Study Plan for June LSAT (Jan 2022 Score: 152)

[Sundin13]

Hello Everyone!

Background- After completing the Logic Games Bible last October, I took a two month course with Manhattan Prep at the end of the year and went from a 146 diagnostic to a 152 score on the January 2022 LSAT. My weakest section is LG. I was only able to successfully get to two games in the January exam & blind guessed two whole games!

Plan- I'd really like to write the June 2022 LSAT, but I will not hesitate to delay it until October/November if I am not scoring in my target range (158-162).  I liked the Manhattan Prep LR & RC material and I believe that is what helped me get a 152, while doing horrible on LG.  I'd like to think that with revision and more targeted practice, I can build upon LR/RC and raise my score.

Question- My question is concerning LG, as it is my weakest section.  What would some of the best ways be to prepare for LG such that when June comes around I can go in confidently & pick up 20+ points on the LG section?  I have heard 7sage and their "foolproof method" is the way to go, would it be realistic/practical to go through their LG and have that section solid for June? I am studying full-time at this stage.  I enjoy studying for the LSAT and leading up to the January test I was able to comfortably study 6-8+ hours per day.

Any input/advice would be highly appreciated 🙂 

[soundofconfusion]

1 hour ago, Sundin13 said:

Hello Everyone!

Background- After completing the Logic Games Bible last October, I took a two month course with Manhattan Prep at the end of the year and went from a 146 diagnostic to a 152 score on the January 2022 LSAT. My weakest section is LG. I was only able to successfully get to two games in the January exam & blind guessed two whole games!

Plan- I'd really like to write the June 2022 LSAT, but I will not hesitate to delay it until October/November if I am not scoring in my target range (158-162).  I liked the Manhattan Prep LR & RC material and I believe that is what helped me get a 152, while doing horrible on LG.  I'd like to think that with revision and more targeted practice, I can build upon LR/RC and raise my score.

Question- My question is concerning LG, as it is my weakest section.  What would some of the best ways be to prepare for LG such that when June comes around I can go in confidently & pick up 20+ points on the LG section?  I have heard 7sage and their "foolproof method" is the way to go, would it be realistic/practical to go through their LG and have that section solid for June? I am studying full-time at this stage.  I enjoy studying for the LSAT and leading up to the January test I was able to comfortably study 6-8+ hours per day.

Any input/advice would be highly appreciated 🙂 

Ok, your study method appears to be flawed. 6-8 hours a day does not sound productive or beneficial and, given that the best you've managed to do thus far is a 152, my guess is that it hasn't been. Given, also, that you say your problem is mostly with one specific section, you really shouldn't be too general with your practice and should zoom right in on the things you find difficult. With the LSAT, I personally found that studying for an hour to two hours every day was about as effective as doing it for longer, and I think that's broadly the experience of most other people. Take some of that time and do nice things. Be good to yourself.

A few questions that might help me and others give you better advice:

• When you are practicing, what are you doing? Do you ever take practice tests factoring in the time limits? Or is it just untimed, isolated question sets? 
• When you look back at wrong answers, what's your ratio of "I didn't read this right and made a dumb mistake" to "I was good at eliminating the obviously wrong answers, but found it hard to choose between two seemingly good ones" to "I don't know what the hell I did wrong"?
• When you do logic games, if you do them untimed, how many do you get right?

Based on what you've said in this post, though, it sounds like you have a hard time prioritizing questions you can answer. For the record, the following is advice I heard from multiple sources but did not take, because my brain functions best when it's focused on one task at a time, but I feel like it might be helpful in your case: if you're having problems with a question, skip it. Move on. Go to the next question set, diagram it, find questions you can answer quickly, and get them done. Repeat the process through the whole of LG. Once you're done with all that, go back to where you skipped and do your best to get those.

As to your questions on study prep, I can't help you, because literally all I did was buy Mike Kim's LSAT trainer and twenty practice tests, but  I'm sure other people can.

