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175+ scorers- what was your diagnostic, and how long did it take you to study?
the180life
Member
Hi guys,
I'm a new 7Sager and this is my first post! I am tentatively aiming to take the November 2018 or January 2019 test, with an end goal of entering law school in fall of 2020 (I am a junior in college).
I just took my timed diagnostic LSAT last week (the June 2007 one) and scored a 162 (-3 LG, -4.5 LR, -7 RC). I was pretty happy with this score, apart from RC (I actually expected it to be my best section). My dream is to get to 175+ (ideally 180 but I know that's nearly impossible). I am wondering how people who have achieved this went about it- what was your diagnostic score and how long did you study for? With a 162 diagnostic do I have a shot at getting there?
I have not purchased a 7Sage course yet but am planning on it soon. I have already bought the LSAT Trainer book but haven't looked at it yet. Considering this, which course do people recommend I purchase? I am leaning towards Ultimate+ but money is tight.
Looking forward to getting to know you all, this community seems fantastic 
Comments
162 is a killer diagnostic score! If you are willing to put in a lot of hard work, then 175+ is achievable. Case and point, here is one of the most inspirational LSAT improvement success stories I've heard (162 ---->169 ---->174 ---->Yale):
http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=284629
I wish I had taken 7Sage more seriously from the start instead of wasting my time with the typical PS Bibles (although I did find the Trainer to be very helpful). I honestly think that 7Sage's instruction methodology and study strategies prepare you to perform to your full potential on the real test, rather than just get awesome at taking PTs under controlled conditions (this was my problem on my first attempt—I was scoring mid 170s on all PTs, but ended up with mid 160s score on the real deal). It promotes flexibility and logical consistency more so than any other prep service I used, and the community support system is unique and invaluable.
Ultimate+ is definitely worth it! I mainly used the Trainer and Powerscore with a little bit of 7Sage for my first take in December, but I am prioritizing 7Sage's methods alone for my retake in February/June. I am already feeling much more prepared!
You see many anecdotal stories of people in the 7Sage community doing better than they expect on the LSAT. I think the promotion of test-day mindset throughout the entire study process is what sets 7Sage apart. All of the strategies are applicable and easy to keep track of during the ups and downs/intense pressure of the real exam.
If you can't afford Ultimate+ to begin with, you can always purchase a more basic 7Sage package and upgrade later. Hope to see you on the forums soon as a member! It's an awesome community—you won't regret it.
Hi the180life,
My first diagnostic was 169. That was back in mid-July. You should get the one that you feel that will help you the most. You want to be careful that you don't use two different methods. It is best to stick one method like the 7sage. For me, the LSAT for me has become more of artform. I am trying to hit my score range between 176-180, which what I am capable of. I have pretty good at it so far. I don't want to go Ivy Leagues or schools in California because I would stick out like sore thumb in winter. They would make fun of the way I talk. I have strong Texas accent. In your case, I would try to aim as high as you can and keep practicing. It is sort of like aim at target and trying to hit the bullseye every time. The last 14 PT were 180 that I scored with a lot of practice.This is recently.
1) Breath deeply.
2) Don't aim for perfection and don't be hard on yourself where you lose focus.
3) Learn to fail. It won't be popular to say it and do it with PTs only. This is where you going to improve and get that great score over time.
3) Try for your best score.
3) Give it your best and not worst.
4) Ask yourself where you do want to go to law school.
I am going take the June 2018 LSAT and try to go back to law school after 9 yr absence for health reasons. I am going to apply for in the fall of this year. I love 7sage LSAT so far. My second favorite is Atticus Falcon's Planet Law School II. I took his examsmanship course before I left school and use get on his yahoo board before it closed. He used to rip me up one side and down the other. I got use to it and improved my law school exam writing down pat. He didn't rip me up after I mastered it. He was my mentor for law school.
You always try your best on the LSAT no matter what. Don't worry about what other people score. 180 is never impossible and can be done. If you want it bad enough, you will do it.
It's absolutely possible! I had my early life crisis at 22, February of 2017 and started considering going to law school kindof out of the blue. I took the free june 2007 test just to see if it was realistic, so I'd consider that the ultimate cold diagnostic. I also got a 162.
I studied for 3 months, mainly just taking PTs and using power score bible for games. In June I got a 170. I was happy, but decided to retake in sept. 180 and a few months of effort is a small price to pay for the chance at HYS or $$$.
