Five Weeks Until February 2016 LSAT - Preparation Feedback Forum

[7Steps]

Hey everybody,

I'm taking the February LSAT and would appreciate your feedback on my preparation plans for the next five weeks. A bit of background: I took my first diagnostic in May 2014 (I think I scored a 158?) with the intention of taking it in February 2015. A few projects that I was working on took much more time than I had expected, so I ended up postponing for basically a year. In between, I casually studied by going through the 7Sage lessons but haven't taken an actual prep-test until today (166.) The breakdown was:

-8 on LG (didn't finish)
-5 on LR #1
-3 on LR #2
-3 on RC

As expected, I began to feel the fatigue of doing twenty-five problems in a row that I hadn't encountered in my drilling as I went through the sections. In review (apart from LG), nearly all of my mistakes were from carelessness as opposed to a fundamental misunderstanding of the material.

Not to be "that guy" but in preparation and in theory I'm working towards a 180. If I get a 173+, I'll be happy. If I get between 170-172, I won't be happy but likely wouldn't retake. For anything below that, I'll retake.

I'm a college senior and have the entire J-Term (next five weeks) to study with no other obligations or distractions. Given where I'm at, I feel optimistic about hearing the common refrain that LG is the easiest section to consistently get to -0 at but am wary of using that as an excuse to take it lightly. Keeping all of this in mind, I plan on PT'ing every day/every other day until February 6th and then extensively going over my mistakes. I'll also go through the 7Sage LG lessons over the next three days to get a firmer foundation before I dive in.

Keeping all of this in mind, are there any suggestions that you have for using my time effectively, zoning in on those LG's, and fighting through the fatigue? I think that the former will come through sheer repetition, but if there are any strategies for a relatively fresh PTer that you would recommend, I'd love to hear them.

Thanks so much! I'll probably be posting a lot over the next month, so looking forward to getting out of long-time lurker status.

[7Steps]

Update: I've been following the outlined plan and am feeling a bit of burnout, as evidenced by my PT scores (I've fluctuated anywhere from 177 to 164 in the last four days.) I think that I more or less understand the majority of the material at this point but am having trouble concentrating. Does anybody have tips for this? On the one hand, I've read that PTing is the only way to solidify a higher score. On the other hand, I have reason to believe that it's affecting my mental stamina.

[eml123]

You're most likely burning out. I had the same thing happen. I generally saw the greatest PT score increases when I took a couple days off. I would suggest slowing down a little bit and going for quality over quantity at this point. Maybe practice the question types you struggle with in between PT days. Good Luck!

[RamTitan]

Definitely cool off for a couple of day and then get back at it.

I'm curious, what enabled you to spike up to 177 so quickly? I've been stuck in the 167-171 range for about 4 months now.

[7Steps]

Thanks for the replies. I agree, changing the tempo up a little.

@RamTitan, over time most of my misses were concentrated in LG so I watched a ton of 7Sage videos over the span of a few days and worked them over and over. There seem to be five or six general patterns that reoccur, so once I worked through them a few times it become easier to replicate.

With RC, I found that if I was reading a few books while studying I generally scored higher. Weird but it might work.

I also did the majority of my studying informally (no extensive drilling or PTs) over the course of a year, so sitting down and PTing over and over was a bit of a transition. I think that once I got used to taking the test it helped a lot.

Is there a particular section that you're missing questions on?

[railyard]

Definitely spend time drilling those LG sections! Your other sections seem really good!