Edited February 15, 2022 by soundofconfusion

[Sundin13]

48 minutes ago, soundofconfusion said:

• When you are practicing, what are you doing? Do you ever take practice tests factoring in the time limits? Or is it just untimed, isolated question sets? 
• When you look back at wrong answers, what's your ratio of "I didn't read this right and made a dumb mistake" to "I was good at eliminating the obviously wrong answers, but found it hard to choose between two seemingly good ones" to "I don't know what the hell I did wrong"?
• When you do logic games, if you do them untimed, how many do you get right?

- All my PTs leading up to the January test were timed. I took about 10 complete PTs in total, scores ranged from 146 to 154 with my average before the January LSAT being a 152 - scored the same on the actual test. I also did a bunch of timed LR sections as well. 

- Wrong answers for LR consist mainly of "I was good at eliminating the obviously wrong answers, but found it hard to choose between two seemingly good ones".  Wrong answers for LG are wrong simply because I couldn't build up to getting more than 2 games done in timed PTs. However, the 2 games I do attempt are with 99% accuracy. 

- I feel pretty good with easy and medium difficulty games, but I do have a tougher time with slightly harder games, even untimed.

Appreciate the advice! In terms of effectiveness of my studying leading up to the January test, I was not able to review nearly as much and as thoroughly as I would have liked to. This go around I will be indulging in more thorough reviews of PTs as well as redoing logic games that gave me trouble. Any tips on how to review effectively?

[soundofconfusion]

27 minutes ago, Sundin13 said:

- All my PTs leading up to the January test were timed. I took about 10 complete PTs in total, scores ranged from 146 to 154 with my average before the January LSAT being a 152 - scored the same on the actual test. I also did a bunch of timed LR sections as well. 

- Wrong answers for LR consist mainly of "I was good at eliminating the obviously wrong answers, but found it hard to choose between two seemingly good ones".  Wrong answers for LG are wrong simply because I couldn't build up to getting more than 2 games done in timed PTs. However, the 2 games I do attempt are with 99% accuracy. 

- I feel pretty good with easy and medium difficulty games, but I do have a tougher time with slightly harder games, even untimed.

Appreciate the advice! In terms of effectiveness of my studying leading up to the January test, I was not able to review nearly as much and as thoroughly as I would have liked to. This go around I will be indulging in more thorough reviews of PTs as well as redoing logic games that gave me trouble. Any tips on how to review effectively?

Gotcha. Your weaknesses are overall similar to mine, unfortunately, so my help is going to be fairly limited. If I was better at tough logic games or better at choosing right answers instead of eliminating wrong ones, my score would probably have been about ten points higher. But it's encouraging that you can at least eliminate obviously wrong answers for LR and get the right answer for the logic games you do finish; that and your GPA tell me you're smart, conscientious, and have good logical reasoning skills, so the good news is that you're just having trouble adjusting to the format of the test and can very likely improve your score to the range you're shooting for. While I don't know that I'm best-placed to help you, it sounds to me like you're in a position where you would really flourish with the right help. One thing I can say, though: do you double-check and triple-check all your logic games answers while doing timed practice tests? If so (and this is just an assumption that I'm making; it could totally be unfounded), I might say that you'd be better-served by moving on once you feel reasonably comfortable with your answer. The points you might lose from not double or triple-checking would be more than outweighed by just getting to more answers and feeling reasonably ok with them.

In terms of reviewing effectively, I actually had a pretty terrible week leading up to the LSAT myself and couldn't get a ton of review done, but what I found helpful was trying to compare myself to where I started. I didn't review any question types specifically or try to analyze exactly where I went wrong, but I did go back to a lot of the questions I missed months before and tried to see if I could get them right that time. That was pretty good for me psychologically and I think that you want to be pretty confident in yourself and your skills before a stressful test like that, especially if you're as anxious as I can be with these things.