This time I started studying right, I found 7sage, really learned games, LR, and RC. I blind reviewed hard, which I had never done before, and my PT average went up to 175ish. But my Sept score was 170 again. ?
I rolled the dice one more time in Dec. Kept studying like a fiend, and walked in with swagger. Ended up finding out i got a 176 and crying tears of joy in a McDonald's on dec 22.
Tldr; 162 diagnostic, 176 in Dec on 3rd attempt after 10 months of studying. 7sage starter pack is a bargain at 10x the price! Get ultimate if you can afford it!
Live long and prosper!
Those involuntary type of tears too. Where your eyes glance across the number and then BOOM waterworks. I know that feeling all to well...lucky for me I was at home when the joy bomb hit.
To sum it all up: Yes, 162 is a really good diagnostic, and all signs point to a potential for mid to high 170s score, BUT it won't come automatically, only with hard work. The points from 160s to 170s are the very hardest to come by, and are qualitatively different than the same number of points in lower scoring ranges.
I had a cold diagnostic of 168, scored a 172 after a few weeks of prep mostly with the powerscore bibles and practice tests, was still weak on games which I didn't finish when I scored the 172 so I took a break and then used 7 sage and the foolproof method to study for a little over three months before my retake where I got a 180 with one mistake after scoring mostly 176's 177's and 178's on my last twenty or thirty practice tests.
I'm not sure anecdotes like this are necessarily all that helpful in terms of time estimates though since I had a much different section as my main focus than you. Games are the most straightforward to improve. You foolproof them(at least the first 35 tests) using the 7sage method. If you are starting at a -3, I would bet you can get that down to a reliable -1 or -0 with a month or so of really dedicated foolproofing. By -4.5 LR I assume you mean you missed 9 over two sections. That is probably going to be easier to improve than the RC and might be the thing that the core curriculum which comes with any 7 sage package will help you with most and what you can definitely address by drilling. From everything I have heard, it is really hard, but possible to improve on RC. I don't know from experience though since RC wasn't my weakness. The core curriculum addresses all three topics, but I felt like it did a better job explaining Logic Games and LR which could have just been because they tend to be a little less ambiguous and more straight foreward. JY says there is always a completely right answer and four completely wrong ones and of course this is always true, but I think it is most clearly true with games and least with RC.
Anyways, take however much time you need to in order to maximize your score whether that is two months, two seasons, or two years.
Not a 175+ scorer (yet haha) so can't comment on that. But I will say, Ultimate+ is worth eeeeevery penny. Part of the perk of 7sage is it includes printable prep tests. I started out with the Starter because I came across 7sage after self-studying for a while and had already purchased about half of the available prep tests. Thought that I would only really need the Starter. I ended up extending it multiple times though and now have Ultimate+ so can really compare and contrast the packages and I have to say, Ultimate+ is truly a gold mine.
Totally understand that money is tight. You could also start with the Starter and upgrade to bigger packages as you can afford it. Upgrading vs buying outright gives you fewer months, but 7sage is extremely generous and will often give you those missing months if you ask the right person very nicely.
Wow, thank you all so much!! I know a few of your anecdotes don't translate into what will happen for me, but it's just nice to hear stories from people who started in similar situations as myself. I definitely am excited to join the community after lurking for a few weeks, hehe.
On a more specific note, I know logic games are easiest to improve (and 2 of my -3 were from running out of time) and RC hardest, so that aspect of my diagnostic results definitely makes me nervous...I'm hoping it was a little fluky and I average better on RC once I start practicing. And I know it will take a lot of time and effort, but I'm oddly excited about it. I'm studying abroad this semester, and hoping to progress through the CC slowly while I'm abroad, but I know the LSAT won't (and shouldn't be) the first thing on my mind during those few months. Really gonna buckle down until I leave in February and then full time in July and August...we'll see what happens
I'm jealous of all the people with diagnostics in the 160s, haha!
I wonder if there's anyone on here with a 170+ diagnostic...
I think @"Seeking Perfection"’s 168 is the highest I’ve ever heard of haha.
Yeah, that's just insane
"I started out in the 96th percentile. Nbd."
Cray.
