155 -> 171 thanks to 7Sage, strategies/advice

I know there’s a lot of similar posts on here, but I was able to increase my score from a 155 on my initial diagnostic to a 171 on my first LSAT with 2.5 months of 7sage, so I thought I’d share which strategies helped me the most. Figure this will be most useful for anyone else out there who speeds through tests and reading, as that was my biggest Achilles heel.
History – I decided to apply to law school over the summer, in early July, so I was already very under the gun in terms of timing. I mapped out the studying and application process and decided that I would need to take the October and November tests, and could maybe take the January test to help get off a waitlist. That left me exactly 3 months until the October test. The first thing I did was order the Kaplan LSAR Prep book and then take a diagnostic test – which was a 155. Like many people, Logic Games was my kryptonite – I think I truly finished the first 9 questions before time ran out and guessed on the rest. I started studying via Kaplan, and started to pick up on the games a bit, it sort of helped, but not enough. I took a second PT via lawhub and got another 155, and was not feeling great about the progress so far. Then I spoke to someone who recommended 7Sage. I’d already been thinking something interactive and digital would be more helpful, specifically for explanation videos and being able to pay attention to what I did wrong, and so the timing lined up perfectly. With 2.5 months to go, I started on the 7sage learning paths and started triaging what of the syllabus I would be able to cover in that time frame. I was studying about 20-30 hours per week, and so I figured I could do most of LG (since that was my weak point), pick and choose my way through LR, and do the RC one if necessary (ended up being very necessary, which I’ll get to later).
I started with, and probably spent the most time on, LG. I think with LG, it really just comes down to reps. You can’t shortcut that. The more games you do, the more you start to memorize the inferences you have to make, and I could literally catch myself remembering an inference from a similar type of game mid-section. However, I definitely have a bias for speeding through things – a theme throughout my LSAT studying. I had to learn to slow down – practice doesn’t make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect. For me, that meant that I needed to stop and review each game (seems obvious but like I said I speed through things) and TRULY understand each inference, and make sure I understood each question (why the correct answer was right, and why the wrong answers were wrong). One thing I started doing towards the end was printing out 5 copies of each game I got a wrong answer on, and then completing them and reviewing each one in depth afterwards. This really helped, and if I could go back and do it again I would absolutely have done this from the beginning. I’d probably just start out printing out 1 star games early, move to 2 star games, 3 star, etc – and use this to supplement the syllabus work. This process allowed me to get to the point where I was consistently around -0, -1, 2. I truly learned to enjoy the LG section, and as weird as it sounds I think I’ll miss not doing those games every day. Sort of sad to see them go too.
Initially, I felt very solid around RC. It’s just reading right? But, like I said I have a tendency to speed through things. I eventually realized my scores were not improving, and I was anywhere from -6 to -9 on most PTs. That was when I dove into the RC syllabus, which absolutely helped change the way I looked at RC. But the biggest mindset shift for me was just slowing the hell down while I was reading. Shifting from finishing the passages in 1:30 to finishing in 3:30-5 minutes is what really helped. It felt like I was wasting valuable time that I could be spending returning to the passages to hunt for details and to rule out incorrect answers, but the scores just spoke for themselves. This way I was consistently able to get around -3, and there was just no arguing with results. I was better able to remember those details and where they could be found, and understand different perspectives and tones throughout. JY’s syllabus material about the low-res summaries helped a lot too – for me, when I first heard this, I started focusing too much on the detail of the passage in the low-res summaries, before shifting to focus on the argument format. Focusing on how the argument was structured helped me answer the questions around the main point and structure of the argument, and slowing down already helped a ton with finding the specific details. I also limited how much highlighting/underlining I was doing – I read somewhere online that sometimes we use marking up passages as a method of saying “I”ll come back to this later,” but when you’re reading a timed passage like this, you don’t have the time to do this. So I tried to focus on just reading, the only other thing I let myself do was write down the 1-2 word low-res summary. Also, RC is another area where reps matter a ton. I absolutely hated doing them everyday, but doing a few passages a day paid off. Doing entire sections at a time was too stressful to do daily for me, so I started doing one passage at a time (timed), and then 2 at a time, then 3 at a time. This got me much more comfortable with the timing (I would also time how long I spent on each passage just reading), and the volume helped me start to pick up on trends across passages. By the end, I was much more naturally acknowledging, as I read, changes in tone or who’s argument this paragraph’s is. I also think re-doing passages from PTs was a worthwhile exercise. I don’t think you can truly understand where you went wrong on an individual question unless you re-do the whole passage. Time consuming, but worth it.

LR was probably the section I spent the least amount of time on, to be frank. I used the syllabus to cover most of the question types (but didn’t really finish any of them after the first few). The biggest bump on LR for me came as a result of the changes I made in RC. Slowing down, and really engaging with each sentence of a passage made a world of a difference. Your work on RC and LR really aid with the other, so I guess the new LG-less LSAT will be at least a more focused study. I never struggled with time on LR like I did with RC and LG, and I found myself consciously forcing myself to slow down. When I realized how slow I could go, I started picking up on things I wouldn’t have otherwise picked up on, eliminating all 4 wrong answers (previously I’d speed through and eliminate 2-3 wrong answers and rush through, ending up with time remaining at the end). Reps were huge in LR for me too, just re-doing all of the PTs I did made a big difference. Like the rest of the test, there are trends in right answers and wrong answers they like to throw out. You really can’t beat just doing and re-doing hundreds and hundreds of questions.

As far as my testing methodology, I was extremely impatient and struggled with the blind review because I wanted to know my score so badly. Eventually I realized if I just looked at the score to satisfy that urge, I could then go set up each section as a drill and re-do it, and that was totally worth it. So, long way of saying blind review is great and totally works, I just needed to see the number, so I found a work around.

All in all, this is just what worked for me, I realize some of this may not provide much help to others. I think if you’re someone who naturally moves quickly through tests and has a tendency to skim while reading, this is probably more relevant to you than to anyone else. That’s the biggest moral of the story for me, forcing myself to slow down made a crazy big difference. Even if you don’t move too quick, the repetitions of the same games in LG will be helpful, that helped me speed up on some of the tougher games. So anyways, go slow, do a ton of reps, and review each wrong answer very carefully. And 7Sage is awesome. Hope that helps!

One last thing – don’t ignore the mental hurdles you go through. I bombed a PT 9 days before the October test and freaked out, felt like I was having a full blown panic attack. I realized I was studying way too much, specifically timed sections, and was just constantly stressed out. I took the next few days off, and didn’t do any more timed work before the test, and it turned out pretty well. So as much as you absolutely need to work hard and push yourself, when stress is really creeping in, take the time off. Do something fun and de-stress. I pushed myself HARD in those 2.5 months, and wouldn’t necessarily recommend it. My strategies were solid, but they would have been way better over 3-4 months instead.