Less than a month to study and still in school, advice? Forum

[notaznguy]

Okay, my school is on the quarter system and I'm planning on taking the Feb LSAT. My general plan is basically to take a prep test every Saturday morning. I will spend 2 days reviewing the test and to see what I did wrong. The rest of the days I will drill whatever I want, though it will mainly be LR and LG.

How many hours a day do you recommend I spend drilling? So far, I'm only spending 1 to 1.5 hours a day so far. Not sure how much time I can realistically give up without taking time off from doing homework/studying for undergrad stuff.

Do you think 1-1.5 hours a day is good enough?

I'm PTing 161-164 in my last 3 PTs and I'm hoping to get at least a 163 on game day.

[breadbucket]

6-8 hours a day, stop watching tv

[notaznguy]

6-8 hours a day, stop watching tv

Okay sure. Anyone else?

[American_in_China]

Don't, Take in June, apply next cycle. Applying this late is just bad- your chances are heavily reduced by this point. Seriously, take a year off. June is much better, better.

[indo]

Take June Exams.

[indo]

Take June Exam.

[notaznguy]

First off, I "am" taking a year off. I'm taking it in February because June is too hectic for me. There's final exams graduation and all that non sense. If I don't do well in February, I'm going to retake it in October. Either way, I'll still be applying for Fall 2013 and and will be taking a year off and applying relatively early.

Why does everyone assume I'm trying to get into this cycle?

[gaud]

6-8 hours a day, stop watching tv

Okay sure. Anyone else?

That seems like too much (IMHO). For me the ideal prep time was about 2.5 - 4.5 hours , depending on whether it was prep test or just drilling or whatever

[Mr.Binks]

First off, I "am" taking a year off. I'm taking it in February because June is too hectic for me. There's final exams graduation and all that non sense. If I don't do well in February, I'm going to retake it in October. Either way, I'll still be applying for Fall 2013 and and will be taking a year off and applying relatively early.

Why does everyone assume I'm trying to get into this cycle?

The February test just seems like one that people generally take to try to squeeze in some applications last minute. However, if you are applying next cycle, the October test will allow you plenty of time to apply ED--assuming you have all of your PS, Resume, etc. complete. I think it'd be best if you just study like hell for the October test and do well the first time.

The February test is coming up pretty quickly, and one good score is always better than two scores.

[kwais]

First off, I "am" taking a year off. I'm taking it in February because June is too hectic for me. There's final exams graduation and all that non sense. If I don't do well in February, I'm going to retake it in October. Either way, I'll still be applying for Fall 2013 and and will be taking a year off and applying relatively early.

Why does everyone assume I'm trying to get into this cycle?

in fact most people seem to know that you are not. They are saying simply that a few weeks is insufficient. they are right. take this seriously. just take October and have one good score instead of one good and one mediocre.

[notaznguy]

First off, I "am" taking a year off. I'm taking it in February because June is too hectic for me. There's final exams graduation and all that non sense. If I don't do well in February, I'm going to retake it in October. Either way, I'll still be applying for Fall 2013 and and will be taking a year off and applying relatively early.

Why does everyone assume I'm trying to get into this cycle?

in fact most people seem to know that you are not. They are saying simply that a few weeks is insufficient. they are right. take this seriously. just take October and have one good score instead of one good and one mediocre.

I thought most schools took your highest score anyways though.

[Mr.Binks]

First off, I "am" taking a year off. I'm taking it in February because June is too hectic for me. There's final exams graduation and all that non sense. If I don't do well in February, I'm going to retake it in October. Either way, I'll still be applying for Fall 2013 and and will be taking a year off and applying relatively early.

Why does everyone assume I'm trying to get into this cycle?

in fact most people seem to know that you are not. They are saying simply that a few weeks is insufficient. they are right. take this seriously. just take October and have one good score instead of one good and one mediocre.

I thought most schools took your highest score anyways though.

Even though certain schools will take the highest score, they're still able to see all of your scores. So intuitively, a 180 first-time taker will look much better than another with a 180 and a 150.

[EMZE]

Okay, my school is on the quarter system and I'm planning on taking the Feb LSAT. My general plan is basically to take a prep test every Saturday morning. I will spend 2 days reviewing the test and to see what I did wrong. The rest of the days I will drill whatever I want, though it will mainly be LR and LG.

How many hours a day do you recommend I spend drilling? So far, I'm only spending 1 to 1.5 hours a day so far. Not sure how much time I can realistically give up without taking time off from doing homework/studying for undergrad stuff.

Do you think 1-1.5 hours a day is good enough?

I'm PTing 161-164 in my last 3 PTs and I'm hoping to get at least a 163 on game day.

I spent 8 hours a day, 5x days a week, studying for 1 month for the Oct LSAT. I spent more time than anything drilling individual sections, and would do the equivalent of 2 full tests in a day worth of actual problems. That made the whole endurance aspect moot, since I was spending so much time consistently working problems. I was fortunate in that, after spending so much time studying, a lot of things really began to click and I found myself maxing games and down to -2 - -3 on LR, an -4 on RC. Review is obviously always important, and I absolutely spent my time doing that, but it also helped me realize how much better I would do after an extensive warm-up. Game day, I spent almost an hour working on questions and getting into the right mind set. I found myself usually about 25% more accurate after a good warmup instead of just going in cold. I also really tapered off in the last week.

Something you mentioned that is a glaring and common mistake is reviewing only what you got wrong. I know full well that there were always questions that I answered with less than 100% confidence in my answer. If there are questions that you feel like you can really easily answer and easily ID what it is that is wrong about the wrong answer choices, reviewing those may not be beneficial. But on the questions that cause you pause but you still get right, mark them in the margin and make sure you really figure out why you chose the right answer and what is wrong about each of the wrong ones. For LR, that is usually was enough to discern when you give yourself enough time to really consider each answer choice. On the games, timing can alwas become an issue, so make are to practice scenarios where you get to a game, often the third, that is taking way to long and get comfortable quickly identifying and moving on to the next game to maximize correct answers. Keep a log of your mistakes so you can at least be aware of patters for why you choose those wrong answers. That should really help you. And again, thats just what worked decently well for me. Others will vary individually, but I would definitely recommend more than 90 minutes a day. On your pretest days I would also start practicing taking the test in the strictest of administration scenarios and I personally would start to work in your warmup period.

I hope this works for you. I felt real progress doing this. I realize that 8 hours a day may sound nuts, but it was not unmanageable. I sometime broke it up into 2 4 hour blocks, but I always made sure to incorporate a review of my running list of past mistake, since correcting those was huge for improving my score.