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135 to 162!
Naruto Uzumaki
Member
Hey Team,
I just wanted to share that after receiving and opening the February LSAT Score today morning, the relief and joy of seeing the hard work and struggles pay off felt like nothing I have ever felt before. I know the next few words have been shared by countless people before me and it might sound useless and unmotivating but truly, "IF I COULD SCORE A 162, ANYONE CAN SCORE 165+!!!" this test is beatable.
A 162 may seem like a measly score to others on this platform who have reached the 170s and even a perfect 180 but this was my last attempt at the LSAT and I wasn't planning on taking it again after that 5th attempt, signalling at myself to move on with life. But seeing this score as a Canadian Applicant looking to get into Canadian Schools, definitely has changed/altered my life's trajectory.
When I began the LSAT journey in November 2020, I used Khan Academy and on the very first diagnostic test I ever did received a 135... Instantly demotivating, heart crushing, and morale destroying.. but at the same time I was easy on myself knowing the journey will be long - accepting that it is only going to get better from here. Then I landed on 7Sage on December of 2020 through a friend and my life around studying for the LSAT Changed.. I never thought I will be writing my own discussion post featuring my score and trying to muster up hope, faith, and motivation in others to reach for the stars when studying for this god forsaken test. Side Note: I thought the reviews people posted were fake loll... but clearly they are not..
The reason I want to emphasize perseverance is because of my experience... LSAT Attempt #1 November 2020, a couple weeks after joining Khan Academy I wanted to sit for a test to see and witness the experience of writing the actual test. Somehow from my diagnostic of 135, I managed to score a 146 on the November 2020 LSAT. And because I was eager to get into Law School in 2021, I did a preptest everyday from December 2020 to January 2021 in preparation for Attempt #2 (January 2021 sitting) without using and going through the 7Sage course and taking my time with it.. Guess what we scored on our second attempt after a month and a half of jamming PTs everyday before the test.... A WHOPPING 146.. THAT'S RIGHT.. We scored the SAME SCORE as our Blind attempt in November.. This was truly soul crushing.. Ended up taking a break for 2 weeks to recoup and to have an honest conversation with myself - of whether we want to continue doing this and take the risk.. because that is what it is, a risk.. A risk full of hopes to score well and even if we score well to be able to get in. We decided to go all in.
Knowing that my chances of getting into a school with those horrendous scores were all but gone for the 2021 year.. I moved from doing a PT everyday to ONE PT a WEEK In preparation for the August 2021 Attempt #3 LSAT - truly cementing the practice of Blind Review which works wonders!
I started to really take J.Y's advice with LG to constantly do it over and over and over again until it becomes ingrained in our memory.. with that we started going from -6/-5 to -2/0.. EVEN ON THOSE GOD AWFUL SUBSTITUTE Q's... when you implement the repeating the LG section over and over method - your intuition really starts to roll and those sub q's start to become clearer and easier.. LR was getting supremely better and I kind of Understood what people were saying when they would say "it felt right.." on tougher questions.. prior to that I HATED HEARING THAT.. but there's no better way to describe that experience.. Fast forward 7 months to August and we score a 158. I was gassed! But felt we could do better but decided to take a month break to travel across Canada to get away from the test.
I came back in October with a mentality to boost my score and to hopefully squeeze into the 160s.. I registered for the January 2022 exam.. still implementing the ONE PT a WEEK regimen. January rolls around and we score a 155๐... After that I was like eff it.. I'll hope for the best to get into a school a with the 158, if it doesn't work out whatever we tried our best and we move on.. Knowing I had one more sitting available I was like meeeeh might as well, we had already threw all this money into this process whats another $300 CAD going to do.. LOOOL Horrible justification but glad I did it.
We scored a 162 on our Feb 2022 sitting which was my FIFTH attempt. I really went into the exam with no hopes, and a defeated mentality - I want to say it helped because I didn't allow my mind to give the test all this unnecessary weight - to classify it as an exam that's going to determine my life (If I dont do well I failed in life.... NO) - life is more than this test, literally the LSAT is a smidgen compared to all the great things you all will achieve in your life.
