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done with this?
I just stopped at the end of section 2-- logic games-- in a prep test, after leaving one game almost completely unfinished. I think I'm ready to give up on the LSAT.
My background: went to a good school, didn't have direction, graduated with a 3.0, and I've been working in a job that I hate for three years. Public service is my passion, and I really want to go to law school (a good law school, of course). I need to crack into the 170's to be a viable candidate. I started studying in May with the PowerScore books, then I discovered 7Sage a few months ago. I've been studying pretty seriously and intensively for the last 2-3 months. My score has improved from a 155 to a 162, but it has stagnated at that 162 for three tests. I've been doing some refining around the edges, really utilizing that LSAT analytics feature-- nailing 4s and 5s.
I feel like I'm not "getting" it-- like I don't have that edge, or intelligence, or whatever it is that allows oneself to crack 170. My throat is hoarse from screaming after ending another logic games section with a game untouched. I thought, what's the point anymore? I've been working at it for so long and hard and I still can't nail these games under timed circumstances, especially when there's only one 1 in the set. Sure, I can go back afterward under non-timed conditions and eventually get it. And sure, I can do it ten times after watching JY brilliantly explain it, but that doesn't change how I perform when I try to apply what I've learned.
I've read some stories from people who have scored really well (175+), and they all share a common feature: they studied for a couple of months (usually around 2-4, sometimes 6), and ended up scoring in the range near what they scored on the test on their last few practice tests. I know everyone is different, but after 6 months of studying I feel like I should be going 150->160->162->165->166->...->171 based on how hard I'm working on this.
I try my hardest to stay positive, think intuitively, be a good listener, and apply what I learned from the lessons to the new material presented to me in practice tests, but I feel like it's getting me nowhere. Am I not smart enough? Have I just hit my mental capacity? I'm no genius by any means, but I feel like I'm pretty damn intelligent.
At this point, I don't see a path forward. And it really sucks. Anyone else relate? How did you pull yourself out of it? How did you start nailing practice tests? My test is Feb 10, and I'm really considering throwing in the towel now.
Comments
I went from mid-140s to 169 official. You can do it, bud. Train effectively.
PM me if you want some pointers.
One thing is on some other sites, people could be lying. Don't take some of the stuff out there too seriously. Just saying. Don't give up. This test can take a long time, especially for people with other commitments, which you have. Stay with it. We're here for you.
Quitting now is the only way to guarantee you'll never reach your goal. I'll admit, I don't have the personal experience, but i've listened to many podcasts and attended sessions given by former 7sagers that started at 150 or lower, but climbed to the 170s. Usually these students spend more than a year to study because the improvement is SLOW. There's no shortcut, you simply have to persevere.
"If you feel like quitting think about why you started." Your score range is definitely high enough to get you into a top 50 school. If you give up now, you give up on the goal of becoming a lawyer. If a score on one test is enough to deter you from pursuing the law as a career, is it something that you really wanted in the first place?
Burnout: Have you considered the possibility that you're burnt out? That may be a factor here hurting your progress. Take a week off.
Time: it took me ~5-6 months to really start consistently PTing in the 170s. At 2-3 months I was probably in the same place you are.
You're not stupid. Nobody is, especially when it comes to the LSAT. There are very few people who are intuitively good at the LSAT - most have worked very hard to get to the point that they're at. The ones that say they didn't work that hard are either 1) lying, 2) geniuses, or 3) modest. It all comes down to how hard are you studying and how effectively you are studying. Which leads me to point 4:
Re-evaluate what you are doing. I mean really think about whether what you're doing is effective. Stand back and look at your study plan, evaluate what kinds of logic games are tripping you up, and drill those. Figure out the fundamentals that you're missing and the question types you're screwing up.
But also, you needa give yourself some tough love. It may very well be the case that you're not studying as hard as you could be. I have a number of friends that HAVE PROOOMMISED me that they are studying SUPER hard for the LSAT, and yet they just can't get their score up! But then when I study with them, they're checking their phone every 5 minutes, or switching the song they're listening to every 3. They get up to use the bathroom three times in an hour, or I catch them watching YouTube videos instead of J.Y.'s explanations.
Did you REALLY make the best use out of the last 3 months that you could have? If not, re-evaluate, re-examine, and re-plan to do so for the next 2. And if you decide that that is too much work and your heart isn't into mastering the LSAT, then yeah, maybe you should just "throw in the towel."
I hope you don't though. I hope your problem is just one of the four I mentioned above and you can dig yourself out of the rut you're in.
The LSAT is a learnable exam, and I'm confident if you keep devoting your energies to it (in the right ways) you will achieve your goals. To use a nerdy geology analogy, the LSAT is a lot like a block of carbon. It's ugly and useful by itself, but with enough time and pressure, you can turn it into a diamond
I haven't read any of the other comments, but I did read your post. The one thing that helped my score jump was to make sure I spent time thoroughly reviewing. I'm at a point now where I'm reviewing more than I PT. That's how your score jumps, and you need to do it either before work, during your lunch break, or on weekends (if you have weekends off) when you can think and learn about what you'v been studying.
