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June 2016 Advice
emilycyoung1
Free Trial Member
I am currently studying for the June 2016 LSAT and have been studying for 3 months. I desperately want a 170 on the LSAT but the last practice test I took I got a 162 missing roughly 4-6 questions per section. Is it possible to increase my score by 8 points in the next 24 days if I aim for 6-8 hours a day 4-5 days a week? And at least 1 hour every day? My practice tests have steadily increased beginning at a 149 then going from that to: 150, 152, 154, 154, 156, 162.
Comments
I'm going to have to agree with @amipp170 . I think you are doing yourself a disservice by not giving yourself enough valuable time to reach your goal score. If I were you, I'd delay your test date to September and give it hell! For most people 3 months is not enough time to reach their true potential. A lot of people (including myself) study a year or more before they reach their goal score, but everyone works differently.
You'll still be early enough in the cycle with a September take, if that is something you are concerned about.
Listen to Yoda when he says “You and I got what it takes to make it. . . All we need is just a little patience.”
Yoda would never lie to you.
I would have to 100% agree with @"Cant Get Right" I would not recommend it. Trust me, you don't want to waste a take. You only get three. I took the LSAT in December last year, and only took it because I pressured myself into taking it and because I had already paid for it (and thought that I could increase my score by then), and I truly regret it. I was not ready and got a horrible score. You don't want that.
Cancel your take and re-register for September once they open registration on LSAC (if you feel sufficiently ready by then).
I don't know what the policies are on getting part of your money back, so check with LSAC on that, it might still be early enough.
If you feel as if you've already paid for it, and you're not getting your money back, you could take the test and cancel your score afterwards, just to gain the experience. But still, I would urge you to delay.
I'm in the same boat as you; aiming for a 170, and taking the June test. I signed up for the 7sage starter a month and a half ago and my goal was to score 170+ consistently on the PT's by test date.
I took the starting PT and scored in the lower 160's.
After going through this course for about a month (about 2-3 hours every other day, sneaking some hours in at work too when there aren't tasks), I just finished the starter course yesterday and took PT36 today, scoring exactly a 170 and a 171 after BR (going to be spending the next 3 weeks days solidifying this to make sure I actually score this on test day of course). I've worked with a lot of materials and books before the 7sage course, and all I can say is that I was blown away by how much I improved. So improving by that amount is definitely *possible* in a focused month. Whether it's *do-able* comes down to you and how much you can dedicate yourself, and whether you can work with a serious time constraint. Personally, I am someone who does much better with impending deadlines, but if that's not you then you definitely don't want to take that June test.
Now, the other posters have your best interests in mind; it's going to be hard to improve by that much, especially once you're in the 160's. The *only* (
necessarysufficient condition lol) reason I'm telling you it's possible is because you mention that you will study 6+ hrs a day. I believe that your goal is attainable, but *only* if you actually put in that much effort. If you know you can't, your necessary condition fails and you should postpone your test.https://7sage.com/lesson/clarification-for-the-only/
Used it right but labeled it wrong, good catch!
It’s like Axl Rose said: “If you end your training now — if you choose the quick and easy path as Vader did — you will become an agent of evil.” Well, an agent of a poor LSAT score anyway.
You have time - till September, or December, or whenever it is that you'll be ready. Take that time to really nail the fundamentals, and squeeze every last bit of learning from each PT and especially BR. At this stage, focusing on the score rather than the learning is only going to be detrimental, and you'll go from highs "Yay, a 165, 170 is next " to lows "Oh, no a 156 - I'll never make it". Just concentrate on the learning, and get your highs from "catching" an attractive trap answer, solving a game of a type you've never been able so solve before, getting through all the passages in time, and other small victories that are a measure of how far you've come in your learning, rather than your score.
The score will come.
I would say that a low 160's diagnostic makes you close to what people around here call "a unicorn" - someone whose natural strengths play very well into the test. It's very possible under those circumstances to improve from low 160's to 170 just by figuring out a few "tricks" - like the fact that games have "types" and you should use diagrams for them, or how to spot the difference between a SA and a NA.
