The Official September 2014 Study Group Forum

[bound]

To those who ordered the Cambridge packets:


Did ya'll download them in .pdf or order the books? Pros to downloading - I get them today. Cons - printing is annoying.

gotta PDF so you can reprint them multiple times

Word. Sick username, btw. Thinking about specializing in that

[Attax]

Bound are you retaking?

[mornincounselor]

Post removed.

[bound]

Bound are you retaking?

contemplating. going to study a little and take a PT...see how much ground I've lost, gage if it's worth it.

[Attax]

Bound are you retaking?

contemplating. going to study a little and take a PT...see how much ground I've lost, gage if it's worth it.

get 180, snag townes rice to UT, come snag all my outlines

[WaltGrace83]

When you guys get an RC passage that you feel like you have a solid handle of (maybe the first passage of the section), do you just fly through the questions on your "gut instinct?" My accuracy is awesome in RC (-0/-1 on a section) but my timing is atrocious. I will spend about 9-11 minutes per passage because I try to validate/invalidate every answer choice. I am wondering if I should trust myself more on the first two passages and slow it down on the second two - or perhaps trust myself on the passages I feel like I got and slow down on passages that I don't feel as if I have as great of a handle of.

This is solely in regards to the questions. I spend 2:45-3:30 on every passage reading it and am not going to speed up there.

NEVERMIND; made a thread topic

[gnomgnomuch]

o_o.

PT 40 - 161.

LR 1- -0 (First time this has ever happened, and I'm ecstatic)
LG - 8 (5/5, 3/5, 1/7(I had absolutely no idea about this game, and it really screwed me a fair amount) 6/6)
LR 2 - -7 (better than my usual -10, but considering the huge discrepancy between LR 1 and LR 2, im confused and kinda sad)
RC - -8 (This was a seriously hard RC for me, I've never missed that many questions, not even on my diagnostic.) 3/5, 6/7, 6/7, 4/8.


I'll get to reviewing the test entirely in about an hour. Go over every problem i got wrong, plus the questions i boxed (thankfully, the majority of the questions i boxed in LR 2 were the ones i got wrong). Ill do all the games a couple of times, and then really focus on the RC. I'm super disappointed in my RC, because i usually go between -2-4, with occasional perfect scores, and that really hurt me in terms of getting a 165+ score.

Nonetheless, a 161 is the highest I've ever gotten on a non BR test (though only by 1 point) and I'm more or less pleased with the overall score, though not with my disjointed performance. Adding another 4-6 points on my RC would have given me anywhere from a 163-165.

Also, if i had any idea on how to approach LG #3, my score would have been even closer to the 170 range. Alas, so much work to be done.

[kinseyjo]

Checking in... Retaking from a shit June 2014 result. Scored a 157 on it, though I was PT'ing 163-166. Pretty disappointed.
But, I am using my hate/disappointment fire to fuel me to a 170 on September 27.

I have purchased all of manhattan, drills for RC and LR from cambridge, and the LSAT trainer. I plan on beginning tonight, and studying around 14 hours a week up until the test.
Current plan:
Spend each week drilling either RC or LR (for example, this week I will drill RC, next I drill LR, and etc.) I will only be reviewing LG because I have that pretty much completely down. At the end of each week I plan on taking a full, proctored, 5-section preptest. I'll be doing Blind Review like a day later and waiting on it, and using the 7sage scorer to find out where I'm really going wrong.

First time around, I studied for 4-ish months, but it was pretty half-ass to be honest. I was studying abroad in France whilst studying, so I was much more focused on my 8 classes in a foreign language and partying in France than I was with the impending June LSAT's. I'm hoping that drilling will get me to a 167+, preferably a 170.

Few questions: does my study plan sound sufficient for my desired result? Also, are there success stories out there of people who have raised their score as much as I intend to?

Thanks!

[kbrizz]

Hey guys, first time poster, been lurking since May when I started LSAT prep. This thread has been so useful so just wanted to thank-you all. Yesterday I hit my first 170+ (173! PT 28) and it felt so good. Diagnostic was 154 with something like -18 on LG, and for the life of me I could not figure it out for the first few weeks. Yesterday went -1. For all of you still struggling, especially with LG, keep it up and it will start flowing.

Amazing!! Tell me your secrets!

[gnomgnomuch]

When you guys get an RC passage that you feel like you have a solid handle of (maybe the first passage of the section), do you just fly through the questions on your "gut instinct?" My accuracy is awesome in RC (-0/-1 on a section) but my timing is atrocious. I will spend about 9-11 minutes per passage because I try to validate/invalidate every answer choice. I am wondering if I should trust myself more on the first two passages and slow it down on the second two - or perhaps trust myself on the passages I feel like I got and slow down on passages that I don't feel as if I have as great of a handle of.

