Is September too soon?

LSAT Student

I started studying May 15th and will be completing the full 7Sage curriculum by next week. That being said the games are really posing a challenge for me. On my Diagnostic I missed 18/23 on the games but I was also completely clueless on what to do. Now I have gone through sequencing games and feel pretty confident but the Sequencing with a twist seem to be a lot harder for me and I am not even to the grouping games yet. I am shooting for a 168+ come September so that I can comfortably apply for this cycle and even apply ED if needed. I'll be applying with a 4.0 GPA (Finance - if it matters) and am really looking to get into a T14. My RC is going well as I am missing on average 2-4 and LR still needs some work missing about 6/section but I just want to make sure I am not rushing anything. I dedicate about 4 hours/day to this test and would like to be ready for September but I see no point in taking the test if I will not be ready to perform my best.

Did the games just start to come naturally for y'all once you kept doing them over and over and watching the videos 7Sage provides? Was there anything else you did that helped you with the games that JY didn't recommend?

Thanks for any suggestions.

Ron Swanson

I think it's too early to tell if September will work for you, especially since you're not out of the curriculum yet. Logic Game skills definitely develop with practice, and the Fool Proof Method alongside JYs video explanations are, in my opinion, the best resource for improvement.

You need to finish the curriculum and take several (think ~10) Practice Tests before you can gauge your development and trajectory. Even then, things click at different times for different people so it's tough to tell at such an early stage.

Luckily you have plenty of time before registration deadlines so I'd recommend just keep plugging away and focus on the task at hand.

Cant Get Right

@"dwade-17" said:
I see no point in taking the test if I will not be ready to perform my best.

This is a mature and enlightened mindset. Especially with your outstanding GPA, you don’t want to mess this up!

So, you’ve definitely given yourself less time than most people need to hit 168+. So I suspect September is going to be overly ambitious for you. But who knows? We all learn at different rates and maybe your learning curve will be particularly steep and you’ll come out of the curriculum averaging 175 on new PTs. Not likely, lol, but who knows. Once you finish the curriculum, what you’ll need to do is take a PT and see where you’re at. If you're within about 5 points or so, I think you may can close that gap by September. The difficult thing about that score range is that each point becomes exponentially more difficult to earn than the last. When you start getting into the 160s, you’ve really shifted from horizontal into vertical territory, if that makes sense.

As far as games, all I’d add is to systematically revisit once you’ve foolproofed. So my rotation is to repeat a section of games after 1 day, 1 week, and 1 month. For each cycle, I will do the games until I am -0 and under time on each game. If on my 1 month I get it on my first go through, I retire the section. If not, back into the pile.

stepharizona

@"Ron Swanson" said:
I think it's too early to tell if September will work for you, especially since you're not out of the curriculum yet.

I agree with this it is just too early to tell. Some people make a huge jump right after the curriculum, others take more time. There is simply no way to predict it.

One factory seems to be true, the more time you spend studying the better your chances are at scoring high. With that said, I know a lot of people that have improved 10-20 points in a 3-4 months.

They all have a few things in common:
1) They were dedicated and spent an appropriate amount of time studying to fit their needs
2) They had all done at least 20 timed preptests, often more.
3) They did blind review effectively and consistantly
4) They all mastered LG, usually score 0-2 per test
5) They all took the time to write their own explanations for questions they missed as to why they chose the answer they did, why it was wrong and why the right answer was correct. This is especially true of the people I know who scored in the 170s
6) They saw the patterns in the questions. They usually got here with doing Steps 1-5

It takes a lot of dedication to really immerse yourself in this level of dedicated studies. But the people I know, who improved quickly and had top scores did these things. Ha... I did not do all of these things, even though I knew they were impactful. I AM doing these things now, and it does make a lot of difference. I would more than likely be done with the LSAT by now if I had. I still wouldnt be attending until Fall 2017 but I would have "One and Done" my first LSAT more than likely, or at least, would be reataking with a high score already in my portfolio

BR is by far the best way to improve and perhaps one of the things that so many people do the wrong way.