So we went from:
November 1st Khan Academy Diagnostic: 135
November 2020 LSAT Attempt #1: 146
January 2021 LSAT Attempt #2: 146... โฐ๏ธ
August 2021 LSAT Attempt #3: 158
January 2022 LSAT Attempt #4: 155..
February 2022 LSAT Attempt $5: 162!!!!
I write all this to say, YOU CAN DO IT.. YOU CAN! There's nothing in this world you can't do
Please have faith in yourself and if youre religious/spiritual in god as well.. Because as Drake said.. it's god's plan. There are going to be days where we feel stagnant but during those days we should strive to tell our minds we can do it!
I haven't gotten into any schools yet but honestly at this point to even score a 162 is more than enough as a reward to know I can walk away from the LSAT happy and content with the effort we put in. HOOO-RAHH.
Thank you all for reading if you did and please don't hesitate to ask questions or leave a comment - I can attempt to aid wherever I can.. LOL I don't how much advice someone would want from someone who scored a 162 but hey lol the lines are open (:
Comments
Thats awesome Congratulations!!! youre hard work 100% paid off!!!!
I see that you're studying for the June Sitting. YOU GOT THIS IN THE BAG!!!
That's amazing!! You should be so proud of yourself and how hard you worked! Your story is SO inspiring, thank you for sharing!!
@krystin Thank youuu!!! Looking forward to hear or read a post from you soon as well โบ๏ธ๐๐ผ
Congrats I love hearing stories like these!
Thanks for sharing your success story. And don't talk down your 162 score, which is 27 points higher than your starting point! That's NOTHING to be ashamed about. I wish you the best as you go forward and thanks for the encouragement.
Felt so happy to read your story! Good luck!
Godspeed, thanks for sharing your story!
Reading stories like this always makes my day. Thank you for sharing and showing that studying persistently does pay off on this exam.
@"Naruto Uzumaki" living up to your name. Let's do this
Thank you everyoneee ๐
Good for you Naruto!!!! Your perseverance is very inspiring, thank you for sharing. Congratulations on achieving a 162 and i wish you the best in the next steps of your journey in becoming an attorney.
Congrats on completeing your LSAT journey!
I was honestly only gonna read first few lines of your post...But you fully had me captivated till the very end. Amazing to see the adversity you encountered and fought through it to the end.
All the Best! and i'd love to keep in touch with other Canadian applicants.
Hey your story is inspiring many people including me! You've got my dream score. I have a question. So did you follow the syllabus or you just jumped into the PTs? Or did you do two tracks which means following the syllabus and doing the PTs at the same time? I am currently following the syllabus but I was wonder if I have to take the PTs anyway. I hope god made my plan, too. Again, congratulations!!
@MakingItHappen2022 Thank you for your well wishes!! Praying you and everyone else dominate this test
@66_Umair_55 Thank you for reading haha
@lsatpatrick Thank you for your kind words and I'm praying that you achieve great things!!
Firstly, let's get the "dream score" out of your vocabulary lol - if we say dream score then it'll stay in your dreams, rather lets both say "that's the score I am going to get or the score I am aiming for and will achieve" let's speak that into existence. The reason I say that is because as I was finishing my fifth attempt at the LSAT I was keeping a mental note of where I could have gotten a question wrong and what my overall score for each section could be. At the end of the test I wrote down 163 on my scrap paper as the score I should get regardless of how unsure or confident I was and through some grace we landed on a 162.
By no means am I implying that caused anything lol (LSAT Trauma corr/causation) but just to encourage yourself to have faith in yourself! You be your #1 supporter.
That being said, sorry for the drivel, I realized I wasn't Clear in my post lol whoopsie!
After receiving the Jan 2021 LSAT score, I started from the beginning, implementing the entire syllabus, really trying to understand what the heck it is that J.Y was trying to say when attempting to explain the process of answering questions. I didn't touch a PT until I got through 90% of the course. I say 90% because I skipped some drills more specifically the Para reas, para flaw reas, etc.
One thing I wish I paid attention to earlier, and in my opinion the most important thing to knock down and understand, is sentence parsing.
