October 2012 Retakers Forum

[Pocahontas]

I'm surprisingly relaxed given that I only recently started showing improvement on my score. I'm just trying to carry that into every practice session, PT and ultimately test day.

[Pocahontas]

In regards to the games, there's a few in the 20's and 30's that I found to be great practice for 60's. As I was drilling them they definitely have that modern feel of not being able to put too many things onto main diagram. Nowadays on the new PT's I always get this "I've seen this before" feeling.

Would you mind sharing which ones? I would love to go back and rework those games since I haven't touched them since my first attempt in 2010. I only have PTs 59, 60, 64-66 left and want to only use them for full length practice.

[Br3v]

On break from PT 62 right now, feel good though my 3rd section was LR 1 and I was getting out of it in the last few minutes but think I recognized in time and was able to correct it. ALMOST TIME TO BE DONE WITH LSAT FOR FOREVER!!!!!!!!!!

[chadbrochill]

In regards to the games, there's a few in the 20's and 30's that I found to be great practice for 60's. As I was drilling them they definitely have that modern feel of not being able to put too many things onto main diagram. Nowadays on the new PT's I always get this "I've seen this before" feeling.

Would you mind sharing which ones? I would love to go back and rework those games since I haven't touched them since my first attempt in 2010. I only have PTs 59, 60, 64-66 left and want to only use them for full length practice.

I think it depends on everyone's strengths and weaknesses, but I found 22,23,24,26,31,32,33,36 to all be really good practice. (In particular 23,26,32)

[vinnnyvincenzo]

Any advice on pattern of reasoning questions? Cant seem to get them down in a reasonable time, or at all sometimes. I just hate this exam with a burning passion.

[Volforlife]

ALMOST TIME TO BE DONE WITH LSAT FOR FOREVER!!!!!!!!!!

This.
-10 for a 173 on PT 62 today. I'll take it.

[Br3v]

I forgot how hard stained glass was haha

PT 62
(i somewhat forget exactly what i missed but I know it was a total -9 and scaled 174)
RC -1
exp LG
LR1 -3
LG -3
LR -2

very generous curve, was rushed on LG again, have to fix that

[Jake Wyler]

PT 61

LGx -0
RC -1
LR1 -5
LG -2
LR2 -3

90 raw for a 170, on this my first 5 section PT. Really pleased with that RC score, my best ever, but that's mitigated by how much I struggled on the first LR section. -5 could have been a lot worse, I thought I was getting crushed. Getting 2 wrong on LG is annoying since I legitimately expect perfection every time, and I spent way too much time on one game (10-11 mins).

Getting to crunch time now. To paraphrase Tywin Lannister, "This retake will be my last war. Win or lose."

[defdef]

177 on PT57
179 on PT60

feelin great,

then today i try out PT65

LR -0 (feeling awesome after this first section, i finished with a huge 10 minutes to spare. huge for me anyway. usually i finish with ~5 for an easy LR)
LG -4 (the 3rd game freaked me out and took forever, i didn't make my diagrams very thoroughly and after reviewing, i think it really cost me on that game. went -2 on the 3rd game, and didn't have enough time to finish the 4th)
RC -5 (still haven't reviewed this yet, but i felt solid on most of my answers so bummed on it)
LR -4 (100% more difficult than the first LR section, seriously what the heck was up with the latter half. the questions/answers all seemed ridiculously ambiguous. there were several where i felt like i could really only narrow it down to two. i know that's on me, but it just felt markedly more difficult than what i'd seen before. i wasn't shocked to learn that the curve was pretty lenient on this test, but still bummed on missing 12)

[Honey_Badger]

Took PT64 yesterday (167) , and an LR section from 56. (-5/-6 on 64, -0 on 56).
I can't seem to perfect LR on PTs 60+

With less than two weeks I'm panicking. It's my third and final shot -- help.

This.
I'm panicking--feel the stress when PTing, which is pissing me off because I'm letting the mental stuff psych me out.
Scheduled a massage for Oct. 5. Want to be loose and relaxed.

[RCinDNA]

Took PT64 yesterday (167) , and an LR section from 56. (-5/-6 on 64, -0 on 56).
I can't seem to perfect LR on PTs 60+

With less than two weeks I'm panicking. It's my third and final shot -- help.

This.
I'm panicking--feel the stress when PTing, which is pissing me off because I'm letting the mental stuff psych me out.
Scheduled a massage for Oct. 5. Want to be loose and relaxed.