You absolutely have a shot. I never took a true diagnostic because honestly I did not see a point in discouraging myself and taking a test for which I had no prior knowledge. Understanding the test like I do now, I honestly think that my diagnostic would have probably been in the mid 140s. Games were a complete nightmare, bad timing issues on everything else. RC was also particularly difficult at first, which I somewhat attribute to being a STEM major and not having many classes that involve heavy reading. After studying for 4.5 months I took Sept 2016 and got a 158 (was averaging 163-165 but underperformed). I knew that it wasn't the end and decided to retake next year. So I started studying again this July after finishing my undergrad and hoping to take Sept 2017, but ended up postponing till December to give myself a couple more months. Walked out with a 176; f***ing cried when I saw the score come out. Admittedly, the easy RC on December played to my strengths, but I'm still going to claim it wasn't all luck haha. I guess my total study time between two takes was about 10 months, but it was worth it.
Soak in the fundamentals, fool proof the games, diligently BR your PTs, and don't take the real test until you are ready to take it. Welcome to LSAT study life and good luck!
@LSATSniper posted above that his diagnostic was a 169. I remember reading somewhere about one someone had in the low 170s. It is really hard for me to see many people doing much better than that unless they already have some exposure to games. But the good thing is if you are there and bad at games there is room for growth and a pretty clear route through foolproofing to that 175+ score.
This is absolutely true! The closer you get to 175-180, the tougher it becomes to gain points. To get higher than a 170 you have all the knowledge and skills, it's just a matter of performance on THE day and errors.
When I got a 170 in Sept I would say my chance of making an error or missing a tough question was about 10 percent, which correlated to 11 wrong. Leading up to December, I was more like 7-8 percent, and I had a combination of luck and just a killer performance to get -4 on THE day.
My blind review scores were consistently 178-180 before both tests, it was just the error minimization that made the difference.
There are certain people whose brains are just wired to think in an "LG" way. I know someone who took an LSAT cold and got in the 170s; for him, LG was just a piece of cake. I know someone else who does LG with minimal diagramming; he just sees the inferences, and how everything works together. But all that is useless for the 99.9999999 % of people who are not like that. I would hate if one of my two acquaintances was my LSAT instructor; they'd probably be very lousy. Some of the worst advice for LSAT comes from those who are "naturals"; they can't anticipate the problems that people with less natural skills will encounter, and they can't communicate their skills to others in a meaningful manner.
I'll add that J.Y. once wrote that he'd probably not be able to teach as effectively as he does if he had scored a 180 on his LSAT.
There's a "natural talent" component to the LSAT, but let's not pretend like people don't embellish and fabricate--yes, maybe even your friends and acquaintances. The anecdote of, "I do LG without studying/writing anything down," is hard to believe. The LSAT is a very expensive test designed by psychometricians who do their utmost to make sure things like this don't happen. Short of someone having an eidetic memory, I'd be skeptical of claims like the ones you mention.
At the end of the day, none of us really knows how much work others put into the test, and who really cares? It's pretty neat to be able to tell people you didn't have to work hard for a high LSAT score, but doesn't that sort of miss the point of the LSAT and law school? I'd imagine that a person who scores 170 with zero preparation has a far less valuable insight into the LSAT than someone who goes from 130-170 over the course of a year. Also, I'd bet that the latter person will tend to outwork the former in a major way in law school.
We have to wonder how their minds got like that though. My sister is one of them. She has no interest in law, but took a LSAT logic games section just to see what I was doing all summer and completed it on time missing 1 the first time. I wouldn't totally dismiss them as useless for tutoring, but they probably need more experience studying an actual method before they have much that is very useful to impart to us mere mortals.
I was similarly wired or naturally good at LR and RC, but feel I can explain LR questions fairly adequately since I tried to solidify my already good intuitions through a lot of study, drilling, and blind review. On the other hand,I basically just let RC take its course since I knew it was supposedly hard to improve and I didn't really need the improvement. That leaves me fairly unable to provide anyone else with any sort of systematic way of approaching the section.
It is hard to say whether people are naturally wired for a section or get that way through some related experience, but I bet in most cases it is a combination. Regardless, it would still have to be a very minute number of people who end up higher than the low 170's on a cold diagnostic because the confluence of events required to both be wired for LR and RC and wired for LG is very rare. I also think the wired for LG people might be substantially rarer than the wired for LR and RC people at least among the crowd of people who tend to presently apply to law school since I have read iterations of my story more frequently than the naturally good gamer story.
Thank goodness, 7sage and other LSAT prep optioms allow us to more or less rewire ourselves for success rather than counting only on the tremendous luck we would otherwise need to score highly.
