Tips on Pushing to 170+

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• 17 Likes

  Jonathan Wang Yearly Sage ⭐

  March 2016 edited March 2016 6869 karma

  You don't mention feeling pressure in LR or RC, which suggests to me that it's not your psychology so much as you're just not good enough at LG and your awareness of this fact is distracting you from productive things. To your credit, you acknowledge this and reference the method you need to be using to get better, so the only thing left to do is to go do it.
  
  Other than that, I think the biggest thing is that you just need to be really hard on yourself.
  
  Realistically, if you get your LG house in order (-0 to -2), you can get away with -8 total in RC/LR, even tacking a few extra mistakes on due to test day nerves. That's a pretty common breakdown for a low-170s score. But you don't want to be thinking that right now. Instead, try this: why aren't you getting a 180 BR every time out?
  
  You're looking for -12 on the low end (170) to something more like -6/-7 (mid-170s). For that kind of goal (especially the mid-170s goal), nothing short of a perfect BR is acceptable. You need to be able to do everything they could possibly throw at you and laugh in their faces doing it, because you simply do not have the leeway to muck around with writing off questions because you don't have a solid idea of what's happening. You need to be basically perfect under timed conditions anyway, so how are you going to justify making any mistakes at all with unlimited time to think? An error under those circumstances is egregious no matter what, and deserves serious scrutiny no matter how 'silly' it looks on the surface.
  
  Start there. If you want a low-to-mid 170s score, you don't want to be in a position where you lose your 170 if something goes wrong - you want 170 to be what you settle for WHEN things go wrong.
  
  Obviously, you will soften this stance a bit as the test draws near, but right now you have 2.5 months to really put the screws to yourself and attempt to stamp out all of your bad habits and bad logic.
  
  It doesn't matter if you're missing the hardest questions; you're just missing questions, period. Nobody judges an Olympic sprinter on how he does in a race against tenth graders.
• 1 Like

  twssmith Alum ⭐

  March 2016 5120 karma

  
  Given your stats on previous PT's and the time to prep before June, hopefully Jon's post will inspire you to you reach your highest potential. Check with some of the LG Sage/guru's for advice on that section. Calling Sage @allison.gill.sanford who had similar strengths in RC and had to work hard on LG:)

  @"Jonathan Wang" said:
  If you want a low-to-mid 170s score, you don't want to be in a position where you lose your 170 if something goes wrong - you want 170 to be what you settle for WHEN things go wrong.
  

  Wow! I only know of a few that do not "sugar coat" their responses on 7Sage and provide personal advice. From my experience as a part of this community, it is a huge compliment to your abilities.
  You can do it!!
  All the best:)
• Chris127 Alum Member

  March 2016 81 karma

  @"Jonathan Wang" Thank you! I appreciate the no sugar-coating. After I BR'ing PT 36 and 37, I believed I got every question right, so I'm going to review again and see if there's a reason I missed those questions. Setting 180 BR as the new standard.
  
  @twssmith Thank you!
• stepharizona Alum Member

  March 2016 3197 karma

  @"Jonathan Wang" said:
  Start there. If you want a low-to-mid 170s score, you don't want to be in a position where you lose your 170 if something goes wrong - you want 170 to be what you settle for WHEN things go wrong.
  

  Love this @"Jonathan Wang"
• apwilliams Alum Member

  March 2016 26 karma

  This post was super helpful for me too, I'm in a similar boat. Thanks
  
• runiggyrun Alum Inactive Sage Inactive ⭐

  March 2016 edited March 2016 2481 karma

  In addition to the advice from @"Jonathan Wang", I'd say that it doesn't look like you've practiced the LG's enough. 1-26 is only ~30% of all the games out there.
  If you're intent on that mid-170, and games are your weak point, you should aim for proofing all the games from the PT's you've done. Preferably as full sections, so you can see how saving time on early games and postponing the toughest last questions can affect your overall performance on the section. And by proofing I mean not just going through the motions, but thinking about those things that come up again and again and how to deal with them BEST. Extra practice is what separates competence from mastery, and knowing you can get all the easy games out of the way with perfect scores and have 10-12 minutes left for the hardest game will ensure that you don't miss more than 3 questions in June, even if you get that one game from hell everybody dreads. If you get a garden variety section like most of them have been in the recent past (except 72 and maybe 77) you should be able to go -0.
• Chris127 Alum Member

  March 2016 81 karma

  Thank you @runiggyrun. I'll go back and Fool Proof the PT's I've done before.
• cmelman95 Alum Member

  March 2016 730 karma

  As someone who's averaging in the low to mid-170s now, I appreciate all your advice. I'm really trying to understand, for every question that I got right and wrong, why each wrong answer is wrong, why each right answer is right, and what the writers are trying to do for each question. It's really about cutting out every last mistake.
  
