Looking for advice on study schedule for September LSAT Forum

[diiggidy]

Hi all,

I've been studying for the September LSAT for around a month now, and i'm close to being done reading the prep books. I purchased the 3 Manhattan LSAT books, LG bible, and the LSAT trainer, and will only have the LSAT trainer left to read as of Friday. My plan was to get through these books as quick as I could so that I could begin drilling, and then look over the respective chapters when drilling. However, this reading took longer than expected, and I have yet to begin actual drilling from the Cambridge packets. With that said, i'm somewhat anxious to begin drilling to really start improving and am looking for advice for scheduling my study plan.

I intend to stick to my plan of going back through the chapters quickly during drilling, but don't know if I should go through the LSAT Trainer before or during drilling? I have all the cambridge packets (1-38) and PTs 39-70, which I intend on (hopefully) going through before the test. I know this is different for every person, but I want to make sure I'm giving myself enough time to get through this material. How long would you say it typically takes to "properly" go through the packets (i'm studying full time this summer and try to get 5-6 hours in a day, which seems to work pretty well for me). I plan on doing focused drilling through July with maybe a PT a week, and then ramping PTs up to 2-3 times a week in August. Classes start for me in September, so i'll try to continue as much studying as I can but want to get as much done before then as possible. Thanks for any advice you can give

[bombaysippin]

Drill while you do the Trainer. I don't see any problems with that. I feel like you should have been drilling from the get go with the lessons from whatever books you were using, since it would help reinforce the lessons more on each respective type of question.

gluck

[Jeffort]

Start drilling right away. Learning LSAT information is just phase one of a three phase process.
You have to drill to get experience applying the information/knowledge you gained from the books to actual questions in order to build skills and good habits.

Actual hands on test day skills are mainly built through drilling properly with thorough review every step of the way with every question you attempt, whether you get it right or wrong, so get into doing it and start drilling ASAP. Review the relevant chapters about whatever question type when you drill and review them to help identify your mistakes/weaknesses more efficiently to hopefully build your skills faster.

Solid review and making refinements to your approach every step of the way based on deep review is the most direct path to improving your score as quickly as possible. Quality drilling is key, not quantity, so make sure to really do deep through review of questions and your actual hands on thought processes/approach to identify weaknesses/mistakes so you can fix them.

Don't prioritize quantity of drilling (volume of questions) over the quality of what you do with each question. Only going through 20 LR questions in a several hour session with quality review is going to help your score way more than burning through 50+ questions in the same amount of time with less review and little to no time dedicated to making adjustments to your approach in between questions based on mistakes from previous questions and what you learned from reviewing them. Your study plan/schedule shouldn't focus on quantity of questions goals/packet completion dates/deadlines to get through X amount of materials. Instead, your study plan should be focused on and revolve around building skills and accuracy rate with higher difficulty level questions of each type since those are the ones you need to master for scoring 160+. You shouldn't aim to finish each LR Q type packet before moving onto another Q type first time drilling each type since you'll need to revisit and drill more for each Q type later down the road once you start doing timed practice and figure out types you initially suck at under time pressure or have problems with on many PTs. Focus on mastering each Q type, meaning building your skills up to be able to have close to 100% accuracy with level 3 and 4 difficulty questions. You don't need to do all the questions in a packet to master the question type if you use them correctly. Focus on building accuracy rate on higher difficulty level versions (cambridge levels 3 and 4) of each type during drilling if you are going for a 160s-170s range score.

[diiggidy]

Start drilling right away. Learning LSAT information is just phase one of a three phase process.
You have to drill to get experience applying the information/knowledge you gained from the books to actual questions in order to build skills and good habits.

Actual hands on test day skills are mainly built through drilling properly with thorough review every step of the way with every question you attempt, whether you get it right or wrong, so get into doing it and start drilling ASAP. Review the relevant chapters about whatever question type when you drill and review them to help identify your mistakes/weaknesses more efficiently to hopefully build your skills faster.

Solid review and making refinements to your approach every step of the way based on deep review is the most direct path to improving your score as quickly as possible. Quality drilling is key, not quantity, so make sure to really do deep through review of questions and your actual hands on thought processes/approach to identify weaknesses/mistakes so you can fix them.

Don't prioritize quantity of drilling (volume of questions) over the quality of what you do with each question. Only going through 20 LR questions in a several hour session with quality review is going to help your score way more than burning through 50+ questions in the same amount of time with less review and little to no time dedicated to making adjustments to your approach in between questions based on mistakes from previous questions and what you learned from reviewing them. Your study plan/schedule shouldn't focus on quantity of questions goals/packet completion dates/deadlines to get through X amount of materials. Instead, your study plan should be focused on and revolve around building skills and accuracy rate with higher difficulty level questions of each type since those are the ones you need to master for scoring 160+. You shouldn't aim to finish each LR Q type packet before moving onto another Q type first time drilling each type since you'll need to revisit and drill more for each Q type later down the road once you start doing timed practice and figure out types you initially suck at under time pressure or have problems with on many PTs. Focus on mastering each Q type, meaning building your skills up to be able to have close to 100% accuracy with level 3 and 4 difficulty questions. You don't need to do all the questions in a packet to master the question type if you use them correctly. Focus on building accuracy rate on higher difficulty level versions (cambridge levels 3 and 4) of each type during drilling if you are going for a 160s-170s range score.