You've hit a wall with your studying and I've been there before. But take the time to PROPERLY review. Even if it takes you 4 hours to review 9 questions (as was the case for me) but now I need to review much less, and can get through more questions. Go through the 7Sage explanations and WRITE THEM DOWN. Then, go to the powerscore + manhattan + graeme blake explanations and see what their reasoning was for the question. Write those down as well, and then look at where you went wrong with your reasoning.
Do this for 3 months, then take a practice test. Your score should jump. You shouldn't rush this process, it's about learning more in the next stage of your studying and it's incredibly important that you don't skip corners.
There's some great advice in here. Here's a short direct tidbit -- stop brute forcing games. I'm assuming you are, since you're running out of time consistently. You're scoring good for someone who is missing potentially a whole game in an LG section; don't cut yourself short by not working LG efficiently. More often than not, when a question asks what MBT or CBT, you should take a second to think about the game board and see what answer choices are suspect.
I'll go an entire LG section where I've barely POE'd any answer choices because I learned how to do LG more efficiently through the advice JY gives in the CC. It sounds like you aren't fully utilizing that advice. You gotta
Was in a similar boat, and only recommendation is you just have to keep working at it. Started at 153 back in February and studied while working 50+hrs a week. Just took the Dec LSAT averaging 167 prior so we'll see.. Increases were not linear or expected. Here was my progression:
- Studied Feb to May increasing to high 150s low 160s with LSAT trainer (Avg -12 RC, -10 LR, -5 LG)
From May to June LSAT, 5 section PTing and hours of LG drills and 7Sage videos and redoing. Improved to (-10 RC, -9LR, -1LG) - Got a low 160
Took a month break and got back on it for December. I rode the train every day and focused on LR for about 1.5 hours each day drilling and reviewing question types. Was out of newer practice tests at this point. But saw an increase using 30s PTs (Avg -10 RC, -6LR, -0LG)
So it takes time and you need to give your mind a rest every now and then to let it soak in. Good luck and keep pushing forward!
@"Paul Caint" with an absolutely excellent post.
To OP: It took me over 2,000 games to get my first perfect truly confident, on top of things 100% fresh LG section. I've gotten plenty of -1/-2/-3s along the way, but that perfect fresh section took an enormous amount of LG drilling and refining of technique over practice sections, so I personally know the frustration you're facing. I actually cried when that perfect fresh section happened because I knew it was actually possible: which now that I am admitting that to a group of strangers sounds a bit odd, lol, but it's the truth!
I know you are discouraged, and I know just how that feels. I hit a wall a while back where all I saw on PT's was 150 -> 152 -> 154 -> 150. It was like a nightmare. For some time, I thought I would never be capable of higher than 154. I believed I wasn't smart enough, wasn't good enough, etc. But in the end, that self doubt was nothing but a waste of valuable prep time. Today, my highest score was a 171 (that I know of, there is still Dec LSAT).
The point I'm making is that I don't think your problem is in what you are capable of. I believe you are more than capable of the score you want. I feel like your issue is with the stress, the mind game, the discouragement, the strategies you're using, etc. Mind set is very important in all this.
I do not believe this is a question of your abilities at all, seriously! I can not emphasize this enough. A person who scored 180 said that "the LSAT more than anything else tests your discipline and dedication." And I believe this is one hundred percent correct. Those are definitely two key things in LSAT prep, and in law school as well.
It is up to you whether or not you continue, whether or not you pursue this career. But please, please do not let discouragement or self doubt be the thing the turns you away from your goals. Try taking a few days off, then critically evaluating your prep strategy, and asking different high scorers for new prep advice. Definitely stop testing for a bit, use some of the other ways to practice and nurture your skill sets, piece by piece. Then after that, try tackling a fresh test confidently. Believe in yourself! That will make all the difference. Best!
3 practice tests isn't very long to be stagnant.
You have gained 7 points in 2-3 months.
I could be a match for the type of person you were talking about who started out very good at the lsat. I started at a 168, studied using powerscore for a few weeks took and got a 172. I only really had difficulty with logic games(which I couldn't seem to finish) so I discovered 7 sage and foolproofed and PTd for 3 months moving my average up 6 points. I got a little lucky and hit a 180 on my actual test.
So I'm naturally pretty good at the LSAT and it took me 3 months to improve about 4 points on my average and 8 points on my actual score. In three months you have improved by about the same amount, 7 points. You just have a lot further to travel.
Now I studied for that 3 months at a pretty frantic pace and had to rest from the LSAT at the end to prevent burnout. If you have gained 7 points in the last 3 months you are in the same place. Take a week of rest and then get back into it. Foolproofing works. But it takes two ingredients: repetitions and time. They have done studies on rigorous standardized test preparation and it literally changes the structure of your mind over time. That takes time, rest, and studying for months and months if not one or two years.
