The Official September 2014 Study Group Forum

[dasani13]

PT 43 168
PT 44 170

now if only I can hit these numbers on game day, anyways no internet for a week, so it just me and the trainer + drilling, no more PT for good week

Good job! I'm starting 45 right now in case anyone would like to review together on Skype tomorrow.

[longhorn65]

How in the hell do you all find time for sleep lol. I wake up study, go to work, go to my lsat course. work out, and then think how i should study more but then its already 11-1am.....I NEED more hours in the day

I'm in the same boat, except grad school instead of the last course. I would love it if there were about 10 more hours in the day. I fell asleep during my PT yesterday.

Been there done that. Lets just hope it all pays off.

[sfoglia]

After you say that I suppose there are some similarities between the passages and academic journals. I just finished my undergrad thesis and had to read through countless papers, so maybe looking at the passages like this will help. When you're reading through passages you're obviously finding a purpose for each sentence, but do you take the time after every paragraph for a short summary and figuring out where it fits into the passage as a whole? I can usually figure out a lot of the "pieces" of the passage, but rarely put them together into a solid understanding of the whole thing.

Also, if you don't mind me asking, what were your initial diagnostic scores and how long have you been studying for the test? I assume you're intending on doing patent law with your engineering background? I'd be happy to talk more about patent law or engineering things if you're interested! Thanks for the advice!

I don't pause after each paragraph to see how it relates to the main point, but I do kind of do that mentally as I'm reading. At the very least I mentally file each point into 'supports conclusion' and 'defends conclusion'. On tricky passages it can be difficult to categorize points beyond delineating between supporting and defending.

My initial diagnostic was 172, and I've been studying for almost exactly a month.

Your assumption of patent law is correct! I'd love to talk about engineering/patent law with you!


On another note - has anyone else found lsat question knowledge creeping into their everyday life?

I saw an advertisement for this commemorative stamp at the post office the other day:

https://store.usps.com/store/browse/pro ... ive-stamps

and I thought to myself 'I hope that they are keeping the original away from UV light' and I felt like a huge nerd.
(PT 52, S3, Q1 - in case you're interested)

Okay, so, how much studying are we talking, here? You're clearly incredibly intelligent, so I'm thinking I'd have to at least triple the amount of hours you're putting in, but I'd like to know nonetheless.

[alexK_]

On another note - has anyone else found lsat question knowledge creeping into their everyday life?

I saw an advertisement for this commemorative stamp at the post office the other day:

https://store.usps.com/store/browse/pro ... ive-stamps

and I thought to myself 'I hope that they are keeping the original away from UV light' and I felt like a huge nerd.
(PT 52, S3, Q1 - in case you're interested)

I have, but I'm always worried about whether it's accurate or not. They have no responsibility to make the stimulus factual, right?

Can someone tell me if cats actually derive ample exercise from stretching?

[h3jk5h]

Took two practice tests, one on Tuesday and one today. 159 and 161 on PT40 and PT41.

I am very inconsistent with the LR section.

On PT41, I missed 9 questions on the first LR section, only 4 on the second one.
On PT41, I missed 11 on the first, 2 on the second.

If the discrepancy is smaller (i.e. 3-5), then it's probably the range of difficulty of the sections. But a 9 question difference is surely statistically significant, no? On PT41, the first LR section seemed really hard while the second one gave me very little trouble, and the difficulty rating of both of them according to the 7sage score analytics is around the same.

Does it come down purely to statistical variation in the distribution of difficulty across LR sections, or is there something more to it?

Also, for the RC section of PT41, I struggled comprehending 2 passages, but miraculously I got -3 on the section (my personal best). Huh?

[berkeleynick]

Took two practice tests, one on Tuesday and one today. 159 and 161 on PT40 and PT41.

I am very inconsistent with the LR section.

On PT41, I missed 9 questions on the first LR section, only 4 on the second one.
On PT41, I missed 11 on the first, 2 on the second.

If the discrepancy is smaller (i.e. 3-5), then it's probably the range of difficulty of the sections. But a 9 question difference is surely statistically significant, no? On PT41, the first LR section seemed really hard while the second one gave me very little trouble, and the difficulty rating of both of them according to the 7sage score analytics is around the same.

Does it come down purely to statistical variation in the distribution of difficulty across LR sections, or is there something more to it?

Also, for the RC section of PT41, I struggled comprehending 2 passages, but miraculously I got -3 on the section (my personal best). Huh?

Re: LR sections, do you see any pattern in the question type(s) you get wrong? If you're missing that many questions, you're likely confusing approaches for question types, or narrowing it down to the final two possible answers through process of elimination and then choosing the wrong one, or getting lucky (or having a slightly better process) and selecting the credited response. That could explain why you're sometimes getting that many more right in one section and not the other, or across tests.