It's very annoying. I've had to take a couple of days off because thinking about it every day was bringing on burn out and spending more hours trying to learn something I may have missed in the last 6 months seems counter-productive. I was honestly looking into which states allow 'reading law' to take the bar.

[Gisney]

PT 62 today

LR1: -1
LR: -2
RC: -1
LG: -0

Raw: 98
Scaled: 179

Proud of my RC and LG scores. I def see where stained glass slows people down but it is not a hard game in itself. I think the set up and number of questions take so much time people overly freak out about it. The important take away message is to not panic if an earlier game is harder than expected. You will gain your time back in the next games. Or what may work for some people is to skip the difficult one and come back to it last. Although I find this to be a little bit of a time waster because you are already in the mind set of the hard game so you might as well duke it out rather then repositioning your brain to the next game and then having to go back to your original thought process. Just my thoughts.

Disappointed in my LR scores. Obviously they are fine but I had been doing much better previously. Don't want a -3 test day where the curve might be as generous as this test (-14 for a 170! Wow)

On to PT 63 tomorrow!

[RCinDNA]

PT 62 today

LR1: -1
LR: -2
RC: -1
LG: -0

Raw: 98
Scaled: 179

Proud of my RC and LG scores. I def see where stained glass slows people down but it is not a hard game in itself. I think the set up and number of questions take so much time people overly freak out about it. The important take away message is to not panic if an earlier game is harder than expected. You will gain your time back in the next games. Or what may work for some people is to skip the difficult one and come back to it last. Although I find this to be a little bit of a time waster because you are already in the mind set of the hard game so you might as well duke it out rather then repositioning your brain to the next game and then having to go back to your original thought process. Just my thoughts.

Disappointed in my LR scores. Obviously they are fine but I had been doing much better previously. Don't want a -3 test day where the curve might be as generous as this test (-14 for a 170! Wow)

On to PT 63 tomorrow!

FWIW, I agree. I've struggled through the whole LG learning curve getting past major time issues over the last 6+months, and I've found that reading four setups to ID the 'easy' vs 'hard' games ate up more time than it saved. It's often the case that a 'hard' question is easier than you expected since the difficulty, IMHO, lies in the questions and not necessarily the game type. The first question per game tends to be a rules check, anyway, so you could conceivably have read the rules, generated a diagram and up to question 2 before you could figure out how hard or easy the game was. A bunch of must be true questions should allow you to blow up any game, whereas rule replacement might make a simple game into a slog.

[espressocream]

Took PT64 yesterday (167) , and an LR section from 56. (-5/-6 on 64, -0 on 56).
I can't seem to perfect LR on PTs 60+

With less than two weeks I'm panicking. It's my third and final shot -- help.

This.
I'm panicking--feel the stress when PTing, which is pissing me off because I'm letting the mental stuff psych me out.
Scheduled a massage for Oct. 5. Want to be loose and relaxed.

It's very annoying. I've had to take a couple of days off because thinking about it every day was bringing on burn out and spending more hours trying to learn something I may have missed in the last 6 months seems counter-productive. I was honestly looking into which states allow 'reading law' to take the bar.

I took all day off yesterday, but have yet to see if it helped. Clearly avoiding working.

[bdeebs]

Took PT64 yesterday (167) , and an LR section from 56. (-5/-6 on 64, -0 on 56).
I can't seem to perfect LR on PTs 60+

With less than two weeks I'm panicking. It's my third and final shot -- help.

Have you tried moving on when you come to the problems that are troublesome? My breakthrough came from recognizing the time consuming questions, getting as far through them as I could (either reading the stimulus and going WTF!?!? or eliminating a couple answer choices), then moving on. When I started doing this, I'd finish the section with ~5 minutes to spare, then I'd go back to the hard questions (usually around 4 or 5 in the beginning, then 1-3 as I got more comfortable) and the questions just made a lot more sense the second go around. And because I had seen them before, I could cherry pick which ones I would most likely be able to complete and leave the WTF!?!? questions for the very end.

[Gisney]

Today I gain readmission into the 170 club. PT63, prepare for evisceration.

Retakers, see you in a few hours.

169, the whole thing felt like an abortion. I let myself get caught up in the first RC passage and went -5. I freaked out on the first game and missed a gimmie, not only that but on the last game I couldnt seem to stop thinking GW had to happen when in fact it was WG.

Now I have to go write a fucking econ paper.

