The Official February 2015 Study Group Forum

Shakawkaw · Post by **Shakawkaw** » Sat Dec 27, 2014 6:38 pm

zacboro wrote:I'm saying is it even worth time of setting one up? Do you get anything from it? Or does it just score your test for you if you use it as an answer key?

It takes less than 5 minutes to set up and the benefits are invaluable. Do it. Explore the site. You'll see if you want to use it or not. But the general consensus ITT and beyond is that J.Y. is the fucking man.

Rigo · Post by **Rigo** » Sat Dec 27, 2014 6:59 pm

gamerish · Post by **gamerish** » Sat Dec 27, 2014 7:15 pm

Post removed...

Rigo · Post by **Rigo** » Sat Dec 27, 2014 7:17 pm

flawyers · Post by **flawyers** » Sun Dec 28, 2014 12:47 am

so I was just working on LR and came upon a main conclusion question that took me a good 3 minutes to figure out (an early one at that). Havent missed a single LR question in a good minute, and just struggled with a main conclusion question...I think its time to take a day off. Burnout won today. Rest day tomorrow.

GreenTee · Post by **GreenTee** » Sun Dec 28, 2014 1:11 am

nlee10 · Post by **nlee10** » Sun Dec 28, 2014 1:16 am

flawyers wrote:so I was just working on LR and came upon a main conclusion question that took me a good 3 minutes to figure out (an early one at that). Havent missed a single LR question in a good minute, and just struggled with a main conclusion question...I think its time to take a day off. Burnout won today. Rest day tomorrow.

Don't be afraid to take a day or two off. I've cut down on my daily studying since Thanksgiving and I think it's been benefitting me.

20170322 · Post by **20170322** » Sun Dec 28, 2014 1:17 am

So, I have to hand it to you all, you were right about drilling by type. Looking through past missed questions, my worst area was when games were disguised in-out grouping. After drilling it, my average went way up.

PeanutsNJam · Post by **PeanutsNJam** » Sun Dec 28, 2014 1:26 am

gamerish wrote:Not to sound like an ass but should I bother with the Economist stuff? IIRC I went -3 on RC and it's consistely been my best section so I figured normal prep would be enough.

Economist helped me. It's just for building familiarity. Its articles are written in a very similar style to RC passages. So as you read, ask yourself what the main point is, what the author means by a specific word, what can be inferred from this, yada yada.

IMO it's the only thing that really helps with RC. The difficulty with RC is synthesizing a lot of text in a short amount of time. If you're reading similar stuff all the time, you naturally become quicker. Also read philosophy papers if you please, they're more dense though and structured differently from RC passages.

ilikebaseball · Post by **ilikebaseball** » Sun Dec 28, 2014 1:37 am

I'm gonna tell you what helped me with RC more than anything, but the truth is, there are like 20 diff guides on this website. I went through all of them. This worked for me so well.

First of all, timing. RC was the hardest section to finish on time, IMO. So, I would set my watch for 25 minutes. I HAVE to finish 3 passages in 25 minutes and then I'll have 10 minutes on the last one. The last thing you wanna do is spend 30 min on 3 passages, get to the 4th one without even reading and just guess on the specific questions. You'll more than likely miss every single one. Make sure you have enough time to read through and understand every passage so at least you can make an educated guess. Now, this was hard to do 3 in 25 at first, but you literally get better the more you do. I know it sucks to hear that, but its the truth.

2nd, this is how I diagrammed (and everyone does it differently, but if you're just starting out this is a good starting point)
Circled all dates/years/etc.

Underlined all key words. Whatever the passage is about, whether its statutes, sculptures, origame, purple loosestrife, whatever. Those are the words you underline.

Whenever it said "for example" or was giving me an example, I would go out to the side of the text, bracket where the example begins, and where it ends. I find the examples are somewhat useless. Sometimes there is a question directed right at the example, so the bracket will lead your eyes right to the answer. But, for the most part, the example is just text you can omit unless you are clueless about what the author is talking about.

I would also underline any proper nouns. People's names, cities, artwork names, etc. Simple stuff.

The last, and probably most important diagramming technique comes with experience. As you work through around 40 PT's and have seen the worst RC's LSAC can throw at you, you begin to notice a pattern about when there is an important sentence that will likely be involved in a question. Underline this whole thing. The only way to get good at this is to work and work every day at RC. You seriously do begin to notice patterns. Sometimes they aren't used in the questions, but you'll be surprised at how well you can guess the future questions when you just drill and drill and drill..

Like I said, everyone is different. The most important thing for me was timing. But hopefully this helps someone.

Rigo · Post by **Rigo** » Sun Dec 28, 2014 1:39 am

gamerish · Post by **gamerish** » Sun Dec 28, 2014 1:57 am

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ilikebaseball · Post by **ilikebaseball** » Sun Dec 28, 2014 2:01 am

gamerish wrote:Good stuff, thanks.