Edited February 15, 2022 by soundofconfusion

[Sundin13]

6 minutes ago, soundofconfusion said:

do you double-check and triple-check all your logic games answers while doing timed practice tests?

Yes, yes, yes! Unfortunately I really slow down and take on an overly meticulous approach to logic games. I have been advised that increased repetition of games helps with getting faster and overcoming this issue.  That is one of the reasons why I am seriously considering 7sage - to simply nail down my LG. 

 

9 minutes ago, soundofconfusion said:

In terms of reviewing effectively, I actually had a pretty terrible week leading up to the LSAT myself and couldn't get a ton of review done myself, but what I found helpful was trying to compare myself to where I started. I didn't review any question types specifically or try to analyze exactly where I went wrong, but I did go back to a lot of the questions I missed months before and tried to see if I could get them right that time. That was pretty good for me psychologically and I think that you want to be pretty confident in yourself and your skills before a stressful test like that, especially if you're as anxious as I can be with these things.

I can understand- got COVID-19 the week before my test date lol.  This is great advice, I have also had others tell me that keeping a review log of tough games and LR questions and circling back to these games/questions every few days is a great way to review. Will definitely be incorporating this into my study routine.

[soundofconfusion]

5 minutes ago, Sundin13 said:

Yes, yes, yes! Unfortunately I really slow down and take on an overly meticulous approach to logic games. I have been advised that increased repetition of games helps with getting faster and overcoming this issue.  That is one of the reasons why I am seriously considering 7sage - to simply nail down my LG.

You're going to see a huge jump here once you're able to move through without being overly meticulous. Absolutely gigantic. I can definitely see how more repetition can help, but I think what's just as important is giving yourself permission to get a question wrong, knowing that it's in the service of a higher score. The LSAT actively penalizes perfectionist tendencies and rewards people for being "good enough" under tremendous stress and time pressure. Give yourself permission to be good enough and that might help.

 

[Sundin13]

9 minutes ago, soundofconfusion said:

You're going to see a huge jump here once you're able to move through without being overly meticulous. Absolutely gigantic. I can definitely see how more repetition can help, but I think what's just as important is giving yourself permission to get a question wrong, knowing that it's in the service of a higher score. The LSAT actively penalizes perfectionist tendencies and rewards people for being "good enough" under tremendous stress and time pressure. Give yourself permission to be good enough and that might help.

 

I am definitely going to try and instill this in my practice. Its tough because I have the exact problem you pointed to, "perfectionist tendencies". I started seeing LG like Math, and so I don't feel comfortable moving on unless I am 100% sure the answer I put down is 100% correct. Will have to work on proactively eliminating this tendency, thank you for pointing that out!

[Lawhpefl10]

I got the Powerscore subscription program combined with the Online Law Hub tests (pretty reasonable as access to the tests was $100 for the year and the Powerscore subscription was $25 a month I think). This helped me enormously in getting better a LG and they have detailed answers to basically every question from every test as well as problem sets grouped by type. The system also does automatic analytics on your tests and practice sets to see which types of questions you're struggling on and thus helps guide your studying enormously. This combined with the LSAT Bibles got me from a 150 diagnostic to a 161 on test day in 3 months (Note: I will definitely use it again if I do not get into law school this year as I was PT in the mid 160's leading up to test day). I would also say to start working in Blind Review. I know it sucks and its hard to do but it helps build stamina and really solidifies how to do questions into your head.

 

From your previous comments it does seem to be an issue of allocating your study time properly. Perhaps an analytics program such as the one I mentioned above could help you in diagnosing your weak areas so that you can improve them in an efficient matter. I think everyone studying for the LSAT has had a point where they thought they knew what they were doing in regard to a particular question type and then later realized that they were losing a lot of points due to false confidence in that question type. Hope this helps!

