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Can I do better by September?
Victoria14
Alum Member
Hi everyone,
So i've been posting here semi-often these last two weeks as I work through the CC. I'm just over the 30% mark in material and I decided to take a timed LR section today. I took the June exam and got a 154 and the test we did at the beginning of CC got a 154 as well. I missed roughly -10/-11 on each LR section and even blind reviewed the same. Today I missed -11 and blind reviewed -8. Two questions I still felt foggy about, so I was ok with them being wrong. To say I was disappointed still is a bit of an understatement. I won't relive the gory details but I had a small kitten who has never seen anyone upset in my face and a friend show up with an entire container of ice-cream (I didn't eat the whole thing but I thought about it).
Can I do better by September? I feel so discouraged that this stuff just doesn't want to stick and even more upset that answers I felt like I could totally justify were plain wrong. I don't really want to postpone my exam to December for a multitude of reasons but I need a better score. I've just been doing the CC but should I start mixing in drilling? PTs? Timed PTs? I think I just need to put in more hours every week so if anyone if willing to give me a schedule to follow every day I will happily oblige.
Send help, good vibes, prayers to whoever you believe in, advice, funny memes, etc.
Comments
Of course you'll improve by September if you study. The more important question is how much will you improve. What's your target score? If you're aiming for a 170+, you'd probably want to consider postponing.
Ideally 165. I'm just trying to decide whats the best way to improve. I've been squeezing the hours of studying whenever I can but I feel like maybe I just need to make this a job. Work at it 9-5 if I can every day.
So you need to get roughly 20 more questions correct. I have no idea whether you can hit that by September, but I don't think that's an outrageous goal to have depending on where your mistakes currently are.
I think for starters you need to stop beating yourself up when you've completed 30% of the starter package. You shouldn't be worrying about taking full sections when you haven't covered all the question types. Test yourself on the material that you're learning (I don't know how many problem sets are available in your package).
If you're trying to rush for September:
- go for the low hanging fruit. Work on getting the easy questions right consistently.
- spend more time studying.
- use the schedule generator if you want a study plan.
My concern would be that you shouldn't be taking timed PT until you have covered most of the CC, but you also need to take some PTs before the test which isn't far away.
If I was in your position, I wouldn't waste PTs. If the small number of tests I did manage to take before the exam were within the range I was aiming for, I'd sit for the exam but assume I'd be retaking in December anyways.
Good luck!
Is 160 a little more attainable? I think i'm just going to spend more time studying and trying to consistently nail the easy questions. My logic games section is about 4-6 consistently and can get down to 1-2 if i'm in a groove. I need to improve LR and reading comprehension. It seems like i'm missing all over the board questions in this last section.
The short answer is YES!!
I would definitely say 155s-160s is not a big jump.I will focus on the LR. Try to do an untimed LR section(29-38) and see if the accuracy is increasing. Time pressure is a factor to harm your performance. Rather than get choices right, you need fully digest the stimulus and hunt for conclusion in most question types. You can't predict the difficulty of questions. Yet, you can rely on your skills on tearing stimulus structure.8-10 for each LR section means you have lots to improve on LR. Also, do LG regularly to get most points. For RC, I have difficulty too. So, I will say more exposure would be beneficial and find your pattern(which type of questions you got wrong).
Last but not least, I suggest you listen to Thinking LSAT podcast. It helps me to think what little things I can improve on LSAT.You can listen on your phones.
http://www.thinkinglsat.com/blog/
Yes, you can do better by September. However, I still think you may want to give yourself a date to say, "If I'm not scoring a 165 by X, I will postpone until December." I think it may be a pretty big jump to expect in just under 2 months.
Going from a 155 to a 165 is difficult but not impossible. I will say that from my own experience, I found it fairly challenging because I hit a plateau between 162 and 165 mark. You really need to make sure you have solidified your fundamentals and have reliable strategies for each section to hit the 165 mark. I had to go back and fool proof games for a month, drill tons of RC timed and untimed, and work hard BR many LR sections before I was able to hit the 165 mark.
I think if you have a free schedule, I would try to study around 4-6 hours a day.
Try to do something like studying from 9am-12pm and then take a couple hours to rest, then maybe prep from 2-5pm. You can always adjust but I think prepping for 6 hours a day 6 days a week is pretty doable assuming you don't have any other commitments.
