The Official September 2014 Study Group Forum

[Valamar]

alright, misplacing variables in two LG probs, which, as we all know, lays the groundwork for disaster. In other words,I am up too late studying lurking TLS trying to get my comment count up so I can start posting images

We're on the same page =)

[el madrileno]

168, 174, 171, 174, 168, 173, 171, 169 over the past ten days. This is a retake so I am mostly working on timing issues and working on RC so my approach has been to take PT after PT.

Should I be concerned about these fluctuations? On my lowest PTs I have felt lethargic and timing/anxiety was an issue. How do you guys cope with getting up for a PT after scoring well. I can feel myself become complacent after scoring high, as seen with the scores following the 174s and 173.

Does anyone have a routine (diet, coffee, water, sugar intake) that they follow during long drilling sessions and PTs?

Any help would be much appreciated.

What fluctuations? You've been 171 +- 3 every time.

I have been under the presumption that a lot of the 170+ testers were scoring the same two or three scores every test. Obviously I'm trying to make the 171+ more of a habit than the 171-.

Test day jitters are definitely real but I was fortunate enough to score my PT average from the last five I had taken. I think most people tend to score their average or slightly below their average and very few overachieve on test day- not that I have any evidence to support that claim. Just a hunch based on TLS wisdom and scores from friends.

[el madrileno]

168, 174, 171, 174, 168, 173, 171, 169 over the past ten days. This is a retake so I am mostly working on timing issues and working on RC so my approach has been to take PT after PT.

Should I be concerned about these fluctuations? On my lowest PTs I have felt lethargic and timing/anxiety was an issue. How do you guys cope with getting up for a PT after scoring well. I can feel myself become complacent after scoring high, as seen with the scores following the 174s and 173.

Does anyone have a routine (diet, coffee, water, sugar intake) that they follow during long drilling sessions and PTs?

Any help would be much appreciated.

What fluctuations? You've been 171 +- 3 every time.

that's a good point. The outlier is probably the 174. 171 is a good score. I heard that on test day, though, some people shouldn't be surprised getting a few points below their PT average because of various reasons--jitters, proctor, unfamiliar lsat probs, etc,etc

Just for fun and because it's late and I'm bored

Sample = 168, 174, 171, 174, 168, 173, 171, 169

Mean = 171.00
Standard Deviation = 2.51
Median = 171
Mode (Tri-Modal) = 168, 171, 174

For comparative measure, my own previous 8 tests

Sample = 171, 174, 171, 169, 170, 173, 167, 166

Mean = 170.13
Standard Deviation = 2.75
Median = 170.5
Mode = 171

What is your reaction to the 8 point range? Do you think the 174 and 166 are unrepresentative of your abilities?

[ErgoSum]

About to destroy PT 61. Brought my light saber.

[Tyr]

What kind of time is everyone putting in on a daily basis? I'm just curious to know if I'm putting in enough. I'm currently doing about 5-8 hours a day, 6 to 7 days a week. My social life is my kitten, and she has feline leukemia. So my life is exciting right now.

[BillPackets]

What kind of time is everyone putting in on a daily basis? I'm just curious to know if I'm putting in enough. I'm currently doing about 5-8 hours a day, 6 to 7 days a week. My social life is my kitten, and she has feline leukemia. So my life is exciting right now.

That's a fuck ton of studying and I'm sorry about your cat that's really too bad

[BJS]

What kind of time is everyone putting in on a daily basis? I'm just curious to know if I'm putting in enough. I'm currently doing about 5-8 hours a day, 6 to 7 days a week. My social life is my kitten, and she has feline leukemia. So my life is exciting right now.

So jealous. We are doing 10-12 hours at work during the weeks, so I only have time for 1-2 hours of prep during the day (typically before work or on my lunch break). During the weekends I do around 8-10 hours, spread between two practice tests.

