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no improvement
justinleex3
Alum Member
hi guys, ive been studying for the LSATs since Feb 1st. Ive been taking a course along with the 7sage course. I took a diagnostic test the very first day of my LSAT class and scored a 126 (no knowledge of anything).
After studying a good amount of the basics, I scored a 142 two weeks after my first exam.
i’ve continued to take the course and have been referring back to 7sage when I have had a hard time understanding in-class course material.
My third practice test, i scored a 143. my fourth one scored a 144. and my fifth one today (3rd month of studying) I scored a 145.
ive been getting 7-8 wrong on RC and LG for each PT (which I am fine with at the moment) for each practice exam, but I can’t seem to get more than 20 right on the LR portion. Since my second practice test, I have gone back through all my course material, bought the LR bible and gone through the whole thing, and have made notes in a seperate notebook on all the problems I had a hard time solving/problems I got a mistake on.
i go through every answer choice and write down why a specific answer choice is wrong/right and why I chose the answer choice I chose.
Ive graduated college so all my focus is on the LSAT and i have been spending 30-40 hours a week.
I have seen no improvement in my score at all.
I’m starting to think that the LSAT is not for me and becoming very discouraged. Everyone else in my LSAT course has taken the same amount of courses as I have and are sill students/ working a full time job and soending significantly less time studying than i have. and they have been scoring a 162+ without hesitation.
Any recommendations on studying/improving my score?
there isn’t really a ‘specific portion’ of the LR that im struggling with. sometimes i would get a bunch of flaw quesions wrong, and sometimes I won’t. It seems to be all over the place. If I was getting a specific aet of questions on the LR wrong, it would give me an idea of where i would need to improve but I have nothing to base it off of.
Comments
Hi there,
You’ve been studying for...two months, right? That’s totally normal.
I have some questions for you so that other 7Sagers can give you more concrete advice:
・Have you finished 7Sage’s Core Curriculm?
・What are your Blind Review scores of the PTs you’ve taken?
・What are your sectional scores?
・Have you foolproofed many Logic Games?
・What methods do you use to practice Reading Comprehension?
If I were you, I wouldn’t give up just yet. Because it’s only been two months and there’s plenty of room for you to improve! Only some geniuses can make progress in such a short period of time. Hang in there!
Good luck
I echo @akistotle. You shouldn't give up for a long while yet.
People do make huge gains. That said 126 is a very low diagnostic. On my LSAT for example it was a 22/101. That is a hair better than random chance 20/100. Did you guess on all the questions you couldn't get to? If you didn't, you should ignore the diagnostic. The diagnostic isn't accurate if you don't do everything to maximize your score. Since there is no penalty for guessing you should always randomly guess on questions you don't get to when trying to maximize your score. If you did guess on the questions you didn't get to on the diagnostic, it means you have more room for improvement than typical.
I don't think it sounds like this class is doing you all that much good if you are plateauing in the mid 140's. I think you need to start over with the core curruculum, forget practice tests for a while and drill individual types of questions.
I know you said you are satisfied with LG, but you shouldn't be. If you are missing 7-8 on the most learnable section, you are throwing points away. Additionally, foolproofing logic games shows you how to learn this kind of material. Usually, you begin to grasp hiw to do one type of game first and start to feel comfortable with them when they appear. Then you build on that learning other types and eventually the games section of the test cannot really make you uncomfortable.
Then you seek to replicate that on the Logical Reasoning portion of the exam. You have to be perfectly comfortable doing each question type and identifying the question types. Right now it sounds like you can kind of do a lot of the question types, but are not confident on any of them. That is not a recipe for doing well on the test.
Ignore the people who had a 162 without much studying. They have probably naturally had or from non-LSAT studying experience had already aquired a natural instinctive ease with at least some of the question types. You need to build up that comfort zone. This will help on those questions and also will gradually give you more time to focus on the other questions which are harder for you.
Finally, stop hopping from study resource to resource. 7sage is good enough to get any score on the LSAT. Many people have used the Powerscore Bibles successfully over the years. There are also courses with good results(I have heard good things about Test Masters and bad things about Kaplan). The point if this is that each of these resources has a method which is sufficient to answer every question on the LSAT. But, they all take somewhat different approaches. You only need to know one. So stop trying to learn 3 especially at the same time.
I studied with the Powerscore Bibles the first time, but felt I had sort of hit a ceiling on games and ran across the 7sage games explanations which I really liked. For my second take I studied exclusively with 7 sage material and prep tests. It took a little while to get used to the different methods and forget the powerscore ones anyway. I would advise 7 sage since you can go at your own pace, rewatch videos at your convenience, and since I know their methods were sufficient for me to do as well as I possibly could on the test.
So, you've jumped 19-20 points in just two months? That's amazing! Congrats! Just because you're having a little plateau right now doesn't mean anything. Everyone hits a plateau for a while. Maybe something isn't clicking. That's okay. Perfectly normal.
I would suggest NOT doing any more PT's. Work on the CC. And by working on the CC, I mean really focus. Fool proof. Watch the lessons multiple times. Read the comments on the lessons if you have even a shadow of a doubt on why something is (sometimes, the way another person phrases the explanation will cause you to understand it better. this has happened to me a few times). Ask questions until you understand it thoroughly. Everyone here is so willing to help!
And, as @"Seeking Perfection" said, pick one method and stick with it. I went from self-study with the Bibles to 7sage. Honestly? I think 7sage has everything in the Bibles (and more), in a better format. But pick a method that speaks to you and gets you the best results, and stick with it. Don't bounce back and forth. The Bibles and JY's methods differ quite a bit in some respects, particularly in LG. Trying to do both will mess you up. I speak from experience here. The Bibles do have a lot of games you can use for practice, though, so if you choose 7sage, they still have value in that way. Just don't mix the lessons.
Congrats again on your major improvement. You CAN do this. So what if some people are faster? You are making gains over time. If this is something you really want, keep going.
thanks to everyone who replied.
its just been extremely stressful since ive never actually taken a standaridzed/timed exam. i was a high school drop out and went through communty college - transfer so this is the first time im tackling an exam like this. extremely thnkful for all your guys’ replies and ill definitely be giving it more effort. thanks for being reassuring and thanks for all the tips!
I echo others' thoughts about focusing more attention on LG, especially given that you already are aware of 7sage and can make use of the LG videos!
If you said you are currently missing 7-8 in LG, even if you didn't improve on either LR or RC, you could still significantly improve your score through LG alone. Let's say you miss 7/8 on both LR sections and around 8 on RC, like you said above..if you could get your LG down to -0/1 (WHICH IS VERY DOABLE) that's going to automatically put you in the high 150s, possibly into 160, which is a respectable score.
LG is SO SO learnable. I also think it would be a confidence booster for you if you are feeling frustrated with lack of progress in LR. You can also work on foolproofing LG and while still drilling in LR, so you could potentially make progress in both areas.
Like others have also said though, don't be too quick to give up on yourself. The concepts tested on the LSAT do take considerable time to really sink in, especially if you didn't already start out with a high diagnostic, which is totally normal. Just stick to a study schedule and curriculum and your brain is sure to adjust, even if it does take months. While it may seem like it is taking an age now, there will come a day when things start clicking and it will all be very worth it.