For example, "Many boats that have red railings with the letters S.S. Zeus painted on them are more likely to capsize than are most boats that feature black railings with no letters on them"
So during BR I would literally talk to myself as such:
"Okay, so boats - are we talking about all the boats in the world? NO, we are talking about 'Many=some' boats."
"Okay moving on, what kind of many boats, well it looks like many boats 'that' (descriptive) red railings. okaay what about those red railings, they have S.S. Zeus written on them"
"Okay what about these specific subset of boats?"
they "are more likely to capsize than" STOP, Than = comparative and we have a winner in the comparison (More likely) who's more likely?
So on and so fourth. THIS IS THE HOLY GRAIL OF SECRETS to conquering the LSAT IMO. Once I truly started to implement this is when my scores and speed at understanding question stimulus sky rocketed - Not only for LR but for RC (my weakest section). It helped spot gaps in words being used (many to most), or identify jumps (assumptions) from premises to conclusion. Hopefully that helps.
But yes really focus on the syllabus/course. they really help lay the foundation - especially sections on
1) Phen/Hypo: know how to weaken/strengthen - create predictions
2) Correlation/Causations: know how to strengthen/weaken - pay attention to control groups.
3) and analogies: be comfortable in strengthening and weakening analogies.
4) PSA Q's - look for a conclusion that either affirms the conclusion or negates the premises.
- Be quick to eliminate, ACs that affirm the premise in the conclusion or affirms the opposite of the conclusion.
5) Prescriptive vs descriptive
etc. I can send you the cheat sheet I created to help me - I would read that once a week to keep me honest with the entire process. Let me know, although, fair warning I don't know how legible it may be lol
Appreciate the share of your journey here. I am 40 hours in on 7 Sage. Does that mean 860 hours to go to get to 900 hours? I am okay with that. What were your total hours of study time? Now doing MSS Q Sets. Soon, formal logic. I have set aside 4-6 am for study, then an afternoon study session. That is about 3 hours a day. What were your daily hourly session time frames?
Congrats Naruto
@brianpettee Hi (: Never a problem, Thank you for taking the time to read.
Yes I would 100% recommend finishing the core curriculum. and then try to take away a couple main points from each section. For example, 90% of the time for MSS Q's, weak ACs are easier to support - key words to look for are "some, at least, sometimes, etc.." within AC - but still ensure the AC makes sense and is relevant to the stim.
So my situation may not be the ideal situation. I wasn't working when I began studying for the LSAT. I actually quit my job to treat the LSAT journey as a full time job.
My schedule went like this:
Core Curriculum: I would start my study days at 9am and end at 4:30-5:00pm. I literally treated it as a job, adopting a 9-5 attitude because I wanted to finish the CC as fast as possible. I would not recommend speeding through the CC (So don't do what I did lol), take your time with it, that's the foundation.
Once I started PTs (1 per week): I would do the PT on the day I felt I would choose the LSAT to be on. I always opted for the Friday sittings whenever I took the official test. So I would wake up every Friday thinking it was test day and start each PT around 10:30-11am depending on the day. SIDE NOTE: I never simulated the flex option.
After each PT I would take a break for 2-3 hours, go workout, watch YouTube videos, or soccer. After my break I would come back to the test to begin Blind Review (BR) which I allowed myself to take a week. If I finished BR in 5 days (say Wednesday) then that's more of an incentive for me to take the 6th day (the day before the next PT) as an off day. but most of the time I never had that luxury as I would always take all 6 days lol.. WORTH IT!
To start my BR, I would always start with LG - I would do one Game and then go to the Explanation Videos, then second game followed by second video, so and so forth. The reason why I did LG first is because each day I would return for BR I would start with LG by getting a scrap paper and then trying to beat my time to finish each game faster than I had the prior day - this allowed me to get to perfect (I think) on the 162 test in their LG section. Also I recommend using a tablet for BR, you save a lot of paper lol.
Also, each BR day was treated as a 9-5 (EVEN ON WEEKENDS). of course there were off days where I hung out with friends or created plans later in the day to incentivize myself to get work done. I was also blessed to have friends who would hop on zoom and we would all work, study on things we had to work on.