[AOT]

What kind of time is everyone putting in on a daily basis? I'm just curious to know if I'm putting in enough. I'm currently doing about 5-8 hours a day, 6 to 7 days a week. My social life is my kitten, and she has feline leukemia. So my life is exciting right now.

Woweee!

About 2 hours a day, 3 days a week and then about 5 hours I'd say on weekends. About to take a full week off to really get down, and then relax a bit the week before the LSAT to give my brain a rest.

Making a fuckton of stupid mistakes on the logic games atm and am wondering if it's because I'm saturated? E.g. writing a T instead of an L, on a game with no T involved and then panicking and totally screwing a section because the questions dont seem to match what I've got. Make these kinds of mistakes a lot, which means I dont trust my setups, which is a disaster. Really hope I can smooth this issue out over the next weeks. It could totally break me

[chimera]

Probably around 4 hours 6 or 7 days a week. Sorry about your cat, I adopted my tar back in May and would be devastated if she were sick like that.

[Colonel_funkadunk]

alright, misplacing variables in two LG probs, which, as we all know, lays the groundwork for disaster. In other words,I am up too late studying lurking TLS trying to get my comment count up so I can start posting images

We're on the same page =)

PW anytime, there's no barriers to entry

[BillPackets]

Probably around 4 hours 6 or 7 days a week. Sorry about your cat, I adopted my tar back in May and would be devastated if she were sick like that.

You have a really pretty cat I was a dog person my fiancé's cat is so fucking cool he's flame point/rag doll/Siamese just this big white furry cat with orange tips looks like a freaking show cat

[AOT]

I'm going to post this again as I think it was overlooked the first time and I would really appreciate a few suggestions.
Pls respond to this (credit to flash for this one)

My biggest weakness seems to be timing in the RC section, as I usually go -8/-10, and NEVER get to the questions for the last passage. I spend an average of 4 minutes reading a passage (too long) and roughly twice as long answering the questions for each passage (waaaay too long). Of the questions I do have adequate time to answer, I miss 1 for the section on average. I think I just need to speed the hell up.

What are some specific tactics that y'all use to keep things moving during RC?

edit: 5000th post!

Hmm so I actually also spend on average 4 minutes on the passages, and tend to go between -0 and -3 on passages so it's not necessarily a bad move. I think you need to make sure that if you're spending that long, you're really taking it all in (almost memorizing the passage), so that when it comes to questions you can be super quick.

If you're spending 4 minutes and still slow on questions then I think you should try and diagnose exactly what you're getting out of the passage when you read. I possibly read this somewhere else - but try and do some RC sections "blind" i.e. not looking back at the passage at all. That will give you a good indication of what you're taking in.

Once you know what your strengths are e.g., taking in details but not the argument, or vice versa, you can focus on that. Underlining shiz helps me a LOT, because I tend to remember the argument, and the underlining somehow makes the details stick better. If you're the other way round, maybe try making short notations like "death penalty pro", "death penalty no", "only if guilt proven conc." or something, which will both make it stick in your brain, and give you a prompt if you need it.

Also use signs! I tend to make up notation as I go, but things like a + and - to show for and against. Or an = to say same argument. Or a little clock to show that the time period is important to the argument. Stuff like that. Again, it's mainly to make it stick, so that I only have to go to the text for confirmation when answering questions, but also helps if you panic or forget.

With RC, you should kind of know the answer in most cases before looking at the options

Hope some of that was useful!

[BillPackets]

PW anytime, there's no barriers to entry

[Colonel_funkadunk]

I'm going to post this again as I think it was overlooked the first time and I would really appreciate a few suggestions.
Pls respond to this (credit to flash for this one)

My biggest weakness seems to be timing in the RC section, as I usually go -8/-10, and NEVER get to the questions for the last passage. I spend an average of 4 minutes reading a passage (too long) and roughly twice as long answering the questions for each passage (waaaay too long). Of the questions I do have adequate time to answer, I miss 1 for the section on average. I think I just need to speed the hell up.

What are some specific tactics that y'all use to keep things moving during RC?

edit: 5000th post!

Or a little clock to show that the time period is important to the argument.

I feel like it would take me forever to draw a clock

[AOT]

honestly thought bill was going to be a big black dude for some reason

glad to see i'm not the only one who has troube looking past the tar... you'll always be a massive black dude in my eyes bill

OMG effing lost it

Reminds that today I asked a big black guy to move his car bc he had me blocked in at a gas pump. He cussed at me then moved it

offs...

is this expected on any threads that aren't explicitly URM?

What's with all this "big black dude" crap?

[AOT]

I'm going to post this again as I think it was overlooked the first time and I would really appreciate a few suggestions.
Pls respond to this (credit to flash for this one)

My biggest weakness seems to be timing in the RC section, as I usually go -8/-10, and NEVER get to the questions for the last passage. I spend an average of 4 minutes reading a passage (too long) and roughly twice as long answering the questions for each passage (waaaay too long). Of the questions I do have adequate time to answer, I miss 1 for the section on average. I think I just need to speed the hell up.

What are some specific tactics that y'all use to keep things moving during RC?

edit: 5000th post!

Or a little clock to show that the time period is important to the argument.

I feel like it would take me forever to draw a clock

It's literally a circle with a wonky V in it

[P.J.Fry]

What is your reaction to the 8 point range? Do you think the 174 and 166 are unrepresentative of your abilities?

Well I'd love to think that 174 is what I should be scoring, and 166 was just a terrible day. Realistically though, the stats probably aren't that far off despite the small sample size. I would expect my "abilities" would have me scoring around a 170-171 right now on average.

A four point swing downwards could easily occur from a particularly hard section - games are often the culprit for me as it's not uncommon for me to take too long and have to guess on 3-4 questions (as well as getting 1-2 wrong already). A four point swing in the other direction could come from nailing all my 50/50 guesses in LR, or having RC passages where I'm very familiar with the topic and able to go through much quicker than normal with perfect accuracy.

For a 170 scorer, naturally there should be some variance in scores due to difficulty, timing, familiarity, guesses etc.. As one gets closer to becoming a 180 scorer, the variance in those scores becomes less as those factors play less of a role in their ability to get the correct answer. Likewise, if you looked at 160 and then 150 scorers, I would expect their variance from test to test to be dramatically higher.

My theory anyhow...

[BillPackets]

offs...

is this expected on any threads that aren't explicitly URM?

What's with all this "big black dude" crap?

Do u see that phrase a lot on or r u making a huge generalization regarding expectations within any given thread on this website

[bound]

I don't know why but I woke up pretty stoked to fucking crush my PT.


too. much. coffee!

[Colonel_funkadunk]

honestly thought bill was going to be a big black dude for some reason

glad to see i'm not the only one who has troube looking past the tar... you'll always be a massive black dude in my eyes bill

Reminds that today I asked a big black guy to move his car bc he had me blocked in at a gas pump. He cussed at me then moved it

offs...

is this expected on any threads that aren't explicitly URM?

What's with all this "big black dude" crap?

Just lol

[Colonel_funkadunk]

I don't know why but I woke up pretty stoked to fucking crush my PT.


too. much. coffee!

KILL IT

[BillPackets]

I don't know why but I woke up pretty stoked to fucking crush my PT.


too. much. coffee!

Get it bound

[Gray]

.

[Colonel_funkadunk]

PW anytime, there's no barriers to entry

except for the "you need to have 100 posts to add pictures" barrier.

I don't know why but I woke up pretty stoked to fucking crush my PT.


too. much. coffee!

GO MAXIMUM BEYONCE ON THAT PT.

Ok ok ok always got to one up grey, in ref to pwing

And it's her birthday so good beyonce vibes r everywhere

[AOT]

Just lol

Do u see that phrase a lot on or r u making a huge generalization regarding expectations within any given thread on this website

Pretty big generalization. Not that lol though, unless you guys are actually larger than average, black men - in which case my B