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I feel stuck. I am going through the syllabus as suggested but I don't feel like this is the best way to improve. I feel as that I should be taking drills and practice tests in between. Is this the best way to get the most from the program? How are you guys studying?
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I just reread the "Welcome to 7Sage" portion of the LSAT and now realize I am on the right track and to keep. Going I guess I forgot and needed a reminder. Nevertheless, feel free to add your comments on how you study the material.
I understand that the earlier portion of the core curriculum can seem monotonous. It can seem like you're just watching videos on grammar, logic, procedure, etc. and not actually getting better. Trust me, though, it's worth it in the long run! You'll really appreciate the foundation you have when you start drilling timed sections and PTing.
You may already be doing some of these things, but I can tell you some stuff that I found useful while going through the curriculum: Instead of doing all of the drill sets at the end of lessons, I'd do every other drill. Sometimes, if I just felt like I intuitively understood a question type, I'd do less than half of the drills. It helps you move quicker and gives you stuff to practice with if you ever need to revisit the curriculum. Another thing I found useful was getting accustomed to listening to JY at 1.4x or 1.7x speed. For lessons that you aren't grasping well you may want to turn it down to 1x speed, but nine times out of ten I could understand him just as well with the videos sped up. One other thing I found useful was setting goals for the percentage of the curriculum I'd get through in a day. At the top of the syllabus you can see the percentage of the curriculum you've completed. I'd tell myself something like, "okay, today I'm completing at least 1.5%." This helped me to actually notice my progress and it made completing the curriculum seem more doable.
I hope some of this helps! Good luck with your studies. Though it can seem tedious, just know it's worth it!
Hey @lawyergirl25! I understand what you're feeling. It can be difficult to keep going through with the curriculum without getting tempted to take a Practice Test and apply the knowledge you're learning. I'm going to give a lawyer-y answer here and say the best way to get the most out of the program "depends." On what? On you and the way you study!
For some folks, working through the curriculum start to finish then applying that knowledge through Practice Tests works best. For others, like myself, it helped to jump around the Core Curriculum with my own drilling a bit as I got comfortable with question, game, and passage types. It sounds like you might be in the same boat. If you feel stuck, I would work on jumping around the syllabus to work on a little from each section every study session you have rather than going straight down the syllabus.
Once you do that and feel like you have a foundational strategy down, you can start introducing drills into your plan. For example, you can do an untimed minute timed LR drill and see how that goes. If you felt like there were certain question types that you struggled with, go back and do the lessons for those questions types from the core curriculum. Once you get stronger with doing untimed LR practice, move towards timed sections.
I would also avoid taking a whole bunch of Practice Tests in the beginning of your studies. Without using the Core Curriculum and drilling to supplement your studies, you would burn through Practice Tests without changing the way you're studying to improve your scores. As a general best practice, I like to advise my students to start off taking 1-2 Practice Tests a month and then go up to 1 or maximum 2 a week once they have the core curriculum down and have scored near their goal range. Even when you're done working through most of the core curriculum/basic drills, use your analytics to assess your Practice Test patterns. If there's specific things you're missing or struggling with, you can go back to the Core Curriculum to refresh your memory.
If you're interested in more tailored study advice based on your analytics, you can set up a free consultation with one of our tutors here: https://calendly.com/7sage-tutoring/7sage-tutoring-free-consultation?utm_source=FCA_A.