The way I implemented the 9-5 study time was I would do 45 minute sessions and take a 15 minute break to be on my phone, YouTube, snack, do pushups, etc - In my later days of studying for this test, I deactivated all of my socials, so no Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Snap.. which helped LOADS. around 12 I would take an hour break for lunch and the come back at 1pm to resume all the way until 4:30-5pm.. depending on the day I would go for longer.
Let me know, if you would want the cheat sheet I used to help keep me honest. I sent it to one other person and they seemed to like it (:
This was really inspiring to myself, as someone who scored a 133 on their first diagnostic and first LSAT test. A 162 is a score I am really shooting for although a 148 is the score I need to get into the law school I want. But your story really rejuvenated my motivation to keep going for my test in June. As someone who is doing the main core curriculum and Khan Academy.
Would you recommend in the core curriculum, say like I am still doing Logical Reasoning section of it, it is my last week of it and then I start to go into Logic Games. On Khan Academy should I just focus on Logical Reasoning since that is what I am doing right now. Or still mix it up and do logical games and reading comprehension?
Thank you so much!
Congrats!!! I hope nothing but the BEST FOR YOU!!!
So happy that you shared this with us all!
@BRReiva Hi (:
Hmm that's an interesting position ๐ค Take what I say with a grain a salt lol
Personally, I never meshed with Khan Academy - I only used them for two weeks and never looked that way afterwards.
I used the power score books from 2017 - read cover to cover which I found helpful as well.
and 85% of my studying/learning came from 7Sage. So I would say if Khan Academy is working for you, might as well keep that in the rotation to further cement the concepts and ideas. But personally I would recommend really harnessing what J.Y has to offer (THE MAN IS A GOD) and go in the order the CC is offered, don't worry about mixing (my opinion).
The reason I say that is, I found myself at times returning the CC even when I did PTs to further understand and to see if I missed something. Helped a lot whenever I did return to the CC when I was PTing. From what I remember - phen/hypo, weakening, and formal logic (knowing when things trigger, or become irrelevant) <--- this last one was good for LG and for PSA, SA, Para Reas, and sometimes NA questions.
congratulations!!!! so inspiring
Congratulations and thank you for sharing your LSAT journey. I take my first test on Friday, and I know that this is just the begining of my LSAT journey.
Your story is inspiring in that it reaffirms this test is hard, but it can be beaten with constant persistence and hardwork.
Congrats again!!
@MrRAustinJr Yes sirrr!! you got it ๐๐ผ Who's to say you won't score amazingly on the upcoming test?? NO ONE!!
Aim for the stars
Thank you for reading and your kind words (: && I wish you the best of luck - dominate
There is so much positivity in this post!!! Thank you for sharing your experience! I feel so defeated from this exam that Iโve legit taken a 5 year break from it. But in those 5 years, Iโve been worried and anxious about how I need to prep for it one day. So really, I never took a break I guess ๐. Iโm just beginning my journey again And I know I need a ton load of practice so realistically Iโm trying to take the exam in November 2022 ๐ฎโ๐จ just thinking about the journey gives me so much anxiety. Any advice would be helpfulโฆ (ESP in keeping yourself grounded and consistent) Thanks for taking the time to read this! ๐ฅบ
That is awesome! Thanks for sharing! Going into my 3rd time writing either in June or August and this is really inspiring!
@Canadianfinn You got this!! I am definitely cheering you on (:
Hi, I am so proud of you. I always happen to see your comments under many LR questions. I remember you and I'm not surprised you killed the test!
Congratulations! your story is inspiring and I hope you the best.
@defeatRC Haha Hopefully those comments were helpful lol some were just vents!! but willing to offer help if you need (: Thank you for reading!!
But it was definitely one hell of ride! lol
@RichStaton-1 Thank youuu
Congrats!!! Is it possible to send me over this cheat sheet you speak of in your previous convo? Lol "etc. I can send you the cheat sheet I created to help me - I would read that once a week to keep me honest with the entire process. Let me know, although, fair warning I don't know how legible it may be lol"
Congratulations!!! I can totally feel you! I started at a very low score. But now I believe I have already made some progress. I will keep climbing the mountain because I want more. And RC is my worst section. I can barely finish it. Do you have any special tips for me? I think the best way is to ask the survivor how they make it. Thank you in advance!