I agree with everything you said. I didn't drill initially when going through the books because I wanted to get through them faster, and thought the problems they put in each chapter already helped solidify the ideas in my head. I'm going to try to finish the Manhattan RC book this week, and then start drilling while going through the LSAT trainer next week. I understand that drilling is by far the most important part of studying in terms of improving my overall score, but I'm still not clear on what the best method of drilling is. Obviously it'll be a bit different depending on the person, but while drilling should I do one question at a time (or one game at a time for LG) or multiple before I check the answer. Should I time myself at all while drilling initially? I know the idea is to thoroughly go through each problem and understand exactly why each answer was right/wrong, but still don't know the "best" way to go about this. Also, just as reference my cold diagnostic was a 160, and my goal is a 174+. Thanks for your advice

[fra]

I understand that drilling is by far the most important part of studying in terms of improving my overall score, but I'm still not clear on what the best method of drilling is. Obviously it'll be a bit different depending on the person, but while drilling should I do one question at a time (or one game at a time for LG) or multiple before I check the answer. Should I time myself at all while drilling initially? I know the idea is to thoroughly go through each problem and understand exactly why each answer was right/wrong, but still don't know the "best" way to go about this. Also, just as reference my cold diagnostic was a 160, and my goal is a 174+. Thanks for your advice

I'm also studying for September. My drilling method varies by section.
For LG and RC I'm doing one game or reading section at a time, answering all of the questions and then checking the answers and reviewing the game/section before moving on to the next.
For LR I finish an entire preptest section and then go over the whole section at once. Every LR question that I miss or don't feel 100% confident about gets typed up in a word doc to be reviewed later.

I don't move on from any drilling section (single LG, RC passage, or LR section) until I understand every correct answer and feel confident that I won't miss a similar question in the future. I don't restrict the amount of time I use on any drilling section, but I do time each section and record the amount of time elapsed.

I'm using 10 of the earlier preptests to drill, just working my way through the book.

I take at least one timed preptest that I haven't seen before under simulated testing conditions a week, so that I can monitor progress and see where I fail under time pressure. I use the full tests to see where I need to focus during my drills.

Obviously the best method is the one that works for you. If you aren't seeing progress then do something different!

[diiggidy]

I understand that drilling is by far the most important part of studying in terms of improving my overall score, but I'm still not clear on what the best method of drilling is. Obviously it'll be a bit different depending on the person, but while drilling should I do one question at a time (or one game at a time for LG) or multiple before I check the answer. Should I time myself at all while drilling initially? I know the idea is to thoroughly go through each problem and understand exactly why each answer was right/wrong, but still don't know the "best" way to go about this. Also, just as reference my cold diagnostic was a 160, and my goal is a 174+. Thanks for your advice

I'm also studying for September. My drilling method varies by section.
For LG and RC I'm doing one game or reading section at a time, answering all of the questions and then checking the answers and reviewing the game/section before moving on to the next.
For LR I finish an entire preptest section and then go over the whole section at once. Every LR question that I miss or don't feel 100% confident about gets typed up in a word doc to be reviewed later.

I don't move on from any drilling section (single LG, RC passage, or LR section) until I understand every correct answer and feel confident that I won't miss a similar question in the future. I don't restrict the amount of time I use on any drilling section, but I do time each section and record the amount of time elapsed.

I'm using 10 of the earlier preptests to drill, just working my way through the book.

I take at least one timed preptest that I haven't seen before under simulated testing conditions a week, so that I can monitor progress and see where I fail under time pressure. I use the full tests to see where I need to focus during my drills.

Obviously the best method is the one that works for you. If you aren't seeing progress then do something different!

Are you using the Cambridge packets at all for drilling, or just slowly going through full preptests?

[fra]

Are you using the Cambridge packets at all for drilling, or just slowly going through full preptests?

I'm going through the full preptests. I'm using one of the books with 10 pt in them and just going through section by section. So if the first section in a test is LR, I do the entire LR section - don't move on until I understand everything, then move to the next section in the test and do the same. I noticed that if I focused on just one section type for too long, my skills in the other sections would get a little rusty. It's worked better for me to switch up the question types fairly often - which using the regular PT to drill is doing.

Also I'm too cheap to buy the Cambridge packets.