June 2011 Study Group Forum

[BlaqBella]

About 6 weeks of hardcore LG studying, went through the bible and all the exercises twice, as well as any games from tests before 30 (hadn't bought the more recent yet). At least two hours a day on games, going slowly and finding all the inferences and diagramming in a way that made sense to my brain.

Thanks for sharing! Any advice on LR ?

[coldshoulder]

LR has been my toughest since the beginning. I was getting -6/-6 consistently for a while. What helped me get down to more like -2/-3 (where I am now) is lots and lots of review. I would write down every question I got wrong or struggled with, and then use the bible to check out some tips for the problem types I was missing the most.

Also, controlling my asthma and anxiety (thank you Advair).

[Strange]

I feel like I should lay off of LG for awhile. Just finished PT52, and got -1 on LG. In the last four PT's I've done, I've missed no less than 3. My LR and RC sections are what's holding me back from the 170. 52's RC seemed relatively difficult, especially the comparative reading one.

I'm hoping that a month and a half is enough to improve in those areas. Lately I've been drilling games to death, than doing 15 LR questions out of the mastery a day, but I may switch it up. Start actually practicing RC (haven't done that at all yet). Any books you guys recommend for LR and RC besides the bible and mastery?

My results, btw:

PT52

LR: -7
RC: -4
LG: -1

Overall: -12, 87, 168 Scaled

[pkpop]

Hey everyone.
In case you haven't noticed, I believe someone mentioned there is about 50 days until test time. For tonight's study group, I would like to go over a few areas where your input would be valuable. We will go over the airlines game really quick (PT 40 #3), and then talk about the Sunday groups direction from there. With the amount of time we have left, it would be good to stop and assess where we are in prep and then, perhaps, to adjust the group's study session activities moving forward.

Thanks!

[Strange]

What time is the chat?

[Yassig]

Going to miss tonight's session - my one year old managed to swallow a screw this morning. So after spending half the day in the ER I'm totally beat and just want to sleep for a week to recover. Thankfully he's going to live but I have to tell you that I just grew about 100 gray hairs. Anyway, I'll be back on Thursday but apparently am out of commission for today.

What time is the chat?

8pm EST

[jim-green]

We will go over the airlines game really quick (PT 40 #3), and then talk about the Sunday groups direction from there. With the amount of time we have left, it would be good to stop and assess where we are in prep and then, perhaps, to adjust the group's study session activities moving forward.

Sounds great! Will we just go over the PT40 game or other stuff as well before the general discussion?

[Eichörnchen]

Going to miss tonight's session - my one year old managed to swallow a screw this morning. So after spending half the day in the ER I'm totally beat and just want to sleep for a week to recover. Thankfully he's going to live but I have to tell you that I just grew about 100 gray hairs. Anyway, I'll be back on Thursday but apparently am out of commission for today.

What time is the chat?

8pm EST

how did you discover this??

On another note, I am home at my apartment which, due to a recent move means I am sans wifi Plus I really need to drill LG. Too bad though cause I'd like to participate in the discussion.

And 50 days??? AhhhHhhhhHHHHH!! I need to make some big fat gains asap.
PT 51 went ok, I'm very happy to have gotten my best LG score to date, but annoyed that I made up for it with an unusually bad RC:
LR1: -0
RC: -5 (!)
LR2: -4. Ew.
LG: -5 (yes -5 is my best ever haha)
raw 86
scaled 168

[jim-green]

What time does the other study grp meet on Wednesdays? I mean the group that meets on Sundays 4:30 PM

[coldshoulder]

And 50 days??? AhhhHhhhhHHHHH!! I need to make some big fat gains asap.
PT 51 went ok, I'm very happy to have gotten my best LG score to date, but annoyed that I made up for it with an unusually bad RC:
LR1: -0
RC: -5 (!)
LR2: -4. Ew.
LG: -5 (yes -5 is my best ever haha)
raw 86
scaled 168

Nice on LR1! I'm jealous, I still haven't ever scored a -0 LR section...
LG -5 really isn't bad. With fifty days left I think you can easily get that down to -1 or -0. Ten days per point? You can do it!
Was it one section that you scored poorly in RC on?

[coldshoulder]

PT 29
29 -- 04/16/11 ----- LR: -3/-3 ; RC: -1 ; LG: -0 --------94/175 -----
Hell yeah! My LR is getting consistently down to around -6 total, obviously my biggest problem. Best RC and LG scores yet! Though I will admit, the games on this test seemed particularly easy. Either way, two tests in a row at 175+ makes me very very happy. On to the 30's!

[soj]

Congrats, coldshoulder! I thought PT29 and 30 were really hard. Even though I didn't take them as full PTs (I used their sections as experimentals in other PTs), I got my two lowest composite raw scores on 29 and 30. PT29 had some really tough LRs!