Additionally, if it is any comfort, the LSAT community has a term for what you are experiencing. We call it a plateau. You'll probably have several on your path to your eventual score. I had one. It takes time and stubborness, but people brake through these plateaus eventually.
http://news.berkeley.edu/2012/08/22/intense-prep-for-law-school-admissions-test-alters-brain-structure/
"Intensive preparation for the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) actually changes the microscopic structure of the brain, physically bolstering the connections between areas of the brain important for reasoning, according to neuroscientists at the University of California, Berkeley."
"The results also suggest that LSAT training improves students’ reasoning ability by strengthening the connections between the left and right hemispheres of the brain. According to Bunge, director of the Building Blocks of Cognition Laboratory, deductive reasoning, such as language comprehension, taxes a predominantly left-hemisphere brain network, whereas spatial cognition taxes a predominantly right-hemisphere network.
“You could argue that, to the extent that you can employ spatial cognition to think through a verbal problem, you would have the edge,” she said."
"“People assume that IQ tests measure some stable characteristic of an individual, but we think this whole assumption is flawed,” Bunge said. “We think that the skills measured by an IQ test wax and wane over time depending on the individual’s level of cognitive activity.” One fascinating question, Gabrieli noted, is whether the brain changes observed in this study persist for months or longer after the training."
"“One thing that gives us confidence in these data is that a lot of these changes are in the tracts that connect frontal and parietal cortex, or between different hemispheres in those areas, and frontal and parietal regions are absolutely essential for reasoning,” Bunge said. “So, we are seeing the changes exactly where we would expect to see them. And we think that they reflect strengthening of the connections between them.”"
This is what my brain had to do to learn the LSAT. My left hemisphere sucked. ;P
Let me first just thank everyone who read my rambling, disjointed semblance of anger, frustration, dismay, and dejection at myself and the LSAT in general. I'm naturally one to be very hard on myself, and I have been one to get pre-emptive anxiety over failure and end up quitting before beginning an initiative. After reading all your comments (I've read them all over and over), I've given myself some tough love-- like Paul suggested-- and have started to re-evaluate. After calming down and doing some hard thinking, I've reassured myself that I want to take the exam and become a lawyer more than I want to quit this journey. All of your comments are AWESOME-- I had no idea that 7sage would be so much more than a prep test site. It's more of a family.
I'm going to move my test date from February to May. Having the test coming up in two months was putting an exorbitant amount of pressure on me, which was clouding my goals and my motivations. I'm going to take a couple of days off, hit the gym a little extra, and give myself some time to recharge from the LSAT. I’ll come back next week and spend more time focusing on my game/overall test strategy, reviewing, and attaining a fundamental understanding of the material. I’ll go back to the early lessons on 7sage, do more independent research, and hit some old PowerScore books. I’m going to focus my approach on understanding arguments, conceptualizing texts, and visualizing and making inferences on games. No more brute forcing LGs. I may reply to some of you directly and/or join in on more discussions. I’m excited to get the ball rolling again. This is the right move for me. Thank you all so much.
This is so true. The first sentence struck an extremely deep chord (cord?) with me. That says it all. Funny enough, when I read it, I translated it into lawgic in my head. It went something like: "being a lawyer (goal) -> going to law school -> taking LSAT. And if I fail the necessary condition (LSAT), then there goes any chance at all of going to law school and being a lawyer. It's all a matter of fact, but for some reason it really resonated with me. Thank you so much.
This needed to be said. Admittedly, some of my studying was weeks of studying 5-6 hours per day for 5 days in a row. On the other hand, some weeks I would only get maybe 5-6 hours total. So yes, it is time for me to get real. I'm moving my test to May (I was planning to apply for fall '19 anyway). Developing a real strategy and planning seriously is now a priority. Thank you for this, you rock.
@"Paul Caint" what was your study routine for 5-6 months when you started hitting 170?
So happy you're going to continue in this, believe in yourself x
Everyone is different. I am sure there are some people who studied for 3 months and increased their score 10-20 points as you mentioned (although I have never heard a story like that; kudos to them...) But more realistically, I've heard only stories of people who have studied 1-2 YEARS before getting in the 170s. Don't compare yourself to others, it's only discouraging. Keep at it and don't give up and you'll get there.
I'm on board with what has been said. Though you studied a significant amount of time, it's nowhere near the high end. You should take it easy on yourself and remember that. Good luck!---A.c.S
I improved my LR by reading lsat hacks after blind review. Grant has some of the best explanations to every question. But, do it only AFTER blind review.
, spent reviewing every question I missed: 40 min per question (LR). The jump in score will come unexpectedly and progress slowly. The way this test works is: by intense and longitudinal study the neuronal connections get stronger in some areas what increases the speed and accuracy in recognition of right patterns. It's called long term potentiation. Even small stimulus will fire the right neurons. It takes some time to train your brain:)
LG comes easier when you expose yourself to all kinds of games. I did every game timed 2-3 times from 35-82. This helps with seeing inferences and setups without questioning your thinking.
Also, I was stuck at one score for about 10+ tests