First set your sights on breaking into the 160s. To do that make sure you have a good grasp of conditional logic, have fool proofed the games from 1-35, and are beginning to practice an RC strategy that works for you. I would hold off on doing more full PTs and do targeted drilling if you're still missing -8 per section. I think at this point doing untimed sections can also be quite useful. Of course, for these drills you'll almost certainly want to be using the older tests.
Also, don't feel too down about it. You're only 30% done with the CC. There's still a lot more amazing strategies you still need to learn
Good luck
@vtm14
Sorry to hear of your frustration. It is a hard test, so don't beat yourself up too much.
If you want my honest advice, I think you should consider postponing. Of course, I could be wrong and I'm not saying there is no way you can pull up your score to the mid-160s by September test, but I really think it is unlikely. I say that because you still have a ton of CC to go through, and also because this is the kind of test that you can't cram for. It's not like cramming for a biology test or other content based test. It really is a test that tests skills and these take time to solidify. In fact, one of the biggest factors I feel in rising scores is time. It's like training your brain to do a new trick. If it doesn't come naturally (as it didn't for me), then it takes time and hard work.
Again, not saying you shouldn't aim for September, but I'd keep this in perspective.
Also, wearing yourself out by trying to cram as much in by september could even harm your chances of doing better. You could exhaust yourself.
Anyways, why not study hard till a week before and decide then if you are ready or not. And if not, postpone till December
Good luck!
Question, how would you go about drilling? Drilling specific types or questions or the LR sections as a whole? I fortunately have all of the older tests so i'm not stressed about losing material. I think I'm going to break cardinal rule and skip around the CC a little bit to start working on my notable problem areas. Like do 1-2 hours of CC as prescribed and then an hour of focused problem areas where I watch the videos on that type of problem and do practice on them. Is that a good idea? I feel like I really made gains when I started addressing certain types of problems. I'm also going to start doing at least an RC section a day because that's my weakest area.
Hey!
So I completely agree and i'm considering postponing till December. On August 20th i'm going to sit a timed PT and if it's not at least a 160, I will bite the bullet and post pone. But I naturally don't want to, so i'm going to try my best to make the leap I need to. Do you have any advice for doing better in LR and RC?
Thank you so much! I will listen to that for sure.
I think I just need to do a mix of CC and practice questions every day to see an increase. I'm going to go ahead and do an untimed LR right now and see how that turns out. LG is my favorite section and i'm consistently around -5 and those are only the ones I leave behind due to time. I'm getting fast enough that i'm able to go back but the game are one of the few things just completely clicked on how to do and think about. LR gets me all stumbled around and I think I'm subconsciously skimming which is deadly because when I go to reread after I check my BR I can see the flaw in my reasoning pretty much right away. The goal is 160, so let's see if I can do it.
No, don't skip around the CC. It's really best to do it in order because many of the lessons build off of the lessons that come before it. Also the order of the question types are pretty important too.
For now, I think it might be best to work on some targeted drilling where you're having issues. Then I would drill LR with both targeted drilling and timed sections.
If RC is your weakest section, definitely work on it. First and foremost try to figure out why it is. For instance, maybe it is because you haven't practiced the memory method enough or haven't even finished the bulk of the RC lessons. RC requires a strategy just like every other section. Don't get tricked into thinking you just read the passage then answer the questions... It's really important to attack each passage with the same systemic approach.
@vtm14 I think that is really smart. Take your time. You look young, so no rush
As for RC and LR. Funny thing about the LSAT is that we all have different areas of weakness. My best marks are more consistently in RC (except when I confront exceptionally hard science passages). I think there is a lot you can do to improve your understanding of the underlying structure of the RC passages that can help you bypass an understanding of all the content (J.Y has some good lessons for this). I also think what really helps with RC is being well-read. I read a lot and in a lot of different areas so I have some familiarity with most of the concepts that come up in RC. It's the ones I don't have familiarity with that I'll often struggle with more (like difficult science passages). In that case, you can still do well if you focus on underlying structure. I think it just helps with less freak out when you have some familiarity with different topics and vocabulary used in different fields. So I'd recommend reading a lot (I also listen to a ton of podcasts on economics and now science topics) on top of working on the underlying reasoning structures.