[Sundin13]

3 hours ago, Lawhpefl10 said:

I got the Powerscore subscription program combined with the Online Law Hub tests (pretty reasonable as access to the tests was $100 for the year and the Powerscore subscription was $25 a month I think). This helped me enormously in getting better a LG and they have detailed answers to basically every question from every test as well as problem sets grouped by type. The system also does automatic analytics on your tests and practice sets to see which types of questions you're struggling on and thus helps guide your studying enormously. This combined with the LSAT Bibles got me from a 150 diagnostic to a 161 on test day in 3 months (Note: I will definitely use it again if I do not get into law school this year as I was PT in the mid 160's leading up to test day). I would also say to start working in Blind Review. I know it sucks and its hard to do but it helps build stamina and really solidifies how to do questions into your head.

 

From your previous comments it does seem to be an issue of allocating your study time properly. Perhaps an analytics program such as the one I mentioned above could help you in diagnosing your weak areas so that you can improve them in an efficient matter. I think everyone studying for the LSAT has had a point where they thought they knew what they were doing in regard to a particular question type and then later realized that they were losing a lot of points due to false confidence in that question type. Hope this helps!

Thank you, will take this advice onboard! I definitely need to get going with the Blind Review. I think that would definitely help, no doubt dread it though!  I was using Manhattan's analytics system to enter my test results but to be honest, I did not use it enough to diagnose weak areas and work on them. Will definitely do that this time around. In terms of the Bible/Powerscore, I did go through the entire LG Bible last year and it definitely help me with getting a grasp of the basics of games.  Based on the advice of many folks, I am probably going to go with 7sage & really use their foolproof method for games as I prepare for the June exam! 

[Jean-Ralphio Saperstein]

I would look into HarvardReady in Toronto. They have absolutely the best classes on logic games and give tons of homework that is specifically geared to help you learn the games inside out. I loved logic games bc of them and it was my best section!

[Sundin13]

2 hours ago, Jean-Ralphio Saperstein said:

I would look into HarvardReady in Toronto. They have absolutely the best classes on logic games and give tons of homework that is specifically geared to help you learn the games inside out. I loved logic games bc of them and it was my best section!

Thanks for the recommendation! How long is their course? Is it live or pre-recorded?

[dimsum1]

I think 7Sage would really be good for you. Really drill down into LG for a few months, while keeping up RC/LR every so often, then spend the last month or so on PTs.

Also, if timing is an issue, learn to let yourself skip an obviously hard/weird game and focus on the other 3.  Then, when you've done those, take the remaining time and guess Bs or something for that hard game.  

[Sundin13]

1 hour ago, dimsum1 said:

I think 7Sage would really be good for you. Really drill down into LG for a few months, while keeping up RC/LR every so often, then spend the last month or so on PTs.

Also, if timing is an issue, learn to let yourself skip an obviously hard/weird game and focus on the other 3.  Then, when you've done those, take the remaining time and guess Bs or something for that hard game.  

Thanks! Will be doing precisely that 🙂 Drilling down on LG while maintaining my LR/RC and then a good 4-5 weeks of PTs! In terms of skipping, I completely agree. Will try to get to the point where 3 games are always there for me and in the odd case, take a guess at tougher questions on the 4th game.

[dimsum1]

11 hours ago, Sundin13 said:

Thanks! Will be doing precisely that 🙂 Drilling down on LG while maintaining my LR/RC and then a good 4-5 weeks of PTs! In terms of skipping, I completely agree. Will try to get to the point where 3 games are always there for me and in the odd case, take a guess at tougher questions on the 4th game.

Definitely.  

I'm not sure if you have read The Loophole, but one of the things she talks about is "hyper-skipping".  She's talking about LR but it applies equally to LG.

Basically, if you don't know within 10-30 seconds how to organize a game, skip it and come back.  The wasted minutes to force through it are better used in another game.  There's usually only 1 (max 2) that you should be scratching your head at how to organize it.

[lawyerlatina]

try 7sage for sure. Im pretty sure I got -1 on LG in the JAN 2022 test.