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SOS! :( Seen every single PT, some more than once, how should I study?
jennyleejh
Alum Member
Hi all, after taking in some words of advice from the 7sagers I have decided to take my fourth LSAT (yikes), knowing that my previous scores were far below my potential and that it would be a waste not take advantage of my relatively high GPA that I really worked hard for in college.
Now that I've made the hard decision, I'm a little lost as to how I should go about studying... If my PTs were around 173-174 but actual score 166, I believe that some of my fundamentals were shaky, but since my 7sage materials have all expired (happily thinking that my December would be my last LSAT ever), I'm not sure where I should turn to. I'm also not sure how I should approach PTs because I've pretty much seen all the PTs at least once, and am scared that just a more thorough BR would be insufficient to guarantee a higher score on my next exam. I've skimmed through my past BR notes/scrapbook to see where I was lacking when I went into the December exam, but I can't really get a good sense of my specific weaknesses (other than, being weak in NA/flaw questions, conditional arguments in general)... I'm so lost as to where I should begin...
Anyone have some words of wisdom for me?! 
Comments
Looks like you have the wisdom to reach any goal you set. Congratulations on your success. Go get 'em!
Hmm. So your PTs were low-mid 170s and day of test was 166. You said this was your third test, though? What were your other scores? Were they all in that same range?
Hi @"Leah M B"! I cancelled my first attempt.. a good day to see how terribly anxious I could be on test day... then my next two scores were 166.
Frustrating... I had changed my tactics from my 2nd to 3rd attempt and I wonder if that change just didn't work for me.
Hey @"jh.lee_jenny". How was your pacing during the exam? What was your diagnostic? Do you feel that you have a tendency to freeze up or throw away good test taking habits during the official take.
Are you perfect on games? If not foolproofing using the freely available games explanations could help.
If you are, where are the errors?
@westcoastbestcoast during the December exam, LG was easy (I heard was particularly easy this time) so I finished 5 minutes left to spare. I had two RC sections, both finished exactly on time but had to rush/make intellectual guesses on maybe 2/3 questions on each section. For my LRs I felt most chased by time, for one section I circled about 4 questions to come back later but in the end I had only about 2/3minutes left so I could only double check one of them.
(I presume this is where I lost most of my points because for some LR stimulus, I had no idea what it was saying...)
Writing this I'm starting to realize pacing would also be something for me to work on...
Hi @"Seeking Perfection" I wouldn't say 100% perfect, but it's usually my best section. In my optimal condition, I've managed -0 but most of the times I make silly mistakes (by filling out diagram wrong, misreading question/answer as such) to miss a question or two.
I've pretty much solved all games at least once, the challenging ones about +10 times, mediocre difficulty about +5 times... So I fear that I've run out of new challenges to throw me off and stimulate my thinking brain
You could try doing LR confidence drills to work on your pacing/speed. Retakes are great for this! Chances are if you are scoring in the high-160s/low170s your fundamentals are strong and time allocation/management is something you should practice.
Retakes will always inherently be inflated but they still have tons of value. So don't worry too much about not having any fresh tests. I don't think it's that big of a deal. Have you seen all of June 07, Feb 97', PT A, PT B, PT C, and C II? If not, those are some relatively unknown tests you could find and take as needed.
Hi @"Alex Divine" could you elaborate what you mean by LR confidence drills? Would it be redoing the questions under stricter time constraints? I've seen most of the stimulus multiple times that somehow my brain is fooling myself that I'm confident with the questions.
Confidence drills are basically when you take an LR section and try to complete them as quickly as possible. You pick an answer choice you're confident on and sort of recklessly complete the LR section that way. It helps to develop both confidence and pacing.
Have you done all of the tests I mentioned above? (Feb 97', PT A, PT B, PT C, and C II)
Even if you know the answers are you able to reverse engineer your thinking and understand why that answer is credited and the other 4 are wrong?
@"Alex Divine" Ah okay! Thank you so much. That's something for me to try then! After recklessly completing the section, I would have to BR it the same way as I would otherwise in standard BRs right?
PT A, B, C are those from the Superprep right? If so, I have unfortunately used them... haha and I solved C II when studying for the December exam. That leaves me with February 97'? Not sure where I can get hold of that but I'll definitely use it thank you!
Yeah more or less. You just want to pay more careful attention to how much time you spent and whether or not you were right to be confident in your answers. The best way to do this is by video recording yourself taking these sections so you can study the objective data it will provide.
And you're very welcome!
Another thing you might want to try is taking retakes with only 25mins/section instead of 35. This may help lessen score inflation from the questions you remember.
Ah so helpful @"Alex Divine" !! Thanks again it's great to have such a concrete strategy I can follow for the next few days! Time for me to print out some fresh PTs!
@"jh.lee_jenny"
You sound solid on games.
It does sound like timing is something to work on with the other sections. I'm not sure how best to do it best without fresh PTs. I don't usually recommend skipping, but a more aggressive skipping strategy might be useful here since you will have trouble knowing if you have your timing right going in unable to take many fresh PTs and want to make sure you get to all the questions you can do easilly with plenty of time vefore handling the harder ones.
