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Feeling discouraged...Recommendations?
Caleb.rohr.church
Alum Member
Over my last 5 tests I have averaged a 156.6. With my high being a 160. My goal is a 167. I took the LSAT in September with a 155 and I've signed up for the December LSAT. I feel like I have been putting in a lot of hours, and without seeing the returns I feel like I should be getting. I am a splitter (hopefully). I have a GPA of 3.25. My letters of recommendation are pretty strong. I've done all the CC. Should I take the February LSAT instead? Should I sign up for an in person class? It feels like I am at the edge of breaking my score and getting where I want to be, but I've also felt like that since before the September LSAT. My huge worry is that I have not been studying for the LSAT in the most efficient way possible.
Comments
I don't think another course would be helpful sense it seems like you have already learned the basics. What you have been doing since you've finished the CC? Have you been fool proofing games and drilling your weaknesses? I don't think taking PTs are a very effective way of improving if you aren't doing ample review and drilling of the weaknesses that the PTs are exposing.
What section(s) are you having issues on?
I am having trouble on all of them I think. Right now over my last 5 ptests my averages are LR -8.2, LG -7.6, and RC- 9. Since I finished the CC in July I did all of the LG in the starter pack, all of the LG in the preptest 62-71 book multiple times and all of the LG in preptest 1-20. Yet I am still averaging a -7.6 on them. This is only after the LSAT in September though. Before the LSAT in September I was averaging I was -12.3 on LG and a 153.5 on PTs. Since the LG were hurting me so much I honestly spending most of time trying to improve that section. I was trying to do the fool-proof method but I don't actually think it helped me that much. I actually scored my highest on the LG ever until recently on the September LSAT. Before the September LSAT I was averaging higher on the RC. I really think I need a drastic change in the way I am studying since it isn't helping that much. One really big folly I have had is a lack of discipline in doing the BR. I've only Br'd 3/19 of the PTests I've done. I'm not sure what is to be done before December if anything can be. I have plenty of time in my schedule to study so I am the littlest bit hopeful. Overall, I have gone from a 148 lowest score to a 160 highest score which is good, but I KNOW I can do better than this. Thanks for your help!
You definitely can get that score you want! You should do and blind review and take at least 30 tests in my opinion before you can have a gauge of where you really stand as far as LSAT aptitude. Finishing the core curriculum is great, but really the LSAT is all about practicing and applying what you learned and it is designed to be a hard test. Remember on any given test half of those who take it score a 150 or below. when you blind review do you sit there and think about each question until you get to the right answer or do you just pick one and look at the answer? Also for games, and reading comp, every time I blind review a test I completely redo these sections just for practice, and I have seen good results. It usually takes me a good 5 hours to completely blind review a test and usually I won't miss more than 4, but back to you. If you have only blind reviewed 3 exams, that is not enough to see the gains, and quality over quantity is the key. I started over a year ago at a 148 as well. I went through mike kim's LSAT trainer, Manhattan Prep for RC and LR, and Powerscore for games, before I even started taking exams or heard of 7sage. 7sage was hands down the best tool but I came in with a basic foundation from all of the other hours of time with the questions. I have taken 50 exams at this point and being a slow reader, generally bad test taker, and inclined to silly mistakes, my lowest scores on a bad day are low 160's. The point is, you definitely can get to where you want to be, but if you are looking for a 167, remember that is approximately the top 5-7 percent of test takers. You don't need to be a genius to beat this test, but you need to be willing to work at it. Now ask yourself if you have out worked at least 93% of test takers and that will be a good gauge as to why your score is where it is, and the amount of time it will take to get it to where you want it to be.
You absolutely have to sit for it in 3 weeks, huh?
Well, if that's where you're at it seems that fool proofing logic games is the next step. You need to do a little more than what you've done so far. Try to see if you can pick up the PT52-61 PTs to work on. Or if you can get your hands on some of the earlier tests, those can also be very helpful for drilling games too.
Going from a 148 to a 160 is already an incredible achievement. So be proud and keep hammering away
I guess I do not have to sit for the test in three weeks. I guess I should take the February test? I absolutely want to apply this cycle. I am really worried about money and acceptance if I take the February test. I know people who have been studying for the test for much less time than I have been and have been scoring 10 points higher than I am. I am wondering if my basics aren't as grounded as they should be. I'm wondering if I'm just slow at learning the LG's and should instead try to improve the LR section with the three weeks I have left. I guess I should stop taking as many Ptests and focus on drilling. I just want to see results, I've given this test so much.