Walk us through your approach when you select an answer choice.

[some1uknown]

PT 71

LR 1 -6
LG -2
LR 2 - 7
RC - 9

total, 77/101 for 163

probably not the best indication of my score as i took this test and reviewed it a month ago but i'm basically out of material to study so i might as well use something

[h3jk5h]

Thanks for the response, Hillary.

I read the stimulus first, try to comprehend it (i.e. argument core and gaps if there are any), once I think I have a decent grasp of it is I read question stem and the answer choices.

I go from a) to e), once I think one fits the bill I take a mental note of it and move onto the other ones to make sure to eliminate the others.

Upon reflection, the sections that I had the most trouble with are the ones where there were many stimuli that I could not get a good grasp of. That is, I could not understand/follow the argument given in the stimulus. Once I understand the argument core, my accuracy in LR is significantly better. I am fairly okay with identifying flaws/gaps with arguments where I understand what is written, but I run into trouble when I could not comprehend the sentences that I'm reading (especially natural science topics). So my major weakness, I think, is more of reading skills. Sigh, maybe I'm about to hit my "natural ceiling" on the LSAT, reading it's one of those things where you can't make significant improvements over a few months.

But I'm going to review these sections more thoroughly to try to identify a pattern in my mistakes. It's not a particular question type that is giving me trouble, it's either careless reading errors or failure to comprehend the stimulus properly.

Took two practice tests, one on Tuesday and one today. 159 and 161 on PT40 and PT41.

I am very inconsistent with the LR section.

On PT41, I missed 9 questions on the first LR section, only 4 on the second one.
On PT41, I missed 11 on the first, 2 on the second.

If the discrepancy is smaller (i.e. 3-5), then it's probably the range of difficulty of the sections. But a 9 question difference is surely statistically significant, no? On PT41, the first LR section seemed really hard while the second one gave me very little trouble, and the difficulty rating of both of them according to the 7sage score analytics is around the same.

Does it come down purely to statistical variation in the distribution of difficulty across LR sections, or is there something more to it?

Also, for the RC section of PT41, I struggled comprehending 2 passages, but miraculously I got -3 on the section (my personal best). Huh?

Re: LR sections, do you see any pattern in the question type(s) you get wrong? If you're missing that many questions, you're likely confusing approaches for question types, or narrowing it down to the final two possible answers through process of elimination and then choosing the wrong one, or getting lucky (or having a slightly better process) and selecting the credited response. That could explain why you're sometimes getting that many more right in one section and not the other, or across tests.

Walk us through your approach when you select an answer choice.

[Irish11]

Just finished PT 38- got my 180!
LR1: -0
LG: -1 (stupid mistake, but it seems like that's always the case with LG mistakes! The games in this PT seemed very difficult, took me much longer than usual to solve - I barely finished in the 35 minutes.)
RC: -1
LR2: -0


The last game in PT38 was a huge pain, it took me forever to figure out the right inferences.

Hope everyone else's studying goes well today!

Well done. Assuming you didn't start out at 179, can you give advice on working up from very good to perfect? I started studying about two weeks ago, and am hitting 174-176 on my PTs. I plan to start studying "full time" tomorrow with the goal of 179-180. I rarely miss on RC and LG - LR is my weakness, and doesn't look to be yours.

Also: hello board! Nice to meet you. I hope everyone is looking forward to a productive week!

[fra]

Well done. Assuming you didn't start out at 179, can you give advice on working up from very good to perfect? I started studying about two weeks ago, and am hitting 174-176 on my PTs. I plan to start studying "full time" tomorrow with the goal of 179-180. I rarely miss on RC and LG - LR is my weakness, and doesn't look to be yours.

Also: hello board! Nice to meet you. I hope everyone is looking forward to a productive week!

I started at 172. Used LR Bible and LG Bible to get to ~175, then heavy blind reviewing to get up to ~180. Most of my progress was in LR, a little bit in RC. I actually had a perfect score in LG on my diagnostic - the only thing that I've improved there is time and consistency.
For LR I actually use the blind review method during my 35 minute timed sections. I usually finish all of the questions in 25-30 minutes, circle the ones that I'm not 100% on and then go back to them in the last 5-10 minutes. Doing that is was made it possible for me to get -0 in LR.
I also read all of the answer choices and eliminate all of the incorrect answer choices. If I can't eliminate 4 choices with 100% certainty, then that is a question that I come back to at the end of the section time.

Good luck getting those last few points! It seems like there are very few resources and very little advice for people trying to improve from 99% to 99.9%.

