The Official December 2015 Study Group Forum

tvu · Post by **tvu** » Fri Nov 13, 2015 6:33 pm

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somethingElse · Post by **somethingElse** » Fri Nov 13, 2015 6:42 pm

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kylemolodets · Post by **kylemolodets** » Fri Nov 13, 2015 6:42 pm

monkey_chi wrote:Pt'ing low 160's and looking to push up to 170+ by test time. Still room for improvement in LG and RC with timing. Always blind review -0 games and -3/4 RC.

About to throw a hail mary and enter 22(?) days of hell with 22 PT's.

M-F: Wake up 5:30 am > Take a 5 section PT > Start work (middle-office finance) at 11:00 am > During down time at desk, drill games (about halfway through doing 5 copies of every game 1-38) and LR bundles at my desk by type > Start blind review after lunch > Go home > finish blind review > grubhub different ethnic food every night > review PT > sleep. Repeat.

S/S: PT > The above but without work. Maybe throw in some nice morning city runs.

Going to get a 180. Godspeed my fellow TLS'ers. Burn-out is for babies.

P.S. I found some nice motivational words I saw on a thread here. I typed them up and taped them to the backside of a UMich playing card that I use to cover answer choices and prephase during BR/final review. *Cut down a bit and credit to LjakW. I also ended up reading the book he mentioned this morning for motivation.

It is a rare time in your life that you have the capacity to control how the rest of it will turn out. To chart your own course. To make up for past mistakes. To overhaul everyone else’s perception of you.

When I first took a proctored diagnostic, I got a 152. Some months later, I took the LSAT and got a 172, going from the 52nd percentile to the 99th.

Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book entitled Outliers: The Story of Success. Without giving away too much, the ‘story of success’ is that hard work leads to success. Throughout the book, he argues that by spending 10,000 hours doing something, one can become truly great at it. I certainly think that 10,000 hours of LSAT studying is a tad too much, but if you are not getting the LSAT score that you want in diagnostics, chances are that you have been studying too little.

Study as if your life depended on it; I guarantee you now that significant parts of your life will be affected by your score.

"

Thanks, that's what I needed to hear to get myself to do a test tomorrow morning

gamerish · Post by **gamerish** » Fri Nov 13, 2015 6:51 pm

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tuna_wasabi · Post by **tuna_wasabi** » Fri Nov 13, 2015 6:53 pm

Petrichor wrote:
tvu wrote:Same here!

My scores started falling again, as I'm moving through PT 60s, my LR is killing me. Anybody have a way to track the question types you get wrong? And if I can do that, should I just start drilling those types?
7sage analytics tracks your answers and gives you a nice graph + stats on what kind of questions you get the wrong the most, question difficulty ,etc. I think that option is available even if you don't pay for anything.

also i am not sure how many PTs you have left but i'd suggest hitting the 70s already, i felt the questions were a bit different so its best to get acclimated earlier rather than later.

How different are they? I notice that from PT.57 onwards the difficulty in LR and RC fluctuates wildly. Anyone else experienced this?

tvu · Post by **tvu** » Fri Nov 13, 2015 7:34 pm

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slizerd · Post by **slizerd** » Fri Nov 13, 2015 8:35 pm

tvu wrote:
gamerish wrote:
monkey_chi wrote:Pt'ing low 160's and looking to push up to 170+ by test time. Still room for improvement in LG and RC with timing. Always blind review -0 games and -3/4 RC.

About to throw a hail mary and enter 22(?) days of hell with 22 PT's.

M-F: Wake up 5:30 am > Take a 5 section PT > Start work (middle-office finance) at 11:00 am > During down time at desk, drill games (about halfway through doing 5 copies of every game 1-38) and LR bundles at my desk by type > Start blind review after lunch > Go home > finish blind review > grubhub different ethnic food every night > review PT > sleep. Repeat.

S/S: PT > The above but without work. Maybe throw in some nice morning city runs.

Going to get a 180. Godspeed my fellow TLS'ers. Burn-out is for babies.

P.S. I found some nice motivational words I saw on a thread here. I typed them up and taped them to the backside of a UMich playing card that I use to cover answer choices and prephase during BR/final review. *Cut down a bit and credit to LjakW. I also ended up reading the book he mentioned this morning for motivation.
This is a very bad idea. But if you wanna write off burn out as being for babies and most likely annihilate your scores as a result, go for it.
I agree with Gamerish, just look at his scores.

Also as an anecdote I did that during the last two weeks I went through 18 Exams, in the week before the exam I went through 10, because I did not feel ready/prepared enough. Completely screwed my real Oct LSAT, I got 10 points less than in my practice PTS, burnout is real.

