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140 to 160s possible?
ram.sharma1998
Member
Hey guys. I plan on taking the November 15th LSAT this year. My diagnostic was pretty bad (140). I was pretty devastated considering that I have a 3.9+ GPA in undergrad currently. I want to get into the 160s and go to a T-25 law school. Is jumping from140 to the160s possible given the amount of time I have? I have a little over 6 months.
And what's a good way to prepare? I plan on using full proof from JY for LG and going through the LG Bible. But what about LR and RC?
Comments
Hi there!
I think that a score jump like that, about 20 points, is going to be very difficult but doable in the time that you have. With a diagnostic at 140 there is a lot of low hanging fruit that you can pick up. Foolproofing logic games to the point where you are consistently around -2 is doable in 6 months, that alone will boost your score significantly.
I dont know how much time you have to study, but I would recommend going through the CC in as much depth as you can. All the little things that JY says really are important and can help you. For example, it really is worthwhile to make flashcards to memorize all of the conditional logic indicator words and valid/invalid argument forms. Don't skimp on the problem sets either, make sure that you feel comfortable with the concepts before moving on. Also, make sure that you go back and drill anything that you felt unsure about.
Once you have gone through the CC enough to have a solid foundation, then comes the PT stage. Once you are at this point, I cant emphasize how important working on rigorous blind review is. Go through each question that you either missed or were unsure about and isolate the premises and conclusion. While you are doing so, figure out the structure. The arguments fit together like puzzles. Go through the answers in detail as well. Carefully parse out why each incorrect answer is wrong in depth.
I would also recommend doing a lot of other things to challenge your understanding, since that is going to be what ends up giving you the familiarity you need to score in the 160s. When you are dealing with a question that you either got wrong or gave you trouble, try to change the wrong answers in a way that would make them actually correct. After that, do the reverse. Try to change the stimulus in a way that would allow the wrong answer choices to correctly answer the question. Build templates for yourself and create your own new analogous arguments that have the same structure as the argument that gave you trouble. Doing that will help you see how all the questions really are all the same. Particularly in LR, there often isn't that much difference between a hard question and an easy question in terms of the logic, its just a matter of how many flourishes the LSAT decides to put on top of the question to make it scary.
In addition, for those last few questions that really give you an unusual amount of trouble, keep track of them and go through them every few weeks to make sure that you still really do understand what was going on there. Doing these things will help you to really take the mask off the LSAT. That translates into both speed and accuracy.
I hope this helps, let me know if you have any questions!
YES! Take your diagnostic with a grain of salt. I'm sure most people get bad scores on their diagnostics. Mine was 145, i ended up with 169 on the July LSAT. Put in the time and effort, do the lessons,the drills, and work on your weaknesses.
Depends what your per section scores were. AR is much easier to improve than the other 2 sections.
Yes of course it is possible, all it requires is hard work. With such a low score, my immediate concern is reading comprehansion, basically, do you understand what you read. For that, I recomend "The Loophole" by Ellen Casdidy. Personally, I scored a 143 on my diagnotstic and with less than two months of legit studying, I have gone up to the mid 150's and hepefully by August will relaibly be in the 160's after improving my awful LG scores. Word of advice is that everyday counts, everyday you should be doing something that will increase your score.
@jmarmaduke96 That is great advice. Thank you for providing so much detail! I did have one question. Is it smart to take a timed practice section per day? Then blind review it. Then find the question types I struggle on. Then read strategies on how to attack such questions?
@JohnRamsa Yup, I just got The Loophole. Just finished chapter one. I love her writing style. Congrats on making such an improvement. Rooting for you!
@"Peter.p.l" Wow, that's an awesome increase in score! Congrats on that. Would you mind sharing what your study regiment was like?
I'm following.
My diagnostic was a 144 and I finished with a 166 two years later.
It takes countless hours, but it totally doable if you really want the score. I wrote a fairly long post with advice I learned throughout my journey. It's on my profile if you wish to view it. My best wishes to you!
In terms of Prep Test scores, I jumped nearly 20 points from my diagnostic in about a year. Nerves got to me on the real thing but I went from a diagnostic of 157 to a best PT of 177 with a 172 5-test average during my final month of studies. I've heard of people going from the 130s to the 170s with enough disciplined study. 140 to 160 is totally doable from now until Novemeber - but it's going to take a lot of work.
@"ram.sharma1998" I would start with taking untimed tests from the older LSAT PTs, to diagnose my weakness. I think untimed is a great way to diagnose your weaknesses because if you got something wrong and you can't blame running out of time or not having enough time. RC was my main weakness so I honed in on doing the memory method that 7sage teaches. For LR, I supplemented with Ellen Cassidy's Loophole. As I got better, I would start doing timed tests with 1 hour per section, 50 min per section, etc.