I like the Trainer's method so far. Underline the main/contrasting points and the author's opinion(s). I also blaze through the question stimulses super quick before I read the passage to see if there's a "line blah" or specific person/date/object I should watch out for.

If I can't get the -3 on my cold take up to a -1 or -0 on my own, I'll get the economist subscription.

meh. IIRC, that method is really hit or miss. I remember the study group thread that I was in most people just said that it was a borefest and didnt help them and that the only real way to get better is to continue drilling and drilling

GreenTee · Post by **GreenTee** » Sun Dec 28, 2014 2:10 am

Smallville · Post by **Smallville** » Sun Dec 28, 2014 4:21 am

totally meant to post telling GT and Shaka I was going to the city today... oops

PeanutsNJam · Post by **PeanutsNJam** » Sun Dec 28, 2014 4:27 am

Personally I'm against diagramming or making marks on the RC passages, it just takes time (at least for me, I hate looking at messy underlining/circles/etc.), and sometimes the markings get in the way of words and such.

Via the Economist method, I just got used to answering questions as I read, and so when a question came up I knew exactly where in the passage to look if I wasn't sure. It's a combination of pre-phrasing in LR and making deductions on the diagram in LG. It was quick and efficient for me.

Smallville · Post by **Smallville** » Sun Dec 28, 2014 4:31 am

PeanutsNJam wrote:Personally I'm against diagramming or making marks on the RC passages, it just takes time (at least for me, I hate looking at messy underlining/circles/etc.), and sometimes the markings get in the way of words and such.

Via the Economist method, I just got used to answering questions as I read, and so when a question came up I knew exactly where in the passage to look if I wasn't sure. It's a combination of pre-phrasing in LR and making deductions on the diagram in LG. It was quick and efficient for me.

yeah I used to make some marks but recently stopped and have been able to grasp a little bit more while reading and not worrying about underlining n that

peetesLA · Post by **peetesLA** » Sun Dec 28, 2014 4:45 am

So I just did my first LSAT prep whatsoever in over 3 months (I studied for about 6 weeks in the summer) and got a 174 on Preptest 60. -1, -2 on LR, -1 on RC, -4 on LG (must admit at least 3 blind guesses were correct on the games section).

Games by far the hardest section for me. I'm planning to study only that (and PTs) for the next six weeks and take test in Feb. I was planning to take in Dec but my part-time undergrad/full time job schedule wound up squeezing LSAT prep out. Now I'm thinking of applying for 2016 cycle.

I'm far less serious and motivated about this than most of you, but I feel like it would be a shame to not attempt to harness what seems to be innate raw talent for LR and RC into a run at the high 170s or even 180. I'm a recovering drug addict and half of my GPA came before I got clean and it's not pretty. I'm also 36 years old. All of this factors into whether I really want to spend 3 years in full time school.

The good thing is that the second half of my GPA is 3.95 and is at Harvard Extension School (overall GPA probably 3.5 at best). For now I'm only trying to get the highest score possible on the first try, and will go from there.

Hopefully I won't disappear like I did from the December thread.

20170322 · Post by **20170322** » Sun Dec 28, 2014 10:43 am

peetesLA wrote:So I just did my first LSAT prep whatsoever in over 3 months (I studied for about 6 weeks in the summer) and got a 174 on Preptest 60. -1, -2 on LR, -1 on RC, -4 on LG (must admit at least 3 blind guesses were correct on the games section).

Games by far the hardest section for me. I'm planning to study only that (and PTs) for the next six weeks and take test in Feb. I was planning to take in Dec but my part-time undergrad/full time job schedule wound up squeezing LSAT prep out. Now I'm thinking of applying for 2016 cycle.

I'm far less serious and motivated about this than most of you, but I feel like it would be a shame to not attempt to harness what seems to be innate raw talent for LR and RC into a run at the high 170s or even 180. I'm a recovering drug addict and half of my GPA came before I got clean and it's not pretty. I'm also 36 years old. All of this factors into whether I really want to spend 3 years in full time school.

The good thing is that the second half of my GPA is 3.95 and is at Harvard Extension School (overall GPA probably 3.5 at best). For now I'm only trying to get the highest score possible on the first try, and will go from there.

Hopefully I won't disappear like I did from the December thread.

For me, what's been most effective has been doing at least SOME LG every morning. It's one of those things where, if you do a problem wrong, you'll be ruminating on it all day, making the prep more valuable.

NL2424 · Post by **NL2424** » Sun Dec 28, 2014 12:32 pm

Rigo · Post by **Rigo** » Sun Dec 28, 2014 12:37 pm

I<3ScholarlySweets! · Post by **I<3ScholarlySweets!** » Sun Dec 28, 2014 12:41 pm

peetesLA, I'd say you will be too old by the time you graduate LS. If you get BIGLAW, you'd be getting bossed around by people younger and more immature than you. Do you want something that humiliating?

Rigo · Post by **Rigo** » Sun Dec 28, 2014 12:44 pm