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17 point improvement - thank you JY and 7Sage!
Watermelon Otter
Alum Member
So I originally sent a thank you directly to 7Sage, and Akiko encouraged me to post about it here in the hopes of helping/encouraging others.
I will try to keep this short, but I want to start by just saying a huge thank you again to the entire 7Sage team for all their work on this site, and especially to JY for all of his videos as well as the recent month-long RC review he held leading up to the exam. Those RC calls were strangely a lot of fun and I know they definitely helped me and others a lot. I would also like to thank people like @"Cant Get Right" and @Daniel.Sieradzki for their LR and RC sessions last year, and @Sami and @"Leah M B" for helping me out with mindset-related issues leading up to the test.
I started out with a somewhat inflated diagnostic score of 153 (I didn't use a bubbling sheet and had some questionable timekeeping practices). After that diagnostic, I stopped studying for about a year to finish up college. In 2017 I started studying again more seriously and after about 9 months with 7Sage, while working full-time, I scored a 170 on the June 2018 exam.
I feel like I made some definite mistakes in my prep, but also did a few things well, so if anyone is interested I could potentially offer some help. I am by no means an LSAT expert, but if possible I would love to help anyone I can to tackle this crazy test. Along those lines, please feel free to PM me or leave a comment if there is anything I may be able to answer or help out with.
Thanks again!
Comments
That's awesome, congratulations!! That's a fantastic score and improvement. Thank you so much for sharing your story with all of us. Can't wait to see what school you end up at.
Congratulations!
https://media.giphy.com/media/3o6fJ1BM7R2EBRDnxK/giphy.gif
Big ups! That’s an amazing jump!!!
Congrats! You were great on the RC calls.
Congrats! These are my favourite posts.
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/degrassi/images/5/59/Celebrate_gif.gif
Congratulation!!!
Great work! A webinar could be an awesome idea for the future, but I understand if time doesn't allow, but just saying. So glad your work paid off and this is a wonderful encouragement to not give up for all stages of prep.
congrats very inspirational for future test takers wish you best of luck with admissions!
Congratulations, well earned!
Thank you for the kind words everyone, it is much appreciated
So inspiring! Congrats!!
What were the RC calls?
Leading up to the June 2018 test JY held some live reading comp. review sessions open to all students where we would essentially go through passages from various RC sections together, make low resolution summaries, discuss the passages and their structure, and then tackle the questions.
JY if you happen to read this, can we have another one of those RC webinar/sessions for those of us that couldn't take advantage of the previous one. Thanks!
Incredible!!! I do have a question for you:
I am taking my test in July, and I work full-time as well, often 50-55 hours/week. What did you do for your last few weeks of prep directly before your test?
@"Watermelon Otter" What were some of the things you did well? I also started off with an inflated 158 diagnostic score and have only been able to score 160 as my highest since then. In my diagnostic test, I got -0 on the logic games section and had time leftover on the RC section. Now, I haven't been able to complete either section on any follow-up PTs. I really want at least a 168, so I'm wondering what some of your specific tips are?
Congratulations! That is awesome!
congrats on that amazing journey and end result! i'm struggling balancing a full-time job while studying for this monstrous test, and i was wondering if you had any pearls of wisdom you could share about balancing those two commitments. thank you, stories like this are fuel to the "beating-the-lsat" fire.
Congrats, any advice on conquering MBT questions?
My last couple weeks I took things really easy/light, and focused on more mental prep to make sure I was in the right mindset for the test. I would talk to friends more, play video games, watch a movie here and there, go for walks, get plenty of sleep, and then do just very light review (just barely enough to keep the LSAT fresh in my mind but not trying to do "real" studying). I ended up feeling less nervous on test day than for certain of my PTs, which I think helped more than any intense studying would have for me personally during those final weeks.
One thing I feel I did well was striking the right balance between quantity and quality when it came to studying. You can't brute force the LSAT, but at the same time you need to expose yourself to as many questions as possible to build familiarity and confidence. I did relatively few full length PTs, but I did a very high number of timed sections and question drills followed by, in my opinion, pretty solid BR and analysis. This helped me build knowledge and familiarity, which eventually translated into faster speed too. Basically, I am recommending that you focus on striking this balance for yourself, but please feel free to write back if you have any more specific questions about this.
If you are going -0 on games and have time left over on RC then I assume that LR is your weakness. What helped me was doing tons of timed sections, and untimed drills by question type followed by lengthy and detailed review. The other thing that helped was adopting a 15-in-15 timing strategy. This is where you try to answer the first 15 questions within 15 minutes. This helped me spend my time more efficiently by not wasting it on the part of the section that tends to have easier questions. This also helped me decrease the amount of time I would waste early in the section due to underconfidence errors on easy questions.
For MBT questions you have to work really hard on becoming fluent with conditional logic (including logic indicator words like "unless"), existential quantifiers, and also the basic math principles of percentages vs. absolute amounts. You also have to be able to apply a high standard of rigor when hitting the ACs, because often on difficult MBT questions trap wrong answer choices will be statements that seem intuitively true or convincing based on your common sense, but will not in the strictest sense be mandated by the facts in the stimulus. I hope this helps, but please write back if there is anything else I can answer or help with.