There are a lot of mystical beliefs about the LSAT floating around. I tend to find this is little more than "hype."
Also, you claim a 168 diagnostic so you are no "mere mortal." :]
I missed that! 169 may be the record around here then haha.
I know someone who scored a 181 on their diagnostic (got perfect on the writing section + -0 in all sections)
https://media.giphy.com/media/FGOCyugewQaOs/giphy.gif
That's the spirit! =D
Maybe not on LR or RC, but on games I followed a pretty normal path. I was unable to finish the section pre-foolproofing despite many weeks of study and finished it inconsistently after foolproofing 1-35 and just consistently enough for the real test after foolproofing a bunch more games.
I agree that when people have sets of experiences which happen to coincide with the skills on the LSAT they are more likely to succeed. It's just hard to get those experiences relevant to all three section types before taking a diagnostic.
And if you couldn't already be good at all three sections, logic games is the best one to lag behind in due to the clarity of how to improve. So I was pretty lucky.
I'm not sure what mystical beliefs your referring to, but we humans are superstitious creatures.
You do need these kinds of numbers, though, for if you want to apply to the prestigious Princeton Law
He ended turning down Princeton Law after he wound up getting admitted to MIT Law with a full scholarship.
Did you read a lot as a child?
Yes, my sister and I both were early readers. My teachers realized we could read at the start of kindergarden and by the start of first grade we were walking around following my mom while reading short novels when she took us shopping, reading in the car whenever we were going anywhere, and I often staying up late "sneak reading" with a flashlight under the covers of my bed in the hopes that my mom wouldn't catch me and make me go to sleep.
Nonetheless, there are a fair number of people who match that sort of description and nonetheless struggle on the RC section of the LSAT. And it remains virtually impossible to parse out whether we liked to read and therefore read a lot while young because we were naturally good readers, became good readers because we read a lot starting young, experienced some sort of positive feedback loop between the two, or had a third factor like highly educated parents who read to us from a young age and took us to the library weekly which encouraged both. It is the whole nature vs nurture thing and it is often close to irresolvable in any one case.
Yoooo I got a 162 on my diagnostic in April and scored a 177 in December! You got this! ALSO, I took the LSAT in September and scored worse than I had hoped, but the new 7sage RC material is awesome and helped me go from -6 to -0 on that section which obviously made a big difference!
Same here, I started in the low 140's and got to the mid 150's with self study. My goal is the mid 160's with the help with 7sage. I started just a few days ago, and I just learned of BR.... As a son of a successful lawyer and a grandchild of a judicial judge, I feel embarrassed. I hate that people have a "cold d" of which a aspire to achieve. On a positive note, my father, who graduated from GW in the 70's, have no idea how to help me with the LSAT.
Yes, of course we can't say with certainty to what degree nature or nurture affected you. However, it sounds like you really loved to read (natural interest and ability) on top of what was an early start (opportunity). Combine that with the support of educated, loving parents (intellectual and emotional support), and I would imagine that's a recipe for an LSAT prodigy if anything is. Since the LSAT does not measure a fixed trait, I'm inclined to believe that nurture is far more determinative of LSAT success than nature in the vast majority of cases.
Of course, there's no way anyone could deny that innate ability is real and relative. :]
Well, you came to the right place for the LSAT
You can get to the mid 160s with 7sage and some hard work. No need to be embarrassed!
At least you'll have some great career connections from your family!!
That's amazing! Congrats
Enjoy HYS!
That's awesome. Congratulations.
@"Seeking Perfection" OMG, sneak reading under a blanket until 3am!! So real! My parents had to hide all our flashlights because I never got any sleep! Jokes on them, allowance+bike=dollarstore flashlight->Redwall books all night!
Hope someone can back me up with some Brian Jacques love haha!
See my parents were the opposite. My mom gave me a flashlight after I burnt my hand trying to turn off a lamp before they caught me sneak reading.
For some reason, I hadn't fully figured out that the light travelled under the crack in the door and thought they wouldn't catch me if I turned it off fast enough before they came in.
After that, the sneak reading was either caught or not, but there were no more burns.
I went through a Redwall phase for a while too.
149 diagnostic I believe (probably three years ago). Scored 176 on my last PT and I've got one 180 PT score under my belt. I did the CC when I had time in between semesters at school and once I graduated last year I've just been doing PTs. So, just do about 50 practice tests and you should be good!