The other thing is, if you have a log of the questions you have missed I found it particularly valuable on LR to go over all of the questions I had missed when I had spare time. I took pictures of them and flipped through them on my phone when I had time, but I know some people cut them out or use flash cards. This helped me be very confident on LR on the real test since I knew there were only a finite number of differnet ways LR questions could be phrased and I had either gotten them right the first time or recently reviewed them. If you missed an average of 8 LR questions a test over 80 tests that is 640 questions. Reviewing them is really quick after the first couple times since you are more remembering the process of reviewing them than straining your way through it. Therefore it only takes about 6 hours to go over all those questions once you've done it recently. This fits nicely into your walks and before bed anxious doing sonething on your cellphone time and pre-meeting/class slack time and time waiting on the microwave ect. It isn't hard to crank through all of them in a week without really dedicating any official study time. If you go through that set of questions 4 or 5 times between now and the February test you are going to be more confident on LR.
If you’ve run out of lsats, try doing them starting with the very very first ones you worked on. Hopefully some of the questions from those will have been forgotten by now
Confidence drills, like mentioned by @"Alex Divine" sound like a great idea in your case.
Just because you have already seen those PTs, doesn't mean that there isn't anything you can still learn from them. Since you will be taking the tests you have already seen, you can try doing them with a shorter timer — set each section to only 32 minutes or less, rather than the full 35. That should introduce an additional challenge, and might also help a bit with those timing issues. Besides restarting PTs chronologically (i.e. restarting the first ones you took), you can also consider them from the point of the lowest scores. I did something like that before retaking in December. I knew PT 73 was a particularly low score for me, for example, so that was one of the test I retook within only a couple of months.
Here is the link to where you can buy F97 LSAT: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0942639685?ie=UTF8&tag=85394-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0942639685. I don't really think it's worth it to drop $60 on a new copy, but you can gamble with one of those "Acceptable" used ones, so that even if does have some marking, you'd only be out a couple bucks.
@"Seeking Perfection" Thank you for such helpful advice!!! I do have my scrapbook listing all the questions I missed/didn't understand fully when I solved them for the first time. I'll try the flashcard strategy with some new questions and carry them around with me 24 hours!
@PARHAM1373 Yes! I've selected the ones I didn't review for the December exam so I know that's somewhere to start
@pioneer321 I've actually tried to shorten my time when studying for the December exam, sometimes ending the LR section with about 8 minutes to spare... But then again, on the real exam I still had difficulty emulating such speed and had little time to review. Does this mean I should aim for even shorter time, like.. 20 or 25 minutes?
Hmm, ok. Personally, no, I don't think you need to necessarily aim to lower the completion time even more, because timing doesn't seem like a primary issue. And I guess since your PTs were at 173-174, you were also getting almost all those questions correct. I actually suggested to lower the times on all sections during PTs, less to work on your timing skills, but more to somewhat compensate for familiarity with the questions.
So I have a couple other questions then. When you are taking the practice tests, are you taking them under as realistic conditions as possible? I know that this tends to be an issue for a number of people who significantly underscore on the test day. But judging by what you've already written, I am guessing you were probably taking them correctly. The other potential issue that comes to mind then is anxiety or burnout from cramming. My methods for calming nerves are somewhat unorthodox, and I suspect won't apply to many people here, but I have seen numerous posts about positive thinking, meditation, or even yoga, to help with that. Hope any of this helps, and that more people can chime in with tips.
Hey @jh.lee_jenny, I reactivated your Ultimate course for a few weeks so you could review the CC. If you'd like to extend past that, you can do so here:
https://7sage.com/addons/
Ugh, I love 7sage so much. Again I say, one of the most generous companies I've ever seen. This rules.
My gut feeling is that there are test day nerves affecting you. If you were consistently PTing in mid-170s and on test day consistently dropping 8 points, that tells me it's nerves. How were you taking your PTs? I'd try taking some in varying conditions. I liked PTing at the public library because it's a comparable environment to test day. I also did a few sitting at coffeeshops, so with high levels of noise and distractions. I might also suggest you take up something calming like meditating or even yoga. Get into the habit of meditation, and then meditate on test day before going to the test center. It could help relax you, put your mind at ease.
It sounds to me like you really do have fundamentals down. I would focus more on testing in various conditions, learning concentration methods, and then also the confidence drills as people suggested. Be aware that on test day, there may be more of a tendency to overthink things, but you need to know when to keep it moving. That's where I think confidence drills could help - learning not to overthink questions.
Good luck, and definitely take advantage of having your course re-activated! Look over the analytics, and let us know if there's anything else we can help on.
Ahhh thank you so much @"Dillon A. Wright" for your kindness and thank you to everyone who's given me tremendous support ! There really is nowhere else like 7sage :')
@pioneer321 I tried to simulate test day conditions as much as possible for my PTs but I'm starting to think perhaps always taking the test in the same spot (my room) made me feel more comfortable and relaxed than I had realized. I also usually took it in utter silence... which may not have been good practice for any distractions on test day.
As you suggested @"Leah M B" I'll definitely try to change up my test taking spot. And start yoga classes too! I've been reviewing some questions for the past few days but it also seems like I have to fine-tune my LR skills because I keep misreading/interpreting the answer choices and choosing answers that appears clearly wrong to me on the BR. Such carelessness on my part must have played a greater role on the real test, coupled with anxiety, partially explaining the drop in my score.
@"jh.lee_jenny" Yeah I'd definitely change your testing spot sometimes. I actually took 90% of my PTs at home or in the office before work, but almost all of my time drilling in a Starbucks. I fully believe that learning how to process LSAT in such a terrible horrible environment helped me build concentration skills for the actual test, so I would recommend that.
Also I'd experiment with different voices and distraction levels on the 7Sage proctor app if you aren't already. Good luck!