+1

personal anecdote: a few weeks before the Oct LSAT I was scoring 175 consistently, then thought I needed to take a TON of PT's to keep that up. In the week before the LSAT I was scoring in the high 160s, and got a 170 on the actual test.

Didn't do ANYTHING LSAT related for a month, then took a PT and got a 178.

BREAKS ARE GOOD.

flash21 · Post by **flash21** » Fri Nov 13, 2015 10:12 pm

I am so sceptical hippo about my pt scores since they are retakes. How legit of a score do you guys think my pt 76 will be? I haven't looked at it since I took it in October, never reviewed it either. Thoughts please????

heyoshawn · Post by **heyoshawn** » Fri Nov 13, 2015 10:54 pm

Phoenix97 · Post by **Phoenix97** » Fri Nov 13, 2015 11:14 pm

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Phoenix97 · Post by **Phoenix97** » Fri Nov 13, 2015 11:17 pm

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pterodactyls · Post by **pterodactyls** » Fri Nov 13, 2015 11:21 pm

Trying to develop a strategy for the next few weeks.

Scoring anywhere from -1 to -8 on LR.
Scoring anywhere from -11 to -5 on RC.
Games are usually good, except for a few occasional trip ups.

Scoring anywhere from 160 to 170, but averaging around 167 (the recent 160 was when I did two back to back, I think endurance had something to do with it). Scored 164 on October test, trying to do better.

Read Powerscore LR Bible a while ago. Went through the first half of the Manhattan LR book last week. It seems to click and make sense, I like the way the book lays everything out. I think most of the time I get tripped up is because of the language in the actual questions - if there's complicated terminology or if it's a long question that's difficult for me to understand. Going to try drilling? I bought a Cambridge packet that breaks out by question type - was going to go through Assumption family (assumptions, flaws, strengthen/weaken).

RC is killing me. I've been studying since June and can't seem to improve much at all here. I've read the Manhattan RC guide, went through the Voyager guide a few times, and have drilled a decent amount. I have the LSAT trainer and just read the introduction tonight. Might read the RC sections out of the Trainer and see if that helps? I can usually answer most questions correctly when blind reviewing, but it's the timing that kills me.

Any suggestions on polishing LR - drilling vs. reading more strategies from Manhattan and Trainer?
Any suggestions on getting a solid RC strategy down? Thoughts on the Trainer's RC approach?

Thanks in advance!

dellara · Post by **dellara** » Sat Nov 14, 2015 12:15 am

171 on PT57!

LG: -0! But I have done the mauve dinosaurs game before.
LR: -2
LR: -3
RC: -5

Getting there! My trend so far has been 166, 168, 171. Officially 10 more PTs to go.

appind · Post by **appind** » Sat Nov 14, 2015 12:26 am

feeling guilty that i got terribly distracted during the last 10 days at work and stuff and couldn't do any lsat study

tvu · Post by **tvu** » Sat Nov 14, 2015 12:45 am

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tvu · Post by **tvu** » Sat Nov 14, 2015 1:02 am

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hunt godlink · Post by **hunt godlink** » Sat Nov 14, 2015 1:57 am

Should I always blind review my PTs? I usually take the test, score it, and only review the items/passages/games that I had trouble with and the stuff that I missed. Help would be appreciated!

dellara · Post by **dellara** » Sat Nov 14, 2015 3:32 am

hunt godlink wrote:Should I always blind review my PTs? I usually take the test, score it, and only review the items/passages/games that I had trouble with and the stuff that I missed. Help would be appreciated!

Always.

And if you don't understand why, read the original Blind Review article on 7sage. It is always going to help you to reinforce good behavior (I was unsure about this, and I got it right. Okay, so my strategy was good here. Got to reinforce and internalize that) << that thought process can't happen if you're only checking your wrong answers.

STL2014 · Post by **STL2014** » Sat Nov 14, 2015 3:59 am

Hi everyone. I am very concerned with my time management strategy and my mental strength to pull through the last 15+ days.
I am studying LSAT for two hours everyday before/after a full time job. I see some of you are also working full time. How do you guys manage to study every day? I got very tired after work or for get up too early (around 5 a.m.)... I could do much better when I am refreshed and fully rested on weekends.
I could not take time off before the test day and this will be my only chance to take the test.
Do you guys have advice on keeping good time manage, overcome fatigue, stay energetic, etc?
Thanks!!

flash21 · Post by **flash21** » Sat Nov 14, 2015 8:51 am

hunt godlink wrote:Should I always blind review my PTs? I usually take the test, score it, and only review the items/passages/games that I had trouble with and the stuff that I missed. Help would be appreciated!

when you\re taking your pt circie any question you arent 100% sure on for all sections while doing it, then blind review those. you don''t need to blind review every single question from a PT if you think you got them right while doing it. but if you got some of those wrong after scoring you need to review them, too.

pterodactyls · Post by **pterodactyls** » Sat Nov 14, 2015 10:23 am

tvu wrote:
pterodactyls wrote:Trying to develop a strategy for the next few weeks.

