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HELP!!
Hey all! So I'm going through a bit of a nervous breakdown (the one I promised myself I wouldn't have until after February exam). Here's a little background story: I took a live Blueprint class from June - September while studying full time. I look the Sept LSAT and scored roughly 10 points lower than my average PT score and was devastated. I immediately signed up for the December exam and registered with 7sage the same day. I figured I would change my study routine and choose a different prep class since I wasn't too stoked about Blueprint. Unfortunately, I was incredibly burned out after the September exam, so I didn't make the efforts I intended to make. However, I still tried to study as much as I possibly could. I studied about 25-30 hours a week on average but mainly did practice exams and didn't use 7sage much. I took the December exam and did worse on that one than the September one. Embarrassing, I know. I signed up for February the same day I got my score and made a promise with myself to be open minded and stick to 7sage from now until Feb. I'm not working right now, so I am able to dedicate myself to a full time study schedule. I am ready to get started and hopefully score well the third time.. but I'm super overwhelmed now and need some suggestions/help/advice with the following:
1) For the people who are/were in my situation or anyone who can provide insight, how did you study in between exams? Right now, I am dedicating one week each to individual sections. I'm ending this week on Sunday with having finished the LG lessons/drills from here. I was doing so well and feeling confident up until today. My brain just crashed. All the games I was able to do yesterday under 8 minutes, I couldn't do today for the life of me. I think it's a mixture of burn out and I feel a bit confused from 7sage's methods and Blueprints. Blueprint does things a little differently, and I'm having a hard time merging what I already know and what I am learning together without getting confused. I am mainly confused about conditional statements and the overall setup on grouping games. Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated!
2) I haven't submitted any applications yet because I am waiting for my February score. I am hoping to score between 7-10 points higher than my September exam. Keep in mind I scored lower on my December exam. Am I being unrealistic in thinking I can make that type of jump next month? I have major test anxiety and my fight or flight needs to calm tf down. Still trying to work on that. However, am I making the wrong decision in waiting to submit apps until after I get my score?
I've been fool proofing LG and I'm noticing some improvement. However, I haven't BR'd any of my practice exams yet. The reason I haven't done that yet is because I feel like I don't have time to take my time and don't want to get used to taking longer than about a minute on questions. Am I being ridiculous?
Any advice is much appreciated! Thanks in advance, everyone. 
Comments
Hey there. I am in your SAME EXACT BOAT. The Feb exam will be my third time taking the test and I'm going about it completely different than the last two times. My approach is much more stringent and disciplined. I'm not working either so I'm ready to dedicate a full time study schedule. I haven't submitted any applications yet. I need to feel motivated to do so, and I'm hoping that my Feb score will do that for me. I know I'll have to submit my applications not knowing what my score is-huge risk. I've worked way too hard, overcame way too much, to just give up. I know I can do it, I just need to adjust my study methods. ( I hired a private tutor.)
Your hopes for a huge increase is not lofty or unrealistic. I've seen way too many people comment saying to give up or try for next time. What help is that when you're motivated to the umpth degree to do this? What you need is a support system and I'm here! If anything, this pressure will define your studying abilities and discipline.
Just remember you're not alone in this. At least you know I'm in the same boat with you. We will not drown. It's sink or swim time and we will not sink. I'm giving you tough love-we have exactly 29 days to get this done. We haven't come this far for nothing. No rest for the weary. Of course, don't over exhaust yourself. Allow yourself to relax. At the end of the day, what will be will be. You got this.
I am learning, and I think the more experienced 7Sagers here will tell you, BRing is what will help you improve. The test is about 5 weeks away... can you take in June? What are your sectional scores? If you don't mind sharing, what is your score & goal score? My first go at this I was still in undergrad. But I'm also an only parent to 3 youngins, so for me the LSAT just needed it's own special place in my life where I could devote time to it and only it, as far as studying and work goes. I couldn't adequately study it while in UG. My June '15 LSAT score reminds me of that. It really takes time. Don't rush yourself. I think you ought to invest the time in BRing.