  This is especially tough for me with LG, because it's my weakest section. I think at this level you've really got to get into your own head and introspect to see what you were thinking when you were oscillating between two answers and why. That's where mastery comes from, and I'm trying to work on it.
• 1 Like

  Edward__ Alum Member

  March 2016 edited March 2016 36 karma

  Here are my suggestions:
  1- You are not focused on doing your PTs. You don't see it like athletic practice, where you are training your mind to be seamless and fast with these processes. Coming on here and posting about 'how to push 170?' shows you are distracted and not focusing your time on the absolute most important thing - timed PTs. If you only just started doing them this week you should be doing them every day! Don't fuss too much about the scores you are getting - just do the test and answer all the questions. You have absolutely not done nearly enough timed PTs to be trying to find other problems. Do more timed PTs, and don't worry about the BR so much. Just do one or two timed PTs every day, and do them especially when you are tired and don't want to. Do 2 PTs back to back without even reviewing them. After 40 or 50, then you can see if you need some kind of outside input.
  
  2- see above.
• 6 Likes

  Nicole Hopkins Alum Inactive Sage Inactive ⭐

  March 2016 4344 karma

  @"Edward__" said:
  If you only just started doing them this week you should be doing them every day!
  

  No one should take PT's every day under any circumstances. 2-3 maximum per week.

  @"Edward__" said:
  Just do one or two timed PTs every day
  

  Please do not do this.

  @"Edward__" said:
  Do 2 PTs back to back without even reviewing them.
  

  I hope no one is actually doing this! Too much! You can't brute force this test.
  
  OP--it just takes time. Do what @"Jonathan Wang" suggests. You're on the right track. BR should be your focus. Carry on.
• 1 Like

  allison.gill.sanford Alum Inactive Sage

  March 2016 1128 karma

  @Chris127 Sounds like you're in a similar situation as I was with your strengths and weaknesses. Feel free to PM me if you want to talk more.
  I proofed the LGs from 1-35 more than once; went through the bundle probably 1.5 times. You will know when you have hit games mastery, you'll have instincts and you will kill the easy games and jump the hurdles of the harder ones with finesse.

  @runiggyrun said:
  If you're intent on that mid-170, and games are your weak point, you should aim for proofing all the games from the PT's you've done. Preferably as full sections, so you can see how saving time on early games and postponing the toughest last questions can affect your overall performance on the section. And by proofing I mean not just going through the motions, but thinking about those things that come up again and again and how to deal with them BEST.
  

  ^This is great advice - rework the games sections you already did in PTs as well. And REFLECT afterward - how did you attack it, and what was the best or most elegant solution?
  So focus on drilling LG and continue to push for 180s in your BR. I don't doubt you can get there, and you have time before June.
• 4 Likes

  Zenskeptical Free Trial Member

  March 2016 edited March 2016 9 karma

  Hey buddy, I had the same issues as you when I started studying( June 2015); after taking the test in december and getting a 167, I decided to retake in February and got a 176. Getting from the high 160s to the 170s was extremely hard and took a ton of work. You can do it.
  
  I want to severely caution against some of the crazy ideas in this thread. Like them I had this idea that if you put more blood, sweat, and tears into studying you will continue to reap rewards...and I did, until a point. I was taking a PT every single day except Saturdays and blind reviewing and correcting them the same day. Well, I got burnt out of course, and it really hurt my scores...I started to score lower and lower even though I was working harder and harder...
  
  Sometimes it's best to relax. At this point you know the material. It will be improbable there will be a game, LR question, or RC passage that will be unlike what you have seen before. What's more important is to really get some introspection going. Why are you missing certain LR questions? What type are they? Drill those. How are you doing in games? Is your timing allowing you enough time on the harder games? If not, practice getting through the first game as quick as you can. How's RC? What mistakes are you making here? Why are you making them?
  
  I wish I had some more substantive advice for you but there's no recipe for this. You have enough time but just remember: work smarter than harder for the LSAT.
• runiggyrun Alum Inactive Sage Inactive ⭐

  March 2016 2481 karma

  @Zenskeptical congrats on your 176! That's an amazing 9 point improvement in two months and especially difficult to achieve at those levels.
  I'm hoping @Chris127 and the others in the thread interested in making that last leap already know not to listen to the "do 2 PT's back to back" advice, but it's good to have reinforcement from somebody who's walked down the burnout road and come back.
  You wouldn't prepare to win the Boston Marathon by tripling your training volume in the last two months. Assuming you're in the shoes of somebody who can actually win a marathon (and you're scoring close, so you are), you are probably already running all the miles you need to run so you'd focus on the finishing details (like not starting out too fast on the early downhill, remembering that whenever you are in the lead at mile 15 you always fade, practicing your late surge, figuring out when to have your energy drinks and what exactly to put in it, studying your competitors and coming up with strategies against each, and so on). Maybe you'd do some special quad strengthening drills because those downhills are brutal on them.
  So, you'd train smarter, not harder, just like @zenskeptical said above.
  And you'd do the opposite of "just take lots of PT's and not even review them". Maybe you take fewer PT's but really review the last little detail out of every wrong or uncertain question. Make space for drilling the weaknesses (games for Chris, whatever it is for the rest of us).
• 1 Like

  time_to_go Alum Member

  March 2016 edited March 2016 276 karma

  Terence Fletcher: There are no two words in the English language more harmful than "good job".
  
  Watch this movie if you haven't. Think of Fletcher as your LSAT trainer, yelling out "NOT MY TEMPO" whenever you think you've got it. Haha. No seriously.