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Just Broke 170!
stevencamendola
Alum Member
Got a 172 on a practice test this morning! I'm taking the LSAT the 26th of this month so I feel pretty great about that, hopefully I repeat that a few times before and on the day.
I was worried that my entire endeavor might be foolhardy as I was ignoring one of the curriculum's first pieces of advice, which was that three months is not enough time. I've actually only had like two and a half and one entire week was taken up by my entire home flooding and another by the liturgical season of Christmas and it's been like, damn.
But the same article that recommends that is basically warning against lousy and expensive prep courses and unrealistic expectations about your own behavior. Since I'm a bit older and I've already worked jobs where I worked at least 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, I already knew it wasn't unrealistic to assume I could study for 10 or more hours a day and in fact I have done just that since I began.
I just did the core curriculum in order and followed all of the advice precisely, save for the 3 month thing and the recommendation only to do 30 hours a week if you study full time, and the recommendation of diminishing returns on doing consecutive practice tests each day and close together. Since I can work a 10 hour day without any particular mental fatigue I just do the practice test in the morning and the blind review in the afternoon til night and I feel no worse for wear or over saturated with the LSAT the next morning. This morning was the third practice test I took since doing the core curriculum and drilling all LG from PT 1-35 repeatedly, and fourth overall, so I went 163-166-172 over the last three days.
Blind review really is an incredible process. One can feel themselves gaining greater mastery of the test's form while they do it.
If anyone would be interested in any advice from me I guess the one thing I'd say is a piece of advice they gave me in the theater. The context of this advice is that actors new to the trade tend to speak too quickly to be understood from the audience but also tend to pause too much in between lines because they don't know how to evaluate how much weight each moment needs and so they're in the paradoxical predicament of being told they really need to speed the hell up because the play is taking 2 hours and forty-five minutes and some members of the audience live in Brooklyn but also slow the hell down because no one can understand what you're saying.
The obvious piece of advice from outside of their perspective is, "don't speak faster, speak sooner." Similarly while taking a timed LSAT do not think faster, or fall to the trap of having a general impulse to rush that just feels like the subconscious thought process yelling an electrical impulse in the back of your head. Take as much time as you need to think precisely and according to 7sage's methods, just do it sooner. This is also related to the concept of mindfulness which is something I've benefited from a great deal recently. Listen to 7sage's methods and you will understand the fundamentals. After that the test taking experience really is psychological. There's no question you can't get right.
Comments
Congratulations!! I wish I was you right now...
Congrats it's time for celebrating!
I recommend blackpink - ddu-du ddu-du. Good song!
Blackpink in your AREAAAAAAAA
Congratulations on that score! Hard work pays off! I have a goal of studying 2.5 hours a day, but after reading this, I will seriously have to bump that up, to get in my target range by June...Thanks for the inspiration
Could you please elaborate on "don't think faster, but sooner." I am having a hard time during timed section because I am either too slow (and run out of time), or too fast (nothing registers in my brain). What is "thinking sooner"?
I think a good advice is to think as you read along this passage/do active reading. For example, at the beginning of my LSAT prep, I literally just read the LR passage and I go huh, ok, lets read that again I didn't get it.
Now I mostly try to do conditional formatting or actively putting the concept in my head or doodling it onto the page to understand the thing. It's helped me immensely, learning how each sentence interacts with one another and go along with it. (ALso, eventually you'll be able to predict the answer choice without looking at the answers first.) This is actually all through practice.
The military expresses the same concept this way, "Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast." Don't allow your need for quickness to cause you to go faster than you are capable of thinking. It takes far more time to repeat yourself than to take more time to get it right the first time. For me the concept of "sooner" rather than "faster" just helps me quiet an indiscernible, racing voice that takes up time in my mind's ear but doesn't contribute to the next question.
Thank you!
Congrats!!! You did it!