The big thing, is to know yourself, know your abilities, and take the test when you are ready, not because you scheduled to take the test.

Pacifico

The LG gap can be closed in a very short amount of time, and if you do that you're looking at mid 160s with no other improvement so just keep going and I would take in September and fall back on December if needed. Depending on your goals you won't need much more than a mid to high 160 to get into the vast majority of schools with that GPA.

LSAT Student

@"Ron Swanson" said:
I think it's too early to tell if September will work for you, especially since you're not out of the curriculum yet. Logic Game skills definitely develop with practice, and the Fool Proof Method alongside JYs video explanations are, in my opinion, the best resource for improvement.

You need to finish the curriculum and take several (think ~10) Practice Tests before you can gauge your development and trajectory. Even then, things click at different times for different people so it's tough to tell at such an early stage.

Luckily you have plenty of time before registration deadlines so I'd recommend just keep plugging away and focus on the task at hand.

Thanks for the advice, I will just keep working hard and decide if I feel I will be ready by September.

@"Cant Get Right" said:
This is a mature and enlightened mindset. Especially with your outstanding GPA, you don’t want to mess this up!

So, you’ve definitely given yourself less time than most people need to hit 168+. So I suspect September is going to be overly ambitious for you. But who knows? We all learn at different rates and maybe your learning curve will be particularly steep and you’ll come out of the curriculum averaging 175 on new PTs. Not likely, lol, but who knows. Once you finish the curriculum, what you’ll need to do is take a PT and see where you’re at. If you're within about 5 points or so, I think you may can close that gap by September. The difficult thing about that score range is that each point becomes exponentially more difficult to earn than the last. When you start getting into the 160s, you’ve really shifted from horizontal into vertical territory, if that makes sense.

As far as games, all I’d add is to systematically revisit once you’ve foolproofed. So my rotation is to repeat a section of games after 1 day, 1 week, and 1 month. For each cycle, I will do the games until I am -0 and under time on each game. If on my 1 month I get it on my first go through, I retire the section. If not, back into the pile.

Thanks for the extra advice on the games. I will start using this once I begin going through full timed PT's. Right now I am just randomly picking games from the curriculum that I have already completed. I've seen such a great improvement in Pure Sequencing games and Spatial Games that I'm confident that will continue.

@stepharizona said:
I agree with this it is just too early to tell. Some people make a huge jump right after the curriculum, others take more time. There is simply no way to predict it.

One factory seems to be true, the more time you spend studying the better your chances are at scoring high. With that said, I know a lot of people that have improved 10-20 points in a 3-4 months.

They all have a few things in common:
1) They were dedicated and spent an appropriate amount of time studying to fit their needs
2) They had all done at least 20 timed preptests, often more.
3) They did blind review effectively and consistantly
4) They all mastered LG, usually score 0-2 per test
5) They all took the time to write their own explanations for questions they missed as to why they chose the answer they did, why it was wrong and why the right answer was correct. This is especially true of the people I know who scored in the 170s
6) They saw the patterns in the questions. They usually got here with doing Steps 1-5

It takes a lot of dedication to really immerse yourself in this level of dedicated studies. But the people I know, who improved quickly and had top scores did these things. Ha... I did not do all of these things, even though I knew they were impactful. I AM doing these things now, and it does make a lot of difference. I would more than likely be done with the LSAT by now if I had. I still wouldnt be attending until Fall 2017 but I would have "One and Done" my first LSAT more than likely, or at least, would be reataking with a high score already in my portfolio

BR is by far the best way to improve and perhaps one of the things that so many people do the wrong way.

The big thing, is to know yourself, know your abilities, and take the test when you are ready, not because you scheduled to take the test.

Very good info. Thank you.

LSAT Student

@Pacifico said:
The LG gap can be closed in a very short amount of time, and if you do that you're looking at mid 160s with no other improvement so just keep going and I would take in September and fall back on December if needed. Depending on your goals you won't need much more than a mid to high 160 to get into the vast majority of schools with that GPA.

This is my plan. I am shooting for 168-170 which with my GPA should give me decent odds with a good majority of the T14.