Postponed to Feb