@cbyrns21 thank youuuuuu for all of your encouraging words. I REALLY needed to hear that today. I’ve been crying literally for the past hour because I’m just so emotionally and mentally exhausted from this and I just want to hit the score that I know I can hit. I’m determined to start school this fall too. I’ve been in such a weird place in my life and I know what I want and I just wana get it already
thanks again for your kind words. You’re going to kill the Feb exam!
@"sbc.mom_3x" hi! I’m averaging around a 157-159 on my PTs. I’ll occasionally hit 160-161, but it’s only happened a few times. I scored much lower than my PTs, but I am hoping to at least get a 155-157. I misbubbled an entire section in December, so that explains the exceptionally lower decrease, but I’m really just hoping to hit mid to high 150s next month. I’m also determined to start this fall, I’d really really hate to wait until next cycle. I will BR for the next two weeks and hopefully gain a point or two from that.
Theres a lot of things there. I liked and used 7 sage, but I haven't heard loads of negative things about Blueprint. Any system is going to need you to spend a lot of time using it to reap the full rewards.
If you think you are burning out, there is an unambiguous correct study strategy. Don't for at least a couple of days. Then PT. If your scores go back up, you were burnt out and need to be careful of over studying the rest of the time. If they don't, then either you need a longer break or it is something else. However, burnout is the likely culprit and a few days rest followed by carefully limited studying the likely cure.
Some meditation might help with the anxiety and does for lots of 7 sagers. If not, it is sometimes medically treatable and is probably worth a trip to the doctor for advice.
As far as not submitting apps, I think it depends. If you are willing to wait a cycle, you might be doing the right thing. Barring a February increase that is quite substantial you probably should wait and retake in June or September after a longer period of time studying with one system.
Foolproofing logic games works. If you do that for long enough, there is no reason you can't improve to about -0 or -1 as your average on that section.
Not blind reviewing because you don't want to get used to taking a long time on questions isn't very reasonable. You still get the experience of a timed test during blind review. However, you also get all the learning that comes with blind review. You could make the same argument against any thorough review(that it might make you used to spending more time on a question), but if you don't review then you learn nothing from your PTs other than your present score. If you do a review that isn't blind you miss out on a lot of the potential value from the PT since you justify sometimes incorrect rationales with the benefit of already knowing the correct answer. With blind review you get to check whether your thoroughly thought out rational made sense. Get your timing down on the PT and learn from it during the blind review.
@ktvarda1 if you want we can Skype study together! Two is better than one! Since we have the advantage of time, we can tackle our weak points together and help one another. I'm happy to help where I can
I know the feeling like a failure. At the end of the day, we have to rise above the depressing thoughts and persevere. If not, we let depression win and that's just not in the cards for us. Don't get me wrong, I have moments throughout the day where I feel dumb and believe this is all just a waste of time but, I want this so bad. From what I've read, it seems you feel the same. Put one foot in front of the other and before you know it, you'll start to see progress and the shadows will slowly lift and light will creep in and you'll begin to gain the confidence needed to conquer this damn test!
@"Seeking Perfection" hi thank you for your advice!
I am going to apply this cycle and see what happens. If I’m not happy with my options, then I will go for the next cycle. Ideally, I’d like to start this fall so I’m really trying to make my Feb exam worth turning apps in late in the game.
In regard to BR, I didn’t mention that I actually have BR one LR section before, just not an entire test. When I BR’d the one LR section, I found that most of my initial answers were correct. After reading into the questions to decide which answer between the two was correct, I’d often choose the other answer which ended up being incorrect. That’s another reason why I haven’t done much BR. I second guess myself too much and end up rationalizing incorrect answers before revealing that my initial answer was correct. What do you suggest to help improve my BR? Also, if I am able to BR correctly, I plan to do it for the next two weeks and spend the last two weeks before the exam taking PTs under test conditions without BR. Do you think I will benefit from this for the Feb exam? Thanks!
As far as PTs and blind review I would recommend PTing for the full time you have left with blind review after each test. You get two sets of scores(one from each PT and one from its blind review) so I don't think you lose any value compared to PTing without blind review. Either way you do the PT in real time.
