The Official September 2016 Study Group - WAKE ME UP WHEN SEPTEMBER ENDS Forum

[Alexandros]

So in the LG lesson, JY said something to the extent of "every LG you see will have a genetic twin of some sort in another LG."

That's actually a relief for me to hear bc I've been scared to try the more recent games (which I obviously will when I start PTing) after all the horror stories I have heard on the threads.

They're pretty much identical, but, occasionally, you may need to accommodate some type of twist. Typically, they aren't that hard, but they can be a little hard to see if you are too rigid in your approach.

Obviously this doesn't apply to every game or every set, I think many people (myself included) find the more recent games are a good deal easier. If you've mastered the skills to solve the older games, the newer games will be fully within your capabilities. You've got nothing to worry about!
I think many of the LG score drops on this thread result from the testing experience (nerves / endurance) more than the games themselves being substantially more difficult.

[ngogirl12]

So in the LG lesson, JY said something to the extent of "every LG you see will have a genetic twin of some sort in another LG."

That's actually a relief for me to hear bc I've been scared to try the more recent games (which I obviously will when I start PTing) after all the horror stories I have heard on the threads.

They're pretty much identical, but, occasionally, you may need to accommodate some type of twist. Typically, they aren't that hard, but they can be a little hard to see if you are too rigid in your approach.

Obviously this doesn't apply to every game or every set, I think many people (myself included) find the more recent games are a good deal easier. If you've mastered the skills to solve the older games, the newer games will be fully within your capabilities. You've got nothing to worry about!
I think many of the LG score drops on this thread result from the testing experience (nerves / endurance) more than the games themselves being substantially more difficult.

Oh that's good to hear! I've been focusing on the 1-38 Cambridge set, now incorporating it in the LG lessons as HW. So, hopefully there is nothing to fear!

[ngogirl12]

So in the LG lesson, JY said something to the extent of "every LG you see will have a genetic twin of some sort in another LG."

That's actually a relief for me to hear bc I've been scared to try the more recent games (which I obviously will when I start PTing) after all the horror stories I have heard on the threads.

They're pretty much identical, but, occasionally, you may need to accommodate some type of twist. Typically, they aren't that hard, but they can be a little hard to see if you are too rigid in your approach.

What do you mean by too rigid in your approach? Only expecting to approach the game by applying the rules or a certain strategy? Just trying to understand so I am NOT to rigid in my approach lol.

Thanks for the input.

[Mikey]

Any advice on how to get faster at finishing LR sections? I usually always have at least 2 or 3 questions left by the time the 35 min mark is up. I've only ever finished an LR section early once, and on time a few times but I sacrificed accuracy for those times.

[chicharon]

51 days to Sept. 24

[34iplaw]

So in the LG lesson, JY said something to the extent of "every LG you see will have a genetic twin of some sort in another LG."

That's actually a relief for me to hear bc I've been scared to try the more recent games (which I obviously will when I start PTing) after all the horror stories I have heard on the threads.

They're pretty much identical, but, occasionally, you may need to accommodate some type of twist. Typically, they aren't that hard, but they can be a little hard to see if you are too rigid in your approach.

What do you mean by too rigid in your approach? Only expecting to approach the game by applying the rules or a certain strategy? Just trying to understand so I am NOT to rigid in my approach lol.

Thanks for the input.

Dec 2011 Game 4 is a good example. It's a super simple sequencing game except... I wouldn't bother unless you've done it already. This is the one that I just did that comes to mind.

[+] Spoiler

You should start by sequencing the slots by half hour blocks, and, once you place the GG block, you change those two slots to one slot and change times to 1-5. Otherwise, you waste a ton of time (as I did) in your head trying to go back and forth between times and slots since a show could be in the 3rd time slot but be either the 2nd or third show.

[Mikey]

51 days to Sept. 24

120 here i come

[chicharon]

51 days to Sept. 24

120 here i come

Dude honestly I was just looking at the calendar earlier and I'm scared af

[Mikey]

51 days to Sept. 24

120 here i come

Dude honestly I was just looking at the calendar earlier and I'm scared af

Same. I just want to get beyond this point of taking this stupid ass test and move on already. So i'm pretty motivated to destroy this test and never look at it again.

[34iplaw]

51 days to Sept. 24

120 here i come

Dude honestly I was just looking at the calendar earlier and I'm scared af

Same. I just want to get beyond this point of taking this stupid ass test and move on already. So i'm pretty motivated to destroy this test and never look at it again.

I don't really see how people take this test and love it enough afterwards to teach it.

[Mikey]

51 days to Sept. 24

120 here i come

Dude honestly I was just looking at the calendar earlier and I'm scared af

Same. I just want to get beyond this point of taking this stupid ass test and move on already. So i'm pretty motivated to destroy this test and never look at it again.