Okay, so, how much studying are we talking, here? You're clearly incredibly intelligent, so I'm thinking I'd have to at least triple the amount of hours you're putting in, but I'd like to know nonetheless.

I started studying on June 15. I did about 20 hours a week for the first two weeks, got my first 180 on a practice test on June 29. After that I scaled back studying to about 5-10 hours a week.

I don't think that you'll have to triple the amount of time that I'm spending, just make sure that you are getting quality study time. If you're tired and studying and feel like you are getting minimal return on the time that you are investing then do something else for a while - come back to the test when you are fresh.
I noticed someplace else that you were talking about your review methods:

My update for today: I just did an untimed section of LR, with only -1. Was very conscientious, writing down my rationale for any question that gave me trouble, explaining my logic in arriving at the answer choices that I did. Now going to go back to yesterday's PT and review my errors with the same practice, figure out why I'm having so much difficulty putting my knowledge to practice (ha!) on the practice tests. Wish me luck!

and your method looks solid. It's pretty similar to how I reviewed.

[valen]

Just finished about 5 hours of LR and a small amount of diagramming LG studying out of the LSAT trainer. I'm going to take a break for a few hours and then do my second PT later this evening.

At what point should I start doing timed PTs? I used about 45 minutes per section (except RC) on my diagnostic.

[ilikebaseball]

will someone briefly decribe blind reviewing to me? people talk about it a lot

[vracovino]

will someone briefly decribe blind reviewing to me? people talk about it a lot

http://7sage.com/the-blind-review-how-t ... at-part-1/

[Calbears123]

Anyone got any predictions for the Sept test? The last three all had less than normal LG (Dec had two substitution questions, Feb had a circular game, and June had a pattern game)

The RC for both June and Dec had some pretty hard passages also, and the curves were -14 and -13

I'm hoping for a return to "normal" with a -11 curve (I seem to do best with tests that curve at 11 so in hoping that's what we see)

[gnomgnomuch]

Anyone got any predictions for the Sept test? The last three all had less than normal LG (Dec had two substitution questions, Feb had a circular game, and June had a pattern game)

The RC for both June and Dec had some pretty hard passages also, and the curves were -14 and -13

I'm hoping for a return to "normal" with a -11 curve (I seem to do best with tests that curve at 11 so in hoping that's what we see)

I'm actually thinking - but praying I'M wrong - that the test makers are correcting for the relative ease of LG by throwing 1 atypical game into each section. The prevalence of books/online help to perfect LG (most notably 7SAGE) is potentially screwing with the curve, and this is just the LSAT's way of dealing with it.

RC and LR are still more or less the same from what I've seen, though i could be wrong.

[bohemiandaisy]

Just put this in the retake thread, but wanted some advice here as well!

Hey everyone! I was a lurker for June 2014 and choked due to nerves. I have major test anxiety. I took every PT ever before June and still choked. i'm back for my last take.

I just got a 177 on PT 67 in a proctored environment. I don't know how accurate this score is since I've taken the test before (out of takes!) and know the infamous zones game very very well (drilled it at least 10 times). But hey, I guess my logic is still dead on and I'll blind review later.

RC -1
LR -3 (-1 for not bubbling due to time)
LG 0

So my question is: how happy should I be? It's a retake, so realistically, this is an inflated. I took it in early May the first time and scored a 166.

[Louis1127]

You could be right about that, gno.

But it could be that TLSers (including myself sometimes) overanalyze the hell out of the LSAT.

There have been odd-ball games before. There were some in the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and obviously the 70s.

Plus, some hybrid games such as the bus stop game (from PT 55, I think it was, or somewhere around there) aren't generally considered odd-ball type games by they probable should be.

But I'm not saying you're wrong. Just playing devil's advocate

[170plusordie]

Anyone here experiencing god awful decreases in your scores on the newer PT's??


I don't understand why I can score 170 or 168 on PTs in the 50s but today when I took pt 63 I scored a 158 and then last week I scored 165 on PT 60.

Feels awful. I went from scoring -2/3 on the older tests to scoring -5/6 on LRs for newer PTs.

Only thing that really changed since then was me taking PT's less frequently. And drilling less frequently

does score inflation really bump my score up? I was doing amazing on those older PTs but these newer ones I am gettng rocked. I took a 5 day break but now its really scaring me, I don't know what to do. Please help.


feels awful. I am going to take an older PT later this week. Lets see if I can bump up my score and revert to my old ways.

[gnomgnomuch]

You could be right about that, gno.

But it could be that TLSers (including myself sometimes) overanalyze the hell out of the LSAT.

There have been odd-ball games before. There were some in the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and obviously the 70s.