This is solely in regards to the questions. I spend 2:45-3:30 on every passage reading it and am not going to speed up there.

NEVERMIND; made a thread topic

It all depends on your confidencei think. I personally try to take the first passage a bit slower than the others (unless its obviously easy) because it'll get my confidence up. Then I try to go a little faster on the other. I've never ran out of time on an RC section, and i usually have ~2 minutes of time left.

[gnomgnomuch]

Hey guys, first time poster, been lurking since May when I started LSAT prep. This thread has been so useful so just wanted to thank-you all. Yesterday I hit my first 170+ (173! PT 28) and it felt so good. Diagnostic was 154 with something like -18 on LG, and for the life of me I could not figure it out for the first few weeks. Yesterday went -1. For all of you still struggling, especially with LG, keep it up and it will start flowing.

Amazing!! Tell me your secrets!

Prob the fact that he/she started with a 154 with a -18 on LG. Thats basically 17 extra answers he/she added, to an already solid baseline. Add in familiarity with LR and RC and thats prob another 5-10 more correct choices. Congratz though! Thats something to be very proud of.

[kirilrez]

How long are your study sessions? It could be that you've been doing one game at a time and taking small breaks in between each, so your mental endurance is about 1-2 games. Since there are only a couple months left, you should start extending your sessions and go one game to the next to the next (game+review -> game+review) without any breaks in between. I was doing maybe 6-7 games in one sitting.

My study sessions are about 2 hours long. But, you're right I take small breaks in between games, so I should stop doing that. Another thing I noticed is that I had a specific problem with games which combine grouping and ordering they always take me more than 10 minutes and they are usually the last in the section.

[Louis1127]

o_o.

PT 40 - 161.

LR 1- -0 (First time this has ever happened, and I'm ecstatic)
LG - 8 (5/5, 3/5, 1/7(I had absolutely no idea about this game, and it really screwed me a fair amount) 6/6)
LR 2 - -7 (better than my usual -10, but considering the huge discrepancy between LR 1 and LR 2, im confused and kinda sad)
RC - -8 (This was a seriously hard RC for me, I've never missed that many questions, not even on my diagnostic.) 3/5, 6/7, 6/7, 4/8.


I'll get to reviewing the test entirely in about an hour. Go over every problem i got wrong, plus the questions i boxed (thankfully, the majority of the questions i boxed in LR 2 were the ones i got wrong). Ill do all the games a couple of times, and then really focus on the RC. I'm super disappointed in my RC, because i usually go between -2-4, with occasional perfect scores, and that really hurt me in terms of getting a 165+ score.

Nonetheless, a 161 is the highest I've ever gotten on a non BR test (though only by 1 point) and I'm more or less pleased with the overall score, though not with my disjointed performance. Adding another 4-6 points on my RC would have given me anywhere from a 163-165.

Also, if i had any idea on how to approach LG #3, my score would have been even closer to the 170 range. Alas, so much work to be done.

We're really close, gnongnomuch, I got a 160 on that PT two weeks ago. Our distributions were similar as well, I rocked the first LR but got killed by the second one (and had similar LG and RC distributions).

Are you sure we're not the same person? How do I know I'm not talking to myself right now?

[Louis1127]

Superpreps are weird.

Got a 159 on A, which is about near my current average. But my distributions- weird af. Went -2 on RC (wtf?) while getting hit pretty hard on both LR and LG.

Anyhow, time to review.

[longhorn65]

HELP! Hey all as I've said before I am in a prep course and Im truly enjoying it and I think they teach great techniques that have helped me already. BUUUUUT they say under no circumstance should I work outside of the course on problems or review any other materials including my powerscore books. They say this is so that I dont get confused between the 2 different approaches and also so that they can watch me work and keep me from forming bad habits. Now As I said I love how they do things but I think i should work with it outside of class in order for the techniques to become smooth and fluent also I want to read the Bibles because I think the more you know the more you can adapt on test day. The counter point being I paid them good money and they have great results maybe they know better than me. WHAT do you all think any advice? or others whom have been in my situation?

[gnomgnomuch]

o_o.

PT 40 - 161.

LR 1- -0 (First time this has ever happened, and I'm ecstatic)
LG - 8 (5/5, 3/5, 1/7(I had absolutely no idea about this game, and it really screwed me a fair amount) 6/6)
LR 2 - -7 (better than my usual -10, but considering the huge discrepancy between LR 1 and LR 2, im confused and kinda sad)
RC - -8 (This was a seriously hard RC for me, I've never missed that many questions, not even on my diagnostic.) 3/5, 6/7, 6/7, 4/8.


I'll get to reviewing the test entirely in about an hour. Go over every problem i got wrong, plus the questions i boxed (thankfully, the majority of the questions i boxed in LR 2 were the ones i got wrong). Ill do all the games a couple of times, and then really focus on the RC. I'm super disappointed in my RC, because i usually go between -2-4, with occasional perfect scores, and that really hurt me in terms of getting a 165+ score.