I don't really see how people take this test and love it enough afterwards to teach it.

lsat tutors for companies like manhattan, etc. might get paid decent, but they're insane.

[tofuspeedstar]

So I fucked up pretty bad putting my pt60 results into 7sage.

[34iplaw]

51 days to Sept. 24

120 here i come

Dude honestly I was just looking at the calendar earlier and I'm scared af

Same. I just want to get beyond this point of taking this stupid ass test and move on already. So i'm pretty motivated to destroy this test and never look at it again.

I don't really see how people take this test and love it enough afterwards to teach it.

lsat tutors for companies like manhattan, etc. might get paid decent, but they're insane.

I mean it's certainly possible, but, in general, their tutors are probably fairly capable of getting a big law job after law school. I suppose the hourly wage could be a lot better. Then again, anyone going into law is probably a little nuts.

[Doubting Law]

Scored 156 on the last two proctored PT's I did. Hopefully I'll be able raise my floor to at least 160 by test day. Also, I thought I bombed the shit out of my last PT (left seven answers blank on the LG section), and still got a 156, which although being far from a 180 is still a good enough score to get me into my state school.

[Alexandros]

Any advice on how to get faster at finishing LR sections? I usually always have at least 2 or 3 questions left by the time the 35 min mark is up. I've only ever finished an LR section early once, and on time a few times but I sacrificed accuracy for those times.

Do the easiest questions quickly, because there will likely be some questions on any section you'll want to have a full two minutes to do. Get very good at being able to predict the flaws / assumptions / what would logically follow in advance on the easy questions - go through the answer choices and select the one that matches your understanding of the flaw, and eliminate the ones that don't match, and move on. I think at a certain point you can get quite good at doing this intuitively, and don't have to think very hard to eliminate an answer, and thus can easily do a question in under a minute.

[chicharon]

So I fucked up pretty bad putting my pt60 results into 7sage.

It's OK. Brush it off, review, and move on.

[34iplaw]

That is a completely garbage question - Feb 1997 LR1 #12. I got it down to what was the right answer and what was the sucker choice... details in spoiler if anyone cares to look at it or is familiar with it.

[+] Spoiler

Question is about Sarah the mechanic who gives her advice to her friend John about a used car. She had previously lied to her friend Emmett about her opinion, and she lied to him. Therefore, Sarah probably lied when she told John about the condition of the used car.

[A] is a 'fails to offer any grounds' for an ad hominem. You could say that it maybe teeters on ad hominem, but, even if it does, there is basis for it. She has lied in the past.

both claims are in the past nor is it confusing someone else's claims.

[C] right answer, but I fail to see how it bases a 'sweeping claim' ... the rest of the answer choice is fine

[D] is wrong. it's not a loaded circular reasoning type thing.

[E] I felt sucks because the question is about her lying not judging based on her abilities. I don't really know why I picked E over C, but I don't really see why either is right.

[tofuspeedstar]

Any advice on how to get faster at finishing LR sections? I usually always have at least 2 or 3 questions left by the time the 35 min mark is up. I've only ever finished an LR section early once, and on time a few times but I sacrificed accuracy for those times.

Do the easiest questions quickly, because there will likely be some questions on any section you'll want to have a full two minutes to do. Get very good at being able to predict the flaws / assumptions / what would logically follow in advance on the easy questions - go through the answer choices and select the one that matches your understanding of the flaw, and eliminate the ones that don't match, and move on. I think at a certain point you can get quite good at doing this intuitively, and don't have to think very hard to eliminate an answer, and thus can easily do a question in under a minute.

via 7sage:

Now, to bring the analogy home, imagine each of those 25 coconuts had a number on them, 1-25, like the LSAT questions are numbered 1-25. The ground-lying-coconuts, those 12 easy to get coconuts, are numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, 13, 14, 21, 22 and 25. Those 7 medium difficulty, shake-me-loose-coconuts, are numbered 5, 7, 10, 11, 17, 19 and 24. Those 6 difficult-to-get-way-up-on-the-top-of-the-stupid-tree coconuts are numbered 9, 15, 16, 18, 20, 23. The way you approach your LSAT sections ought to mirror the way you approach your coconut collecting. Get the easiest ones first! Save the harder ones for later. This way, you ensure that each incremental minute of time you spend on answering a question is spent on the lowest hanging question, the easiest coconut. This must become a habit.

[Mikey]

Any advice on how to get faster at finishing LR sections? I usually always have at least 2 or 3 questions left by the time the 35 min mark is up. I've only ever finished an LR section early once, and on time a few times but I sacrificed accuracy for those times.