Plus, some hybrid games such as the bus stop game (from PT 55, I think it was, or somewhere around there) aren't generally considered odd-ball type games by they probable should be.

But I'm not saying you're wrong. Just playing devil's advocate

I hope you're right and that this is a statistical anomaly, because there are relatively few hybrid/pattern games out there, and doing those only helps so much.

I started Manhattan today, and I'm pleasantly surprised. A lot of questions and really good strategies to targeting questions. I'll be taking PT 43 on Thursday (starting Chem tmrw, and I'm dreading it) but I hope that I can solidify myself in the mid 160's.

I also really need to learn how to not check the answers after every section.... I'm not a very patient person.

[jmjm]

In trying to improve RC, I find RC passages are much more complex than writing in economist or ny times. So I have been trying to find a book that compiles scholarly complex articles and essays on diverse topics in humanities, soc sciences (art/literature movements, historical events etc). I don't have access to jstor. Any suggestions?

I am in engineering! Unfortunately I don't know how much advice I can give you on RC as I spend a TON of time reading academic journals - which I think are very similar in structure to RC passages.
I started out at -3/-4 in RC, and am now at -1 in RC.

Great RC scores!
How much time do you take to read the passage and to do questions? I found that even after reading the passage carefully in about 4 minutes I need to reread parts/paragraphs from the passage for detail questions. This severely affects my timing. Do you do first pass through the passage fast and then go to questions where you reread parts for detail questions or something else? During my engineering degrees a while ago I read lots of journal papers but I find for me it rarely translates to performance on RC, particularly on humanities, social sciences, and legal passages.

[ilikebaseball]

PT59
LG-0
LR-5
LR-2
RC-6

-13 170

[sfoglia]

Okay, so, how much studying are we talking, here? You're clearly incredibly intelligent, so I'm thinking I'd have to at least triple the amount of hours you're putting in, but I'd like to know nonetheless.

I started studying on June 15. I did about 20 hours a week for the first two weeks, got my first 180 on a practice test on June 29. After that I scaled back studying to about 5-10 hours a week.

I don't think that you'll have to triple the amount of time that I'm spending, just make sure that you are getting quality study time. If you're tired and studying and feel like you are getting minimal return on the time that you are investing then do something else for a while - come back to the test when you are fresh.
I noticed someplace else that you were talking about your review methods:

My update for today: I just did an untimed section of LR, with only -1. Was very conscientious, writing down my rationale for any question that gave me trouble, explaining my logic in arriving at the answer choices that I did. Now going to go back to yesterday's PT and review my errors with the same practice, figure out why I'm having so much difficulty putting my knowledge to practice (ha!) on the practice tests. Wish me luck!

and your method looks solid. It's pretty similar to how I reviewed.

Yeah, I've been studying around 30 hours a week for the past three, about 15 a week for a month before that. My weekly practice tests have put me from 160-164, with an initial diagnostic of 164, so it's clear to me that the 170+ goal I had is definitely not happening for September. And if not for September, obviously not applying this cycle. Which gives me until next June to study.

This weekend decided it for me. I am going to go back to having a life now. I'd be an idiot to keep working this hard when I'm not seeing any improvement.

Quitter signing off now. Good luck everyone! Wishing you all the best.

[Blythe17]

Yeah, I've been studying around 30 hours a week for the past three, about 15 a week for a month before that. My weekly practice tests have put me from 160-164, with an initial diagnostic of 164, so it's clear to me that the 170+ goal I had is definitely not happening for September. And if not for September, obviously not applying this cycle. Which gives me until next June to study.

This weekend decided it for me. I am going to go back to having a life now. I'd be an idiot to keep working this hard when I'm not seeing any improvement.

Quitter signing off now. Good luck everyone! Wishing you all the best.

You're more familiar with your potential than anyone, but I just want to suggest: don't give up! At least until you've tried tweaking your study strategy or switching study material. If that's the case, then you may be wasting time. But if not, you may be missing out on significantly improving and avoiding a 1-year delay! Anecdotal example: I used the powerscore books for a month and my PT average was stale for a while (and considered withdrawing my LSAT). Then during the last 2 weeks before the test I switched to manhattan and my average jumped by 6 points.

[mornincounselor]

Post removed.

[Louis1127]

So I basically never prephase my LR questions (I do for parallel flaw/reasoning, i.e. think about what a correct choice will look like, but generally I feel it takes too long and I enjoy having those "aha" moments when I read through the choices) but this may be what is holding me back on RC. I find that if I know the passage well enough to prephase an answer its a question I can easily answer without prephasing it. In other words the questions which I am having difficulty answering will be the same questions I would find it equally difficult to prephase.

Interested in results from this idea.