Nonetheless, a 161 is the highest I've ever gotten on a non BR test (though only by 1 point) and I'm more or less pleased with the overall score, though not with my disjointed performance. Adding another 4-6 points on my RC would have given me anywhere from a 163-165.

Also, if i had any idea on how to approach LG #3, my score would have been even closer to the 170 range. Alas, so much work to be done.

We're really close, gnongnomuch, I got a 160 on that PT two weeks ago. Our distributions were similar as well, I rocked the first LR but got killed by the second one (and had similar LG and RC distributions).

Are you sure we're not the same person? How do I know I'm not talking to myself right now?

*Dinkleberg* =P

Yea, I don't know whether or not the first LR was just easier than normal or what. The test didnt seem TOO hard, though the -10 curve was a bit strict, i was expecting it to be around a -12 because of that super hard 3rd logic game.

I'm about to start reviewing it pretty seriously. Plan for tomorrow is to re-take PT 40, and aim for a 175+

Also, whenever i get a LR question type wrong (IE, N/A questions) i go over in the book, the exact approach to doing those questions, + do a couple of them out of the packets to solidify my base.

Honestly though, PT 39 was a 158, and i had a -19 on LR combined, and on PT 40 i cut that down by 12, yet only scored 3 points higher, so that's pretty disheartening. =(

[gnomgnomuch]

HELP! Hey all as I've said before I am in a prep course and Im truly enjoying it and I think they teach great techniques that have helped me already. BUUUUUT they say under no circumstance should I work outside of the course on problems or review any other materials including my powerscore books. They say this is so that I dont get confused between the 2 different approaches and also so that they can watch me work and keep me from forming bad habits. Now As I said I love how they do things but I think i should work with it outside of class in order for the techniques to become smooth and fluent also I want to read the Bibles because I think the more you know the more you can adapt on test day. The counter point being I paid them good money and they have great results maybe they know better than me. WHAT do you all think any advice? or others whom have been in my situation?

WHAT?! IDK what prep test you're using but that is seriously iffy. I've used LSAT trainer, the bibles, Blue-Print, and im prob buying the Manhattan set soon as well. You're only gonna be able to game the LSAT up to a certain score (id say its around high 150's). If you want higher than that, you have to be very very fluid in your methods, which will prob involve cherry picking from different test companies approach.

I would at the very least, drill those question types you're doing in class to get down the technique they explain to you.

[Comstock]

Hey guys, first time poster, been lurking since May when I started LSAT prep. This thread has been so useful so just wanted to thank-you all. Yesterday I hit my first 170+ (173! PT 28) and it felt so good. Diagnostic was 154 with something like -18 on LG, and for the life of me I could not figure it out for the first few weeks. Yesterday went -1. For all of you still struggling, especially with LG, keep it up and it will start flowing.

Amazing!! Tell me your secrets!

Prob the fact that he/she started with a 154 with a -18 on LG. Thats basically 17 extra answers he/she added, to an already solid baseline. Add in familiarity with LR and RC and thats prob another 5-10 more correct choices. Congratz though! Thats something to be very proud of.

Haha yeah definitely the biggest improvement was LG. I'm thankful that was by far my weakest section because I do feel it is the most improvable section. Honestly, all I did was put in a lot of raw hours into just doing games. I did nothing special; just the powerscores bible to get the basics, and then just drilled sections (not 7Sage, etc, just figured out by myself). The biggest thing that helped me was not going in with an extremely rigid method and not panicking if I didn't have a huge, fully filled diagram going in the questions. As soon as I allowed myself to rely more on intuition of the game my score jumped a lot because I was finishing on time. This also has the benefit of not completely bombing novel games that appear randomly and which used to guarantee me going -6/7+

LR came the most naturally to me at the very beginning, and like the other poster said with some familiarly I was able to pick up a few points on each section consistently. I'm normally between -4 to -2 now, but even with that I don't feel I'm at my 'cap' as some of my mistakes are quite silly. I did the opposite of what I did with LGB and did drilling of sections (full 35 minute sections as would be in the PT) and then read the LR Bible for specific areas I was getting wrong (for example, parallel was my bane for a long time, so I read the LRB and drilled and now I'm much better. Conversely, assumption questions came much easier for me, so I didn't drill those).

RC used to be -8/-10, and now that I'm familiar with it I'm normally -3/-5 (with a high of -1! Twas a good day). I really don't drill this a lot, and I'm not too happy with the -5s when they come up, but I feel like the energy expenditure I would need to get RC down to below -3 consistently is better spend on places like LR where I really do feel a consistent -2/-1 is possible for me.