Do the easiest questions quickly, because there will likely be some questions on any section you'll want to have a full two minutes to do. Get very good at being able to predict the flaws / assumptions / what would logically follow in advance on the easy questions - go through the answer choices and select the one that matches your understanding of the flaw, and eliminate the ones that don't match, and move on. I think at a certain point you can get quite good at doing this intuitively, and don't have to think very hard to eliminate an answer, and thus can easily do a question in under a minute.

I do do the easiest ones the fastest makes no difference for me though, which is what blows my mind. I just did a timed LR section and tried doing 15-26 first, which i did in 21:59 when I glanced at the stopwatch. This helped a bit with accuracy for the harder questions but when I went to do 1-14 I got 4 wrong in the easier ones (they actually were easier ones, not just because they were earlier). I went -5, so I only got 1 wrong in the tougher ones.

wtf is wrong with me

[Alexandros]

Any advice on how to get faster at finishing LR sections? I usually always have at least 2 or 3 questions left by the time the 35 min mark is up. I've only ever finished an LR section early once, and on time a few times but I sacrificed accuracy for those times.

Do the easiest questions quickly, because there will likely be some questions on any section you'll want to have a full two minutes to do. Get very good at being able to predict the flaws / assumptions / what would logically follow in advance on the easy questions - go through the answer choices and select the one that matches your understanding of the flaw, and eliminate the ones that don't match, and move on. I think at a certain point you can get quite good at doing this intuitively, and don't have to think very hard to eliminate an answer, and thus can easily do a question in under a minute.

via 7sage:

Now, to bring the analogy home, imagine each of those 25 coconuts had a number on them, 1-25, like the LSAT questions are numbered 1-25. The ground-lying-coconuts, those 12 easy to get coconuts, are numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, 13, 14, 21, 22 and 25. Those 7 medium difficulty, shake-me-loose-coconuts, are numbered 5, 7, 10, 11, 17, 19 and 24. Those 6 difficult-to-get-way-up-on-the-top-of-the-stupid-tree coconuts are numbered 9, 15, 16, 18, 20, 23. The way you approach your LSAT sections ought to mirror the way you approach your coconut collecting. Get the easiest ones first! Save the harder ones for later. This way, you ensure that each incremental minute of time you spend on answering a question is spent on the lowest hanging question, the easiest coconut. This must become a habit.

^^^^
Totally.

I personally don't skip questions and haven't had any success with that, but I'm 100% with the philosophy behind this.

[Alexandros]

Any advice on how to get faster at finishing LR sections? I usually always have at least 2 or 3 questions left by the time the 35 min mark is up. I've only ever finished an LR section early once, and on time a few times but I sacrificed accuracy for those times.

Do the easiest questions quickly, because there will likely be some questions on any section you'll want to have a full two minutes to do. Get very good at being able to predict the flaws / assumptions / what would logically follow in advance on the easy questions - go through the answer choices and select the one that matches your understanding of the flaw, and eliminate the ones that don't match, and move on. I think at a certain point you can get quite good at doing this intuitively, and don't have to think very hard to eliminate an answer, and thus can easily do a question in under a minute.

I do do the easiest ones the fastest makes no difference for me though, which is what blows my mind. I just did a timed LR section and tried doing 15-26 first, which i did in 21:59 when I glanced at the stopwatch. This helped a bit with accuracy for the harder questions but when I went to do 1-14 I got 4 wrong in the easier ones (they actually were easier ones, not just because they were earlier). I went -5, so I only got 1 wrong in the tougher ones.

wtf is wrong with me

Hey, -5 isn't too bad!

I'm not sure if spotting the flaw is a problem for you time-wise, but one thing that helped me is going through one of the drills in the Trainer where they have you write out the flaw or the assumption for a bunch of stimuli, and instead of writing them, saying the flaw out loud (or like, kind of out loud, depending on the situation).

Don't give up. I really struggled with timing for a while as well, and managed ~26 minutes on the last four LR sections I drilled. You'll get there.

[Mikey]

Any advice on how to get faster at finishing LR sections? I usually always have at least 2 or 3 questions left by the time the 35 min mark is up. I've only ever finished an LR section early once, and on time a few times but I sacrificed accuracy for those times.

Do the easiest questions quickly, because there will likely be some questions on any section you'll want to have a full two minutes to do. Get very good at being able to predict the flaws / assumptions / what would logically follow in advance on the easy questions - go through the answer choices and select the one that matches your understanding of the flaw, and eliminate the ones that don't match, and move on. I think at a certain point you can get quite good at doing this intuitively, and don't have to think very hard to eliminate an answer, and thus can easily do a question in under a minute.

I do do the easiest ones the fastest makes no difference for me though, which is what blows my mind. I just did a timed LR section and tried doing 15-26 first, which i did in 21:59 when I glanced at the stopwatch. This helped a bit with accuracy for the harder questions but when I went to do 1-14 I got 4 wrong in the easier ones (they actually were easier ones, not just because they were earlier). I went -5, so I only got 1 wrong in the tougher ones.

wtf is wrong with me

Hey, -5 isn't too bad!