LR is a bitch. Sometimes I love her, sometimes I hate her. I think this is mostly about spending a lot of time with the CC and examples and solidifying basic concepts (hence why not to rush it). I also personally bought a Logic Philosophy book which allowed me to have extra practice with pulling apart argument structures. That isn't necessary, but I just had no background in logic so decided to do that. But J.Y's explanations are great. If you can spend the time to digest the CC and go over the core concepts you'll slowly start to build mastery. I do recommend doing some of the later tests (70s) before taking your test because the wording of the LR changes quite a bit in the later tests and takes a bit to get used to
I've gone from a 140 something diagnostic to a 170 on my most recent PT, and I'm an idiot, so yes you can def improve. Drill the crap out of your weaknesses and when you PT do BR and target your weaknesses from that PT then drill the crap out of it.
You have until Aug. 22nd to decide on the September test. Do the CC in order and then take two or three PTs with BR. If your BR score is solidly above your target score and your PT score is a few points above or below your target score, go for it. If not, postpone until December. You've got plenty of time to decide, though. And PLENTY of time to make improvement by December.
Giving yourself permission to postpone while setting realistic performance goals will give you some space to breathe, allowing you to find your flaws and work on them without seeing each mistake as a referendum on your overall potential.
As for the schedule, use the Study Schedule tool on 7sage to setup your schedule. If you've got a lot of free time, there's no reason you can't put in 5 hrs a day on the CC. Above that, in my experience, is unrealistic. These are like billable hours, though. I spent a lot more than 5hrs at my study desk some days to get to those 5hrs in the CC. On other days, I was able to complete the assigned 5hrs worth of CC work a lot faster than that and left the desk a few hours early. Take those breaks when you can.
Pro tip: you're not likely to understand everything in the CC at as deep a level as you need to on the first go. Make an active effort to engage with the material as it comes. If you miss a chunk of questions in the practice, that's awesome. Practice mistakes are what you're on here for. Note that as a section you can come back to and work on. Don't dwell, though. Acknowledge it and move forward.
Anyway. That ice cream would be better served as preventative medicine. A scoop every night to keep study spirits high, not a tub with a friend in commiseration.
This is probably one of the best comments i've ever seen.
This is literally advice I needed.
As for PT/Test Day scores i'm very consistent. I was PTing 154 and I got a 154 on the test day. I'm a fairly consistent individual. I'm sticking to the CC and aiming to do 5 hours a day. I have one week left of my internship, but that's already very low hours (I work 9-1 MWF) and I can even study a little there. Granted this is only if the day isn't full of crazy calls.
I have been noticing that i'm certainly grasping the concept and able to apply it in practice, but i've got a few flaws. I also can see I don't know every 100%. Some stuff genuinely stuck to my brain like glue, but a few others I'm not grasping completely. Like I can execute it, but I only feel 80% sure my answer is right. I normally only get 80% of the questions right when I feel like this.
I also genuinely have a bad habit of seeing every mistake as a reflection of my potential, so I need to knock that off. I can't do better if I don't let myself think that I can.
Thank you so much for your comment!
@TheMikey
Can I ask how much time you had in the interval between your 140 to 170? I have a hard time believing you jumped that much in a month, which is how much time vtm has, but hey you could always be an anomaly
I'd also have a hard time imagining you are an idiot if you jumped 30 points in a month
a year and a half of on and off studying
I was just saying that I went from 140 to 170 to give vtm a confidence boost that they can do it too. honestly, if I would've been more serious earlier on I probably wouldn't have been studying this long so don't take the year and a half at face value
thank you, I'm here to please y'all.
I'll be here all week.
Ayeeee!
@TheMikey
ah I see. Well congrats then!
wassup
Honestly, I suggest the Manhattan LR prepbook. With the information you've gained through 7sage, reading through MHLR and making notes on it, I am confident that your knowledge on LR will strengthen. I think for me, personally, reading works better than watching. I still use 7sage to explain the tougher questions, and for all the LG. I decided I won't be ready for September, because I am also aiming for 165+, but I'm confident that I'll be ready for December to acheive that score (that's how confident MHLR got me lol).
My plan is to finish the "hard" prep before the fall semester, and then I'll spend the remaining semester working on one PT/week, with good blind review until the December exam. I still need to do well on my other classes that's why only 1.
I lost hope so many times throughout my journey (I started in January), but we are so close! We got this!