In short, the best advice I could give is to be flexible with what you are working on and how it goes. Because one method works well for others doesn't mean you necessarily have to do it. I assume this is a major sin on this forum, but, for example, I don't blind review after my PT. I just don't find it super helpful for various reasons.

Also, stay positive! There are times when my score regressed and I felt so frustrated, so I took a few days off from the LSAT completely and each time I did that I broke a new high on my PT record (first time from a 160-162 plateau to a 168, then from a 166-168 plateau to a 173). The LSAT is very much a mind game, and if you are constantly doubting yourself and feeling burnt out, its going to be hard to do anything.

All of this is very general I'm sure, but I just wanted to says what's worked for me so far. Being on forums like this also keeps me motivated to sit down the next day and improve that score! So I hope I do the same for all of you writing because trust me, you guys can do this.

[Comstock]

HELP! Hey all as I've said before I am in a prep course and Im truly enjoying it and I think they teach great techniques that have helped me already. BUUUUUT they say under no circumstance should I work outside of the course on problems or review any other materials including my powerscore books. They say this is so that I dont get confused between the 2 different approaches and also so that they can watch me work and keep me from forming bad habits. Now As I said I love how they do things but I think i should work with it outside of class in order for the techniques to become smooth and fluent also I want to read the Bibles because I think the more you know the more you can adapt on test day. The counter point being I paid them good money and they have great results maybe they know better than me. WHAT do you all think any advice? or others whom have been in my situation?

What's your diagnostic, how much have you improved, and how long is the course?

Unless your course is 15+ hours a week, I would do work on it myself, because the LSAT comes with time. If you want to avoid 'confusion' you can still always just do drilled sections and practice what you are learning in class. I can understand why a prep company would say don't look at other books to avoid confusion, but I can't fathom why they would say don't even practice at home.

[Calbears123]

Finally back in business. Took PT 42

LG, -2
LR, -1
RC, -6
LR, -3

Score = 169

Full Blind Review

LG, -0
LR, -0
RC, -6 (didnt BR study place closed on me)
LR, -2

Score = 174

Next test in PT 43 on friday. Next two days I plan on using the LSAT trainer and drill level 3 and 4's

[gnomgnomuch]

Finally back in business. Took PT 42

LG, -2
LR, -1
RC, -6
LR, -3

Score = 169

Full Blind Review

LG, -0
LR, -0
RC, -6 (didnt BR study place closed on me)
LR, -2

Score = 174

Next test in PT 43 on friday. Next two days I plan on using the LSAT trainer and drill level 3 and 4's

NICE!

[kbrizz]

Okay, so how often should I be PTing?

It doesn't really seem logical to PT while I'm in the middle of my powerscore book. Maybe it is though?

[gnomgnomuch]

Okay, so how often should I be PTing?

It doesn't really seem logical to PT while I'm in the middle of my powerscore book. Maybe it is though?

You should not be PT'ing at all. Maybe take 1 PT after you completely finish learning every type of question (and drilling at least a little those question types) but ideally, you should have LR/LG/RC completely read through, with an understanding of every question type, passage type and game type before you attempt PT's.


I've basically been drilling for ~5 months, only now have i started doing PT's.

[kbrizz]

Okay, so how often should I be PTing?

It doesn't really seem logical to PT while I'm in the middle of my powerscore book. Maybe it is though?

You should not be PT'ing at all. Maybe take 1 PT after you completely finish learning every type of question (and drilling at least a little those question types) but ideally, you should have LR/LG/RC completely read through, with an understanding of every question type, passage type and game type before you attempt PT's.


I've basically been drilling for ~5 months, only now have i started doing PT's.

Okay, got it! Thanks.

[longhorn65]

HELP! Hey all as I've said before I am in a prep course and Im truly enjoying it and I think they teach great techniques that have helped me already. BUUUUUT they say under no circumstance should I work outside of the course on problems or review any other materials including my powerscore books. They say this is so that I dont get confused between the 2 different approaches and also so that they can watch me work and keep me from forming bad habits. Now As I said I love how they do things but I think i should work with it outside of class in order for the techniques to become smooth and fluent also I want to read the Bibles because I think the more you know the more you can adapt on test day. The counter point being I paid them good money and they have great results maybe they know better than me. WHAT do you all think any advice? or others whom have been in my situation?

WHAT?! IDK what prep test you're using but that is seriously iffy. I've used LSAT trainer, the bibles, Blue-Print, and im prob buying the Manhattan set soon as well. You're only gonna be able to game the LSAT up to a certain score (id say its around high 150's). If you want higher than that, you have to be very very fluid in your methods, which will prob involve cherry picking from different test companies approach.

I would at the very least, drill those question types you're doing in class to get down the technique they explain to you.

I am definately getting more than 15 hours a week in the course. Do you think thats enough and I diagnostic tested around 150 timed but it was at 1am with the tv on sooooo