Ok I think I'm going to go PT51.5 Friday followed by drilling games from 58-63. Saturday I'll hit up 64. Drilling like hell Monday. PT65 tues morn, review. PT66 Wednesday, review. Then Friday some RC passages untimed to get my confidence up.

My average over the last 5 PTs is 169.7 but God I need 170+. I cannot waste this 3.91 GPA.

Dude I will kick your ass if you don't make 170+!

But seriously would you settle for less? I mean with that GPA you could be talking holy trinity

[espressocream]

Took PT64 yesterday (167) , and an LR section from 56. (-5/-6 on 64, -0 on 56).
I can't seem to perfect LR on PTs 60+

With less than two weeks I'm panicking. It's my third and final shot -- help.

Have you tried moving on when you come to the problems that are troublesome? My breakthrough came from recognizing the time consuming questions, getting as far through them as I could (either reading the stimulus and going WTF!?!? or eliminating a couple answer choices), then moving on. When I started doing this, I'd finish the section with ~5 minutes to spare, then I'd go back to the hard questions (usually around 4 or 5 in the beginning, then 1-3 as I got more comfortable) and the questions just made a lot more sense the second go around. And because I had seen them before, I could cherry pick which ones I would most likely be able to complete and leave the WTF!?!? questions for the very end.

I will go try this method right now. That might help because I do get stuck on questions where nothing looks right at first glance.

[Honey_Badger]

PT 62 today

LR1: -1
LR: -2
RC: -1
LG: -0

Raw: 98
Scaled: 179

Proud of my RC and LG scores. I def see where stained glass slows people down but it is not a hard game in itself. I think the set up and number of questions take so much time people overly freak out about it. The important take away message is to not panic if an earlier game is harder than expected. You will gain your time back in the next games. Or what may work for some people is to skip the difficult one and come back to it last. Although I find this to be a little bit of a time waster because you are already in the mind set of the hard game so you might as well duke it out rather then repositioning your brain to the next game and then having to go back to your original thought process. Just my thoughts.

Disappointed in my LR scores. Obviously they are fine but I had been doing much better previously. Don't want a -3 test day where the curve might be as generous as this test (-14 for a 170! Wow)

On to PT 63 tomorrow!

I did this one today--you SHOULD be extremely proud of your entire score, but especially the -0 on LG. I did exactly what you said--I panicked. (I also thought of TLS...I was like, "here's that fucking stained glass everyone talks about...") Ironically, I panicked more on the conference schedule day (time was running out FAST, and I skipped it to move on to the others) but only missed one on that one.

I may do PT63 tomorrow as well...you guys are motivating me to kick it into high gear! (I am running out of reasons to miss so much work, though....)

[shntn]

Wait, just dropping in since this shows up in "View Your Posts," but PT62 was the stained glass one? And you got a 179? Well done indeed!!!! I took that baby IRL and as a PT for this June's test and didn't get anywhere near that. Kudos, all, and keep up the great work!

[cc.celina]

If I get HYS I swear I'll star talking like Scarlett O'Harra. "oh my, well I do declay'er"

QFP

[NoodleyOne]

Two straight 178s, and -0 RC.

Feels good man.

[RCinDNA]

If I get HYS I swear I'll star talking like Scarlett O'Harra. "oh my, well I do declay'er"

QFP

QFP?

I was told it means Quoted for Posterity

[052220151]

Just ran into the mauve dinosaur. WTF?

[dba415]

feels good..

Just retook the December 2011 test, the LSAT I actually took and scored 163 on.

LR1: -2
LG1: -0
LR2: -2
RC: -4

Score: 175

Awesome feeling, especially since this is the one test where I for sure never reviewed last year when I was prepping, so it feels more valid than retaking the PTs I took last year. It's also my highest score ever on a PT. The only benefit I had was that I remember the subject of a couple logic games and a couple reading passages, but I never reviewed, never looking at the right answers.

Fun looking at the answers I put now versus the answers I put last year, wondering how did I miss that. Of course, test-day nerves are going to be a factor, like it was last year, but I think the 2nd time around I'll be more able to manage.

[Err26]

Any advice for a retaker with major difficulties on RC? Today I missed more on RC than on my other 3 sections combined! HELP! I'm reading the RC Powerscore Bible and also Manhattan LSAT, and nothing seems to help. RC is the only thing keeping me out of the 170s and Idk what to do because it's the least learnable, with just over a week to go til test day. Any advice would be appreciated!