Eich: thanks for the tip, but I ended up taking SP B anyway. I felt as though if I took today off, I'd go off on a slippery slope of laziness. I find the my lack of faith in myself disturbing, but I'm not taking risks with LSAT prep.

SuperPrep B
LR1: -4
LRe (PT39 S2): -2
LG: 0
RC: -5
LR2: 0
Raw: -9
Scaled: 175

Wow, did not see that -5 in RC coming. I thought the section felt easier than usual. The legal penalties passage (in which I got 4/7) had some tricky questions.

Consecutive LRs is so brutal. Luckily I didn't do too badly on the experimental LR (got all the Qs I felt unsure about right, though I got 2 others wrong), but I know stamina is something I need to work on. I think from now on, every time I use an experimental LR, I'll place it so that it comes immediately before or after a non-exp LR. (EDIT: actually, never mind. I need to train myself to be able to do LR-RC-LR and LR-LG-LR as well.)

Qs I got wrong in LR1: 21, 23, 25, 26. Hmm, not good.

And boy, that LG was tough. It's definitely not for the faint of heart, especially Game 2. However, I knew it was going to be tough so I rushed it a little, choosing answers without being 100% sure of them like I usually do. For example, in LG I usually quickly check over an answer if I can immediately come up with an alternative method of deriving the solution. This time, I skipped that and rushed through the section AQAP. I also did not bother eliminating other ACs if I thought I had found TCR. I actually ended 2 minutes early.

Overall, very happy with LG, not so happy with LR1 and RC. And to think, I got 7 questions wrong within two periods each spanning ~6 minutes. Also, my enthusiasm is tempered by the fact that my raw score is still not where I want it to be, and if it weren't for the very tough LG making the test a difficult one overall (and probably making the curve more lenient), I probably would have gotten a lower scaled score.

[jim-green]

PT 29
29 -- 04/16/11 ----- LR: -3/-3 ; RC: -1 ; LG: -0 --------94/175 -----

Congratulations!

[jim-green]

SuperPrep B
LR1: -4
LRe (PT39 S2): -2
LG: 0
RC: -5
LR2: 0
Raw: -9
Scaled: 175

175 on SPB is probably 180 on final. My SPB was 10 below my latest PT in the mid 40s.

[Eichörnchen]

I felt as though if I took today off, I'd go off on a slippery slope of laziness. I find the my lack of faith in myself disturbing, but I'm not taking risks with LSAT prep.

Haha SOJ I don't think you need to worry. You are a machine. It is ridiculous and I wish I had your skillz. Oh and I have a super sore throat now, so you totally got me sick too haha

And 50 days??? AhhhHhhhhHHHHH!! I need to make some big fat gains asap.
PT 51 went ok, I'm very happy to have gotten my best LG score to date, but annoyed that I made up for it with an unusually bad RC:
LR1: -0
RC: -5 (!)
LR2: -4. Ew.
LG: -5 (yes -5 is my best ever haha)
raw 86
scaled 168

Nice on LR1! I'm jealous, I still haven't ever scored a -0 LR section...
LG -5 really isn't bad. With fifty days left I think you can easily get that down to -1 or -0. Ten days per point? You can do it!
Was it one section that you scored poorly in RC on?

Thanks! It was my second -0 on LR so I was pretty happy. But then I did worse than usual on LR2 haha. And RC was awful! I got three wrong in passage one. Pretty crazy. I hope that was a fluke, and it might have something to do with the fact that I took the PT at my dad's, which I thought would be empty (he's on vacation) but his gf's daughter dropped by to feed the fish while I was on the first passage, so that kind of threw me off. I'm like, "are those footsteps? Robber? Oh, no, Hi yea nice to see you too, yea the weather is crazy today, ok great chat but I'm testing so ignore me, sorry!" haha. Regardless, I should not be getting RC score like that even if it really was a robber or something. My LG is so bad I think I need to have the other sections on lock down. Back when I first started prepping, I really though I could get to a 174ish which is reallllllly really what I wat but now I wonder if that's even possible This LSAT thing is a lot harder than it looks...

[mickeyD]

Back when I first started prepping, I really though I could get to a 174ish which is reallllllly really what I wat but now I wonder if that's even possible This LSAT thing is a lot harder than it looks...

Are you kidding me? You are set up perfectly to get there, and you will. The whole "games are the easiest to master" mantra of TLS is not something that's made up. You've just started your LG drilling and you already threw down your best LG yet. Give it a couple more weeks and you'll be more than capable of that -0, then continued practice and consistency up until the test will give you the confidence to do it on the real thing.

There's a reason we all started studying when we did- because it takes time to get to where we want to be. You have 50 days left, and you're going to use it exactly the way you planned when you started studying months ago- to take that extra step to eliminate your weaknesses, and get a 175 in June.

You can do this!