@1300253424 Hi (:
Apologies for the late reply!!
Firstly, I love when you said "I can barely finish it" LOL On the test that got us a 162, I vividly remember not answering the last two questions (26 & 27) on the RC section ๐๐ I didn't even have time to guess - or I must have tried to read one realized it was too long and then tried to jump to the other before time ran out and ended up not putting an answer for either lol
So with RC, again to echo what you said, it was my worst section but that's not to say that I didn't improve. Over the 7Sage lifetime I went from -12/-13 to -7/-8 on AVG - not a big improvement but still something substantial in my books. And there were days where i'd do a -5 as well but not often.
One thing that helped me with RC was really diving deep into what the Question stem is asking, classifying questions on the scale J.Y talks about, whether the AC will be Explicitly Stated (ES) or Strongly Implied (SI). This distinction definitely helped saved a lot of time in knowing when to jump back into the passage to find something ES or try to use my 'shotty memory' to try and push out an inference answer for SI questions. To add, for SI questions they are literally like MSS questions. I realized early on that I never made the connection between the two question types (SI and MSS). Once I started to attack SI Q's as I would MSS my score on RC started to rise since there are a bunch of them on the section - Easily supportable AC are weaker answers and anything with strong verbiage were already a red flag. Not to say that they are wrong all the time but seeing strong verbiage on Strongly implied Q's ACs allowed me to not place much emphasis on that AC at first which resulted in me scanning all the ACs faster and if nothing popped (weakly supported ACs that made sense in context to the passage) i'd go back and revisit the ACs with strong verbiage. but most of the time this worked for me.
Secondly, I think the biggest thing with RC is understanding the structure lol (the most cliched RC advice right there - i apologize) ๐ AAANDD I had no idea what the heck structure meant until super late into testing lol just kept putting it aside and hoped Id understand it as the tests went on - dont do that!!! Really understand what that means.
It definitely helps to know a little bit about the topic - For example: Science and Law topics were easier for me to understand because of my interest in them but when it came to any topic related to Arts or Humanity, that's where I got lost.
That being said, I'd say on avg 75% of questions on a passage are more so based on a few things:
(1): What the author is saying - this is easy to pick up:
- Usually you know the Author is about to speak when we see, "However, consequently, unfortunately, but" those are all indicators. Or adjectives like "interestingly, impressively, inconveniently" each adjective describing the subtle attitude the author may show (<- this one is a bit tricky to see but once you see it once on a passage, you'll see it going forward)
(2): RC IS NOT ABOUT UNDERSTANDING EVERYTHING IN THE PASSAGE.
(3): From point 2 we move to the structure - the way I layered it out during BR was for each paragraph, I would ID the main point, people speaking, the tone of the paragraph (what's the attitude: are they in agreeance, Is their conflict, so on and so forth) and then structure, where do I think this paragraph belongs in the context of the entire passage? (is it main point, premise, support, context, OPA). Lastly, how does the next paragraph connect to the following paragraph.
- This process was slow at first and unknown but I kept doing it and doing it this way and eventually it became natural when doing the test. What's important is to talk to yourself . At least that's what helped me.
And this is an example of me talking to myself lol
"Okay who's speaking, oh some scientists, okay what are they saying, hmm looks like they have a hypothesis to the observed phenomenon" okaaaayy ๐ค.. oh look we get a however, now the author - what are they saying. - seems like they are offering new evidence almost contradictory hmm At the paragraph conclusion, hmm this may be the main point - author made their point where's the support. now I can anticipate the direction of the passage.
the next paragraph may be support for the authors claim. even if isn't according to my guess or anticipation theres an element of shock or surprise because for sure i swear I thought that this was going to be support and you revise your mental structure further allowing us to be interested in the passage and be engaged with it (:
Let me know if you need more clarification or PM me and we set up a call to further talk about RC (: definitely an interesting section - the goal I would say is to start liking to do RC