I am a competitive person, I like to play basketball, not shoot hoops, I like to play golf, not go to the driving range, I like to play chess, not do chess puzzles. I could go on and on. I would get genuinely excited to take PTs, excited by the chance to compete and get a better score than last time. I ended up taking 49 practice tests, basically just taking a PT every time I wanted to study. After them I would blind review my flagged questions, and then look at all the video explanations for my incorrect answers and flagged questions. This method was my way of enjoying studying for the thousand hours I probably put into the LSAT in total. I probably could have gotten more efficient results doing the prescribed method, but I like the direction that I went in.
Logic Games are solvable. I ended up getting to the point where I was getting -0 with plenty of time to spare on pretty much every logic games section I did, the only time I did not was typically when I misread something. My method was centered on basically solving all of the worlds before going to any of the questions. I would do all of the splits necessary to get all of the worlds, even if it would take me to like 16 worlds sometimes, because I knew that once it was all solved, all the questions would take like 10 seconds, and I would be 100% confident in my answer being correct. I was pretty much always faster than the recommended time for each game. The trick is figuring out the most efficient ways to split, and to stay organized so that you could keep track of everything. This works for most games but not all games, whenever one of the games that it did not work out on I usually had enough time to realize it and do it the normal way because I saved so much time on the other games. This is what worked for me, it might not work for everyone, but if you are struggling with games I encourage you to give it a shot.
Reading comp is all about focusing while you are reading and connecting all of the dots. This was tough for me because I would often zone out and stop thinking about connecting all of the dots. I realized that all I had to do was read things and then internally connect that to the other things that I had read so far, and I was able to understand everything so much better.
Comments
Congratulations! That’s an amazing score and I love your approach! Did you do anything in particular for LR?
Was awesome working with you @Tarheels! Well deserved score, and great tips
Thank you for this!
@siren_toe I did not include my LR method because I did not really have a method that I like discovered that helped me improve. I would basically just go through and try to apply common sense to everything, and as I got more familiar with the structure of the questions and what they are looking for with each thing, it just got easier. I wasn't trying to find strategies to stuff, I would always read the stimulus first, and see what sticks out as potential problems with the arguments, and then I would read the question and see what it wants me to do. If I found a problem I would pre phrase in my head what the issue I have with it is and then look for that in the answer choices and it would oftentimes be correct. Another thing I kept an eye out for was words that are overly constricting, because only a sith deals in absolutes. The arguments are usually much more nuanced, and so its hard to throw a strict blanket over it to cover everything, you need something that can accommodate a bunch of different worlds in one statement.
I know thats probably not super helpful to say just do the questions and apply common sense, but I was not being very fancy with it.
Really helpful post with useful insight for others. Thanks for sharing!
Congratulations and thanks for sharing this. May I know how long it took you to complete all 49 PTs? Were they all timed? How much time did you spend on each BR?
Congrats!! I was wondering if you'd mind sharing what you did differently / what your approach was between the April and June LSAT?
Thank you so much for sharing your experience and insights. Congrats on the well-deserved score!
@ LSAT 170 PLUS MBT I took my diagnostic in December, then I took 44 of them them between January 29th and April 12th. So basically like 4 per week, following that I took the April test. And then I took 4 more in between that and the June LSAT. They were all timed. My BR time decreased from about an hour to only like 5-15 minutes as I had less and less questions that I was uncertain about.
@maggie908 I don't think that I did anything really differently, besides laying off of the gas on studying because I knew that I was capable of getting the score that I needed since my PT average was right there. I just needed to do average or above average on a test, instead of below average like I did in April. Everyone's scores are going to fluctuate as they take PTs, and I just happened to hit the bottom of my range on the first try, and get what I was shooting for on the second. It might have taken all 5 try's to get my goal score, or I could have gotten a 180 on the first test.