Yeah I wouldn't opt to sit a few weeks. Just not enough time to make any meaningful improvement to where you want to be with either LR or LG. These things take time and there's not much use in comparing yourself to others who may have started with a different skill level. Yeah PTs are great for figuring out what to work on but aren't great for much else except using up an incredible amount of energy.
Find a way to get your hands on all of the games from like 1-38 or something and just drill away using the fool proof method. You will see improvement!
When I blind review ( I really hate blind reviewing) I look at all the options and ask myself which answer is best and why. Part of why I stopped is I would occasionally get worse on a section after the BR. My initial intuition is just better most of the time and if I fret over it I loose points. Loosing points after fretting on an answer has lost me points when I look over answers if I finish on an LR section, I'll circle one the one I think is right, and then change it when I come back and my original intuition was the right one. On one preptest I actually lost 4 points changing answers after going back within the 35 minutes. Somehow, this week, I just thought of going back to my tests and re-doing LR section that I've done poorly on to do better on almost in a fool-proof fashion since the whole test is often so cookie cutter. My potential is almost there, but I just have to reach it consistently. My highest scores on each section are -4 LR,-5 LR, -5 RC -6 LG. I do not have the data to know if I have out-worked 93% of the LSAT test takers but I do know that I have worked really really hard on it (at least 300 hours).
the blind review process at first will make you question everything. But what really does help in the long run is being so familiar with the wrong answer choices you know when you are being played into a trap. When you take the exams you should be moving quickly, trusting your intuition, and not second guessing yourself. The timed exams are really where you practice timing, skipping strategies, and practice keeping collected as you move through the test. Honestly, your prep test scores despite seeming like the whole world at the moment, are only a reflection of how well you have developed the proper habits. Those habits however, are developed through the pain staking blind review process, where you think about why you missed a question and learn what questions are your weakness. You don't have time to diagram every LR question on the exam, but when you take the time to diagram the answers and the answer choices in your reviewing sessions, you really get to see the patterns of how the test works. Like i said earlier, the LSAT is a really frustrating exam, and many (possibly even most) top scorers take about a year of studying and practice to be able to put their best foot forward. Our university's pre law advisor who once served on a T14 admission's council has basically echoed everything JY says about preparing for this exam and she also highly recommends a minimum of 30 pt's after you master the basic concepts. I think JY said you should spend about a year to 6 months preparing for this test. According to Gladwell, Keller and Papasan, all prominent authors on what is required to achieve excellence, they recommend dedicating 3-4 hours per day to a single task consistently. From what you're saying and what your numbers are showing, honestly it seems like you are doing great, but you're only 2/3's to half way through the process. You really can't rush this stuff. Yes, there are some people who are able to grind out 6 hours a day and can still see learning gains. Yes, there are people who start this process scoring in the mid to high 150's. However there are far more people that this exam does not come intuitively for and those individuals must really work hard to master this exam. Be patient with yourself. If it's money you are concerned about, the extra cycle may be well worth it after you score high enough for a substantial scholarship. It's all up to you and what matters to you the most, but do not get discouraged or feel like you're inferior if you need to take more time to prepare.
Yeah I think part of the problem here is that all the gains you really make are in review, not the PT itself. Not just doing BR, but even after BR and you see what you got wrong and where you incorrectly changed your answers (GAH I know how frustrating that is - been there) but going back again and review the question in depth. Say you got it right and then changed it during BR - go back and really dig in, figure out why it was right and the other answer was wrong, what made you make that choice and why. Parse the language and the trap answer choices to see why the right one was right, and the others were not. It's tedious, but that is definitely where the actual improvement happens. Otherwise you just kind of run through doing bad habits over and over. You might eventually correct them, but it'll take longer that way.
I am in a similar situation as you are. Right now, my plan is to fool proof games from PT 45-60. Take PTs everyday and BR right after. I feel like the problem usually is getting use to the time ticking. So far I have seen an improvement in my approach but it doesn't work for everyone obviously. I study fulltime so I have the time to take a PT and BR everyday or every other day. I usually fool proof the gameonce I have done a PT. How many PTs have you done so far? I feel like BR is crucial but you have to also do a lot of PTs to get over the time constraints and get used to doing questions while the time is ticking. Im writing in December as well and might choose to write February if I have to but doing timed PTs will definitely help you score higher. The psychological aspect is half the battle for me and I feel like this approach can help. If you are BRing this high, you might just need to work on skipping strategies and timing to see what works for you and this does consist of trial and eror.
