Advice on adjusting my study strategy for next LSAT - or keep the same routine?

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• mikeelliott Alum Member

  December 2017 31 karma

  In addition, I will say that I took a majority of the PT's before I knew what 7sage was and was privy to their teaching methods. I have never BR'd a PT before. I imagine this is one thing in particular I could start doing. And in doing this, I could re-orient myself with the CC. With all of this in mind, is the February 2018 testing date a reasonable amount of time to recalibrate my strategy to see an improved score?
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  Alex Alum Member ⭐

  December 2017 23929 karma

  @mikeelliott said:
  My first time writing the LSAT was over the weekend. I had dedicated a solid 4 months to studying full time using a variety of prep materials. I felt OK for most of the test until I got to the last LG section and I ran into difficulty with the third and fourth games. I ended up guessing on the majority of the questions in Games 3 and 4, and that really clouded my perception of the whole test. My gut tells me I didn't do well, mainly because of this blunder. I was PT'ing around my targeted score range for the schools I want (159 - 164), but I have no idea if I made into this range on the actual test.

  Going forward, what should I do to make sure something like this doesn't happen again? I was fairly confident in my strategy for games. I've exhausted most PT's and finished the Core Curriculum on 7Sage. Could my testing blunder just be a mental miscue due to a combination of stress/fatigue? Or is there something I can do to recalibrate my study strategy so that this sort of thing never happens again?

  What exactly was/is your study strategy?

  How many games had you done at that point, and from which tests?

  I think using 7Sage's game curriculum and fool proof method is your best bet!
• mikeelliott Alum Member

  December 2017 31 karma

  @"Alex Divine" I started off with Manhattan Prep, and was following their core curriculum which included learning the theory and drilling the question types. I then transitioned to 7sage about a month before my December exam, and got through most of the core curriculum. My general study strategy was to learn the core curriculum and drill the appropriate question types per lesson.

  With Games in particular, I found this approach to be inefficient and counterproductive. I wasn't able to make the progress leap in Games that is characteristic of most students who start working on them for a month or so. The approach I used really further conditioned what I have learned are bad habits, especially in Games. I'm not able to easily make inferences when I diagram, so my approach was merely to brute force every Game by drawing out each possible scenario according to what the question was asking. This is what I did on the December exam. While it is an admittedly terrible approach, it was the one approach I got comfortable with because, although it is incredibly time consuming and inefficient, it assured me the greatest sense of accuracy with each question. (I had extra time accommodations for each section, which made my method a plausible method to use on test day.)

  I'd like to unlearn some of these bad habits and start fresh, despite how difficult that may be. Do you suggest the Fool Proof Method?

  In addition, when it comes to LR, I am still somewhat struggling with MBT, Inference, and SA Assumption questions, mostly because I am still struggling with how to chain conditional statements. What do you suggest is a good technique for these particular areas of weakness?

  Hopefully I can patch things up in time for February. I know its only my first time writing the exam, but I don't want to keep making the same mistakes and make a living only preparing for this exam. I appreciate your thoughts and advice.
• catgonzalez1974 Member

  December 2017 193 karma

  I would say that 7sage's LG is much clearer and easier to follow then Manhattan Prep. I like LG, and I do well in it naturally, but 7sage helped me with how to layout a bit cleaner, setting up multiple boards, and helped me with my timing.
  I am a big game player, and if you want some fun ways of doing LG without the stress of it, I would suggest Puzzle Barron's Logic Puzzles. You can pick up a copy on amazon. I think it's like $12, and it really helps with inferences and understanding what is going on with multiple variables. It's also a competitive setup where you can see online how others do in timing.
  I had a tutor who suggested Sudoku, but Puzzle Barron's I think really helps people transition better to visually applying conditional statements, and clues.
  Good luck.
• m.c lshopeful Alum Member

  December 2017 614 karma

  BR is where i made most of my score improvements
• mikeelliott Alum Member

  December 2017 31 karma

  @"mickey.caleb" How long after doing BR did you see score improvements? Were these improvements surprising to you? Did they cover all areas of the test? Thanks!
• m.c lshopeful Alum Member

  December 2017 614 karma

  @mikeelliott said:
  @"mickey.caleb" How long after doing BR did you see score improvements? Were these improvements surprising to you? Did they cover all areas of the test? Thanks!

  I saw improvements pretty much the entire time I was doing BR, right from the very beginning. I think what was surprising to me was all of the ways I was benefiting from BR that I didn't anticipate.

  It definitely helps in all sections... Before you are perfect in all sections, you inevitably run in to those questions where you just can't read the stimulus or push out the inference that you need. These are the questions in your BR that take you up to 20 minutes sometimes because you need to hold yourself prisoner until you see it. Those are the breakthroughs with benefits that cover everything.