I would venture a guess that the same level of improvement in a short time span is a lot harder for someone who got into the low 160's AFTER going through the curriculum. They don't have any of that low hanging fruit to pick to push their score another 8-10 points higher. It's still doable, but after the initial improvement those points are going to take a lot of elbow grease.
So, really, all LSAT advice can boil down to the same thing: master the underlying logic upon which the test is built. Running out of time? Missing all the curve breakers? Suck at in/out games? The solution is the same. So here's how I'd suggest continuing towards that goal.
First, how's your BR score? Your BR really sets kind of a limit on your potential. If you miss something with unlimited time, you're just not going to get it under the clock. Almost everyone can benefit from better BR practices. Make sure you're not cutting any corners. So, don't score your PT until after finishing BR, BR on a clean copy of the test, and write out your entire thought process for each question you review: break down the stimulus, ID the question type, break down each answer choice IDing why the right answer is right and why each wrong answer is wrong. Start with that.
You also need to figure out more specifically what's happening. Why are you slipping? Maybe you're stressed out and need to take a break. Maybe you went -10 on LG. Maybe you missed every single NA question they threw at you. Go back through your PTs and see what the patterns are. Even more importantly, go back through your BRs and tag anything you miss there. Anything you miss in BR becomes high priority, especially if patterns emerge. After you've done that, go back to the lessons and reinforce your weak spots. Depending on your target score, you may want to stop PTing until you've adequately done this.
Hope this helps get you started!
Anyway, first, stop taking practice tests. You're wasting them. I wasted a lot too. The good news is that if you're not BRing (which stands for Blind Review, btw) then you're wasting them to the extent that they'll still be totally usable later. That was my experience anyway. So here's how you Blind Review: as you work through your PT, circle any questions you have not answered with 100% confidence. If you're just not sure what the stimulus was saying, or if you couldn't eliminate an answer choice, or if you could eliminate four answer choices but you still have no idea why the last remaining answer choice is correct, whatever it is; circle it. After you finish the PT, don't grade it. Don't look at the answers. Take a clean copy of the test and go through it and circle the questions you circled in your initial take. Do not transfer your answers or any other information. Then, give yourself unlimited time to work through all of your circled questions on your clean test. Give it as much time as you need, and try to get to 100% confidence. Once you're done, then you can grade it. And that's Blind Review.
Anyway..
So you don't really want to BR PTs you took more than a few days ago. It needs to be fresh. You can still retake them though without much value lost. Without proper review, those tests still have tons of value. Just mix in your retakes with fresh takes and understand that your scores might be slightly inflated. The score doesn't matter anyway, so even that is not a real liability of a retake.
So when I said I joined 7Sage, I signed up to gain access to the curriculum and data analysis and everything. I went with the Ultimate+ package, but even the Starter would have been a huge difference in my studying. I seem to be pitching 7Sage a lot these days, so I'll try to keep it short, lol. I really do feel like I wouldn't have broken the 160's plateau without it. I had studied using PS for a little under a year and I still couldn't break it. After scoring 162 on my second attempt in December 2015 I kind of just quit for awhile. When I came back I just wanted to start over. I went through the 7Sage curriculum and took my time to feel like I'd mastered each concept. (I also began studying with increased discipline and better habits.) My PT average now is 175 timed and like 179.5+ BR.
You can definitely break into the 170s. Anyone can. Just understand that you've hit a plateau that is incredibly difficult to break. Most people never break it. It comes down to discipline, work ethic, good habits, and unwavering determination. I've never worked so hard for anything in my life. I had to change my life, change who I was, to get where I am. The person I was could never have done it. I had to become a better version of myself. I know that maybe sounds overly philosophical, but it's just the truth of my LSAT journey. Anyway, the point is, it's incredibly difficult, yet totally possible, to break into the 170s. The LSAT gets exponentially harder. Expect your progress to slow. Every point is harder than the last. It is so much harder to break out of the 160s than it is to break in. I don't mean to be discouraging. You've just got to know what you're up against if you're going to conquer it. Whatever you've done to get to where you're at, it will take a ten-fold increase in effort and effectiveness to get from there to 170+. And you can totally do it.