@"Caleb.rohr.church"
It is actually sort of a benefit of blind review that you get some questions wrong in blind review and right on the actual test. It means that you didn't actually know how to get the right answer and instead had to rely on an educated guess. Since there is always a right answer, ideally you will always know the answer with nearly100 percent certainty. If you didn't blind review(or never changed your answers in blind review) it would be harder to discover what you don't know.
I'm not sure if you have the ultimate package or not, but it might be a good idea since, if I'm not mistaken, it comes with explanations of all the LR and RC questions in all the tests. So you go through the blind revkew process described by @"Leah M B" and then also check your newly gained understanding agaist the correct rational. The ultimate package is not strictly necessary to excel on the test. I only ever bought the starter package since I mostly just needed to improve on games, but when re-reviewing LR after my blind review, I would occassionally seek out a third party explanation of a question to make sure I was not just justifying the correct answer using bogus logic.
I assume on your blind review of logic games you don't experience this phenomenon of doing worse than your initial PT. Once you know the methods all games are solvable eventually so your blind review of logic games should be a -0. Then it's just a long struggle to figure out how to do that in 35 minutes.
You mentioned doing better than expected on the logic games section of the September test. That's good, but the logic games section of the September test was one of the easier logic games sections in the history of the test. It also featured one of the harder reading comp sections. For me this was an answered prayer (reading complex passages is a strength and logic games were why I was retaking). But, I would caution against thinking scores on those sections from September are good indicators of where you are in your prep.
Defense of Foolproofing:
Finally, you said you are not sure if foolproofing helped you. As long as you are missing more than 1 or 2 questions per game section on average, it is my belief that foolproofing is indispensable. Here is why.
First it works. It works everytime for everyone. It sometimes works slowly. It sometimes works really slowly. It sometimes works so slowly that you can't tell it's working, but it always works. And if you give it enough time it will work for you.
How do I know it works? Ask people on this website their section breakdown sometime. You will notice that there is a significant cluster of people who average between -0 and -1 on logic games. There won't be anywhere near as many people who say that about RC or LR. And almost without fail these people with perfect LG section acerages now bombed their first LG section. They bridged the gap with foolproofing.
How else do I know it works? It started to work for me. My first test I did not complete the logic games section. Then I discovered foolproofing and three months of prep later missed 1 (a stupid misreading error) on the actual Septemver test. It wasn't just the easy games in September either. On the most recent 20 PTs I averaged -2 on games (pedestrian by this site's standards, but pretty good).
Why does it matter that it works? It's just 6ish questions your missing on it. The thing is that until you perfect it, logic games isn't just your average number of missed questions. It's an unnecessary source of stress. One hard game comes along and you are -6 if you identify and skip it. Two hard games and you might be -12. That's what test day disasters are made of. On LR if you run into an abnormally hard question or two, they count for one point each. On RC you will be able to wrestle the answers to some of the questions out of even the most confusing passage. But if you hit a game or two you can't solve you will be guessing nearly blindly. That's stressful.
Foolproofing takes that stress away and that relaxes you for the other sections. When a game is going smoothly it isn't particularly strenuous. That means if you can foolproof games, you just got a 35 minute break from the stress of the test, free points, and ditch the source of the most volatility in your score. The first time I got a perfect games section on a PT was also the first and only PT where I got a 180. That was 5 points higher than my previous best and 7 higher than my median at the time. Those 7 points didn't all come from games. They came because games were the second section of the test and the rest of the test I was relaxed.
Don't give up on foolproofing, but it does take time.
Thanks for your response and reaching out! I am starting to see that it was a huge folly to not have done the blind review system with more of my practice tests. I have started going over my old LR sections from those tests and seeing why I got the questions wrong on those sections then re-doing them the day after with good results!
In regards to the September test I was actually surprised I got such a low score considering my RC and LG scores. I did really well on both but absolutely terrible on one LR section and poorly on a second. It is actually a really great indicator of how well I am doing in general. I got a 155 on it and a 155 was my average going into the test, and I'm only averaging a 1.5 points above 155 right now.
It's completely true what you're saying about the LG. I actually only really started studying the LG section in June. I procrastinated on starting to learn it since I had read it was the most learnable section. I did not realize how much time it takes, despite being the most learnable section. I do notice how a shaky LG section actually sucks the performance out of the following section. Usually if I run into a hard LG section the LR section following I will miss an extra 3-5 questions based on decreased confidence. I'm going to keep up studying and persisting, especially with the LG.
I would delay. If a few extra months can get you into a better school and/or get you scholarship money, it's worth it.