[Eichörnchen]

thanks that actually made me feel a lot better. I guess I've just gotten a little freaked out because I'm only performing at ~8pts better than my cold diagnostic, but I guess you're right- games have always been my worst section so hopefully once they 'click' things will all fall into place. And thanks for reminding me about my PT today- I was happy about it but then also told myself that it seemed like an usually easy games section etc etc but I guess I should quit being such a downer about myself - I went from -12 to -5 in the span of two PTs. That's pretty good, so hopefully I can keep it up. All too often I'm my worst critic, but I guess that not uncommon in our little tls overachiever club

You have inspired me to go drill games until bedtime, and I thank you for that good sir.

[dr123]

Fucking grouping games with only a couple rules are killing me

[Strange]

It kills me to see some of you keep beating yourselves up over 175's. I'd do anything for that kind of a score. I'm stuck in the 168 range after a month and some change of studying and my diagnostic was 159. I'm hoping I can make it into the 170's before June

[tmon]

Hi there!

I've been lurking around this forum for quite a while, and this thread in particular for a month or two now, so I'm pretty familiar with where everyone's at in the process. Reading of all of your successes and difficulties has definitely helped my motivation, so thanks for that!

I finally decided to join in because I've had a particularly rough week, and am kind of questioning my methods after analyzing my results. I've been studying since February, and got a 157 when I took the test officially in June of '09. From that standpoint, my improvement has been somewhat significant--my first PT this time around was a 161, and my best so far is 167. I've gotten really good at LG in the last few weeks, finally -1/-0ing consistently, so that's great. But, despite feeling more confidence in LR overall, my average per test is not changing much. With the first few PTs I was averaging -5/section, and am still more or less there, with some fluctuation. LR on the whole feels so much better than it used to, but it's just not translating in the scores and I'm just not sure what to do. I started by going through the LR Bible and drilling with Kaplan Mastery. I finished that a few weeks ago, and just bought the MLSAT LRII (thanks for the in-depth review, Soj). And again, I'm feeling like it's helping, but I'm not seeing any gains on the paper, despite feeling more confidence as I take the test. I've heard that since the test changes as you get closer to the present, you can see a score drop, so maybe I'm improving, but the changes are dampening the results and it'll even out if I can get used to the new stuff. But I'm not seeing enough difference to justify that opinion.

If anyone has any thoughts, critiques, or questions that might lead me in the right direction, I'd greatly appreciate it. I've been tracking my progress/study plan with the older version of the excel sheet, so here's those if that helps:
--LinkRemoved--
--LinkRemoved--

Apologies if parts don''t make sense, as I've altered the sheet a bit to satisfy my unnecessary hunger for numbers

I've made a lot of gains, but I really need to be consistently around 168 at least, and want 170+ so much. Still a month and a half left...but man does the time fly by when you're working a full time job too. Any thoughts would be helpful!

[Eichörnchen]

It kills me to see some of you keep beating yourselves up over 175's. I'd do anything for that kind of a score. I'm stuck in the 168 range after a month and some change of studying and my diagnostic was 159. I'm hoping I can make it into the 170's before June

Who's beating themselves up over 175s? I thought there were two 175s on this page and they both seemed pretty happy about it (as they should be!) and our stats are almost exactly the same (160 diag, high 160s now). I really hope to break 170. fingers crossed.

[mickeyD]

Drilled a bunch of LR today but our conversation about games got me itching to do a timed section. I picked PT 40, which contains the infamous Zephyr Airlines game, and it lived up to all the hype.

I finished the first two games without much trouble. When I got to the Zephyr game, I didn't expect a mapping game, and was completely thrown off, it was so confusing. But I forced myself not to panic, take my time understanding the rules and figuring out the ideal diagram, and painstakingly made it through the game. I finished with a 23/23 on the section, my first -0 LG ever!

Granted I had seen 2 of the 4 games already, and it wasn't on a real PT, but it's a big confidence boost that I got 7/7 on one of the "10 Hardest Logic Games" in a timed section. I can't imagine being one of the poor test takers that had to encounter that beast on the real thing though.

[geverett]

Man I feel like I've experienced atrophy in my LR score.

Just did PT 35 Timed LR 2 -5 (21/26) I am super bummed about this.

[jim-green]

I'm only performing at ~8pts better than my cold diagnostic, but I guess you're right- games have always been my worst section so hopefully once they 'click' things will all fall into place.

You had a 160 diag? Mine was 155.

[jim-green]

Man I feel like I've experienced atrophy in my LR score. Just did PT 35 Timed LR 2 -5 (21/26) I am super bummed about this.

Took PT46 yesterday. On S2, I bubbled in only 20 answers. There were 25-26 on the section. I just forgot to bubble in the last 5-6 and moved on S3. I did not give myself those 5 points when I totaled it becuase that is how LSAC would do it for real. Need to be real careful of this on the real LSAT.