I'm not sure if spotting the flaw is a problem for you time-wise, but one thing that helped me is going through one of the drills in the Trainer where they have you write out the flaw or the assumption for a bunch of stimuli, and instead of writing them, saying the flaw out loud (or like, kind of out loud, depending on the situation).

Don't give up. I really struggled with timing for a while as well, and managed ~26 minutes on the last four LR sections I drilled. You'll get there.

Yeah, I think if I can pre-phrase for almost all of the questions, I will get slightly faster. I can pre-phrase for like half of the questions in the section, but the other half I usually have a feel for what the answer could be but I'm not certain on it so I go to the A/Cs. I think I could benefit from an exercise like the one you said is in the trainer, I'll look into doing something like that on my own with some questions or something.

Yeah, I mean -5 isn't so bad, but when 4 of them come from the easy ones, it's pretty upsetting. Idk why that's been happening to me a lot lately, I'm starting to get the easier ones wrong, like dafukk.

[34iplaw]

Any advice on how to get faster at finishing LR sections? I usually always have at least 2 or 3 questions left by the time the 35 min mark is up. I've only ever finished an LR section early once, and on time a few times but I sacrificed accuracy for those times.

Do the easiest questions quickly, because there will likely be some questions on any section you'll want to have a full two minutes to do. Get very good at being able to predict the flaws / assumptions / what would logically follow in advance on the easy questions - go through the answer choices and select the one that matches your understanding of the flaw, and eliminate the ones that don't match, and move on. I think at a certain point you can get quite good at doing this intuitively, and don't have to think very hard to eliminate an answer, and thus can easily do a question in under a minute.

I do do the easiest ones the fastest makes no difference for me though, which is what blows my mind. I just did a timed LR section and tried doing 15-26 first, which i did in 21:59 when I glanced at the stopwatch. This helped a bit with accuracy for the harder questions but when I went to do 1-14 I got 4 wrong in the easier ones (they actually were easier ones, not just because they were earlier). I went -5, so I only got 1 wrong in the tougher ones.

wtf is wrong with me

Hey, -5 isn't too bad!

I'm not sure if spotting the flaw is a problem for you time-wise, but one thing that helped me is going through one of the drills in the Trainer where they have you write out the flaw or the assumption for a bunch of stimuli, and instead of writing them, saying the flaw out loud (or like, kind of out loud, depending on the situation).

Don't give up. I really struggled with timing for a while as well, and managed ~26 minutes on the last four LR sections I drilled. You'll get there.

Yeah, I think if I can pre-phrase for almost all of the questions, I will get slightly faster. I can pre-phrase for like half of the questions in the section, but the other half I usually have a feel for what the answer could be but I'm not certain on it so I go to the A/Cs. I think I could benefit from an exercise like the one you said is in the trainer, I'll look into doing something like that on my own with some questions or something.

Yeah, I mean -5 isn't so bad, but when 4 of them come from the easy ones, it's pretty upsetting. Idk why that's been happening to me a lot lately, I'm starting to get the easier ones wrong, like dafukk.

I get easy ones wrong at least as often as hard ones. I think it is, in part, overthinking some of them.

[SunDevil14]

Burn out is real, how do you guys deal with stress and anxiety?

I think my desire to do well, and the pressure I am putting on myself is effecting my performance.

Tbh I'm cutting back studying and convincing myself that this is a proctored PT and that the real test is in December.

True. I suppose it helps to think of the September test as being an early deadline. If I am not hitting my targets, then I can always postpone to December without much detriment.

[ngogirl12]

So in the LG lesson, JY said something to the extent of "every LG you see will have a genetic twin of some sort in another LG."

That's actually a relief for me to hear bc I've been scared to try the more recent games (which I obviously will when I start PTing) after all the horror stories I have heard on the threads.

They're pretty much identical, but, occasionally, you may need to accommodate some type of twist. Typically, they aren't that hard, but they can be a little hard to see if you are too rigid in your approach.

What do you mean by too rigid in your approach? Only expecting to approach the game by applying the rules or a certain strategy? Just trying to understand so I am NOT to rigid in my approach lol.

Thanks for the input.

Dec 2011 Game 4 is a good example. It's a super simple sequencing game except... I wouldn't bother unless you've done it already. This is the one that I just did that comes to mind.

[+] Spoiler

You should start by sequencing the slots by half hour blocks, and, once you place the GG block, you change those two slots to one slot and change times to 1-5. Otherwise, you waste a ton of time (as I did) in your head trying to go back and forth between times and slots since a show could be in the 3rd time slot but be either the 2nd or third show.

I'll check that out, thanks!