As far as choosing the incorrect answer and second guessing yourself during blind review, I don't think that means you are doing blind review wrong. You want to reveal questions that you are not certain of the right answer to so you can seek a good explanation either from 7sage explanations, others here, or other sources online. Those incorrect changes are the benefit of blind review. You would never know they were weaknesses without a blind review, but the weakness and uncertainty would still be there for your next PT.
It is hard to say how much benefit you will get from this by February, but I am confident that it will help you improve more than PTing without blind review would.
Applying this cycle makes sense and most schools will take the February score whatever they claim publicly. However, if you feel uou don't get a fair shake, a lot of your leverage is from being willing to wait a cycle since you can't necessarily get schools to negotiate with eachother the way they would with earlier apps. It sounds like you are willing to wait if you need to which is good.
@ktvarda1, I want to chime in on the topic of BR too if you don't mind. The problem with not reviewing your test, is that you really aren't getting nearly all of the available learning out of the experience. You can keep burning through one PT after another, but you don't really learn the test under the time constraints. Timed PTs are for building up your experience in actually doing the test, whereas review is where you learn the reasoning behind the questions. Now, blind reviewing takes time, even for shorter versions, but you should tell yourself it's time well spent. I feel like it's million times less productive to be burning through hundreds of questions instead fixing the holes in reasoning.
You mentioned that when you were tried to BR, you found yourself second guessing, and switching to wrong answers. I may be wrong on this, but this seems like a sign that there are weaknesses in the way you approach and analyze specific questions and answer choices. What I would recommend (and yes this takes time) is to have the corresponding CC lesson open while you are reviewing a question and make sure that your thought process aligns with the approach method in the lesson. Remember that on the LSAT the 4 wrong answers are definitely wrong and eventually you should be at the point of having concrete reasons for eliminating each of them. You should also read/watch the explanations for those questions. There are several places online which have explanations for questions, including the 7Sage account itself.
Also for what it's worth blind reviewing helped me A LOT, and I continued doing it all the way up to the real exam, even when I was PTing more or less consistently in the 170s. Good luck with your studies!
Yes, to echo what the others have said, BR is really where you make the most gains. If you just take PT after PT without reviewing, you essentially make the same mistakes over and over instead of learning from them. You need to really grapple with each question until you understand why the correct answer is correct and the others are not. That is how you learn. The LSAT is extremely repetitive and if you keep reviewing questions, you begin to learn the patterns. PTs are really just sort of markers to see how you are progressing. I'd recommend only max 2 full PTs per week (and with thorough BR!).
Also, I really think you are dealing with burn out. There was a brief period in my studying where I suddenly got worse on LR. I thought I was losing my mind! I took 3 or 4 days completely off of studying and came back and took a timed section - lo and behold, improvement. Haha. Our brains can only take so much information before they need to rest. You would probably really benefit from at least a couple of days completely away from studying.
For your studying, I would highly recommend working on foolproofing LG and alternate that with taking timed sections of LR and RC. My schedule looked something like this (I worked full time, so this is just limited to evenings):
Monday - timed LR section and BR it. Review cc. Short drill of 1 question type.
Tuesday - foolproof several LGs
Wednesday - timed RC section with BR. Drill 1 LR question type.
Thursday - rest day
Friday - timed LR section with BR. Fool proof 1 or 2 LG.
Saturday - PT and BR
Sunday - finish BR if needed; timed LR or RC section with BR. No studying for about half the day. Rest time!
More or less kept repeating that. I also recommend taking up something relaxing that you can do the day of the test. Meditation works for a lot of people. I think yoga could work too. Something that relaxes your mind and calms you down. Find a way to put yourself in a calm, centered mindset on the day of the test.
Also, I highly recommend making your PTs as similar to a test day experience as you can. If you are only taking PTs at home in a quiet bedroom, take them somewhere with more distractions. I liked taking them at a nearby public library. I also took a few at coffeeshops to really raise the distraction level and work on focusing.
Hope some of that helps!