where to start? 150 first diagnostic, 8 months to study Forum

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epncntk1998

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where to start? 150 first diagnostic, 8 months to study

Post by epncntk1998 » Tue Apr 10, 2018 6:27 pm

I'm a sophomore in college planning on taking the June 2019 LSAT. I just took my first diagnostic and scored a 150. This was timed and my first time ever looking at the test. Here is my breakdown:

Sec 1: -12
Sec 2: -7
Sec 3: -12
Sec 4: -10

Where should I start? I have a little over a year to prepare, but will be studying abroad from August - December, so lets say 8 months of actual time to prepare. When I'm back at school next spring, I'm planning on lightloading (only 12 credit hours) so I will have some extra time to dedicate to studying.

Any tips and advice is appreciated! Obviously my ideal score is a 180, but more realistically I would like to improve to the upper 160s.

Thanks!

albanach

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Re: where to start? 150 first diagnostic, 8 months to study

Post by albanach » Tue Apr 10, 2018 9:08 pm

What section was what? Break those scores down by Reading Comprehension, Logical Raining, and Logic Gages.

That said, there are plenty of guides here on how to do well in the lsat and 150 is a perfectly acceptable diagnostic score. Follow the guides and ask if you have specific issues.

I try to tell everyone, focus on accuracy first, speed comes later. Don't go rushing off to take lots of times tests before you're ready. You won't spend long enough on each question to understand and master them, and there'll be a bunch you never even get to. Take your time initially to really learn the types of questions.

You can repay Logic games. Once I'd done quite a few, I started to keep old ones in my pocket when I was out. If I ever found I had ten minutes free, I'd do a game again.

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preamble

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Re: where to start? 150 first diagnostic, 8 months to study

Post by preamble » Tue Apr 10, 2018 10:27 pm

What were the section breakdowns according to section type? How did you do on RC, LG, and LR? Your aptitude for certain sections might determine the pace at which you can improve.

epncntk1998

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Re: where to start? 150 first diagnostic, 8 months to study

Post by epncntk1998 » Wed Apr 11, 2018 11:09 am

sorry, i assumed the sectioned were in the same order.

Sec 1 LG: -12
Sec 2 LR: -7
Sec 3 LR: -12
Sec 4 CR: -10

The way my school schedule works is we have a winter term for the month of January where students typically take one class, and then spring semester starts in February. This means I could come back from being abroad, not take a class during winter term, and spend 6ish weeks hard core studying for the February test, and then study through out the semester for the June test if I need to retake. Is this a good idea? Or should I plan on just taking June?

albanach

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Re: where to start? 150 first diagnostic, 8 months to study

Post by albanach » Wed Apr 11, 2018 12:23 pm

epncntk1998 wrote:sorry, i assumed the sectioned were in the same order.

Sec 1 LG: -12
Sec 2 LR: -7
Sec 3 LR: -12
Sec 4 CR: -10

The way my school schedule works is we have a winter term for the month of January where students typically take one class, and then spring semester starts in February. This means I could come back from being abroad, not take a class during winter term, and spend 6ish weeks hard core studying for the February test, and then study through out the semester for the June test if I need to retake. Is this a good idea? Or should I plan on just taking June?
That already bodes quite well. LG is completely learnable and you should be aiming to get that to -0 with practice. Those are easy gains and you have plenty of time in which to do so.

For the others, you really need to start working through your wrong answers to understand why they were wrong (and likewise why the correct answer was correct). I think you'll see some pretty quick gains there.

I would work on LG initially, maybe for a couple of weeks so you better understand the concepts and then switch to LR and CR while doing weekly LG work to hone your skills there. Make sure you're allocating good blocks of time to do entire tests (initially untimed) to watch your progress and make sure you set aside enough time to go over why answers are write and wrong. If you make a guess or are unsure about an answer, flag that on your sheet so that you can review it, even if you get it correct.

Wednesday

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Re: where to start? 150 first diagnostic, 8 months to study

Post by Wednesday » Thu Apr 12, 2018 12:42 pm

Seven Sage has video explanations for pretty much every LSAT game ever publisheded on their YouTube channel. The first textbook I used in my preparation was Kaplan. It gave me a general idea of the test and helped me to improve my score by 6-7 points. After that I tried Logical Reasoning Bible and found it very helpful. I also started reading Logic Games Bible but quickly realized that the Seven Sage videos worked much better for me. The videos are free, you can easily find them if you type in the first sentence of a particular game into Google Search or just by prep test and game number.
Aim to do all avaliable games (300+) and watch seven sage videos for all games you were not able to get right in under 10 minutes. If you have money to spare, invest in a course, especially if after 2-3 months of intensive preparation you don't notice a significant improvement.
I started out with a similar to yours score and scored +12 on the test day after 4 months of studying. I'm sure it is possible for some people to go from 150 to 170+.

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