Scoring anywhere from -1 to -8 on LR.
Scoring anywhere from -11 to -5 on RC.
Games are usually good, except for a few occasional trip ups.

Scoring anywhere from 160 to 170, but averaging around 167 (the recent 160 was when I did two back to back, I think endurance had something to do with it). Scored 164 on October test, trying to do better.

Read Powerscore LR Bible a while ago. Went through the first half of the Manhattan LR book last week. It seems to click and make sense, I like the way the book lays everything out. I think most of the time I get tripped up is because of the language in the actual questions - if there's complicated terminology or if it's a long question that's difficult for me to understand. Going to try drilling? I bought a Cambridge packet that breaks out by question type - was going to go through Assumption family (assumptions, flaws, strengthen/weaken).

RC is killing me. I've been studying since June and can't seem to improve much at all here. I've read the Manhattan RC guide, went through the Voyager guide a few times, and have drilled a decent amount. I have the LSAT trainer and just read the introduction tonight. Might read the RC sections out of the Trainer and see if that helps? I can usually answer most questions correctly when blind reviewing, but it's the timing that kills me.

Any suggestions on polishing LR - drilling vs. reading more strategies from Manhattan and Trainer?
Any suggestions on getting a solid RC strategy down? Thoughts on the Trainer's RC approach?

Thanks in advance!
LR is killing me, so I can't help you too much there. Except what you're doing is a really good strategy, just keep drilling your weak questions types.

For RC I usually get 0-3 wrong, so maybe I can offer a few tips. RC Manhattan is excellent.
First, make sure you've got the main idea of the passages, the main position of the author and anybody who has the counter-position.
Then when you get to the questions, pre-phrase the best you can...then eliminate each answer looking very carefully at each word in the sentence (usually there is a part that makes it wrong, i.e an exaggerated word, out of scope or unsupported).
It will take time but eventually you will get the hang of it. (start drilling without timing until you get the progress and then go faster.)
Also for timing, it's best if you start with the passage with the most questions, to get the most points. For the comparative passages, read the first passage first and eliminate answers that refer to both passages, when it does not match the information to the first passage.

I don't know if you are already doing all of this, but maybe something here is new and helps?

That's good advice, thank you!

Yeah I've been thinking more about ordering based on number of questions. The other day I missed -11 on an RC passage and thought to myself, if I just took my time to read the 3 passages with the most questions and rushed or guessed on the last passage, I would have scored higher.

That's interesting advice about the comparative. Makes sense I'm going to try it!

Even if I could just get down to scoring -4 consistently on RC I'd be in heaven.

appind · Post by **appind** » Sat Nov 14, 2015 12:17 pm

tvu wrote:
pterodactyls wrote:Trying to develop a strategy for the next few weeks.

Scoring anywhere from -11 to -5 on RC.

RC is killing me. I've been studying since June and can't seem to improve much at all here. I've read the Manhattan RC guide, went through the Voyager guide a few times, and have drilled a decent amount. I have the LSAT trainer and just read the introduction tonight. Might read the RC sections out of the Trainer and see if that helps? I can usually answer most questions correctly when blind reviewing, but it's the timing that kills me.
For RC I usually get 0-3 wrong, so maybe I can offer a few tips. RC Manhattan is excellent.
First, make sure you've got the main idea of the passages, the main position of the author and anybody who has the counter-position.
Then when you get to the questions, pre-phrase the best you can...then eliminate each answer looking very carefully at each word in the sentence (usually there is a part that makes it wrong, i.e an exaggerated word, out of scope or unsupported).
It will take time but eventually you will get the hang of it. (start drilling without timing until you get the progress and then go faster.)
Also for timing, it's best if you start with the passage with the most questions, to get the most points. For the comparative passages, read the first passage first and eliminate answers that refer to both passages, when it does not match the information to the first passage.

i once tried the approach of answering questions related questions and eliminating choices based on reading first passage alone for comparatives, but i remember it took more time as one would have to read many questions twice. it may help accuracy but wonder if one can go faster doing this if timing is an issue.

newcareernewtown · Post by **newcareernewtown** » Sat Nov 14, 2015 12:49 pm

jmark1 · Post by **jmark1** » Sat Nov 14, 2015 1:06 pm

Just managed a 165 on PT 67, going -2 on both LR sections (HUGE), -6 on RC (boooo!) and -7 on LG thanks to some stupid mistakes and that horror of a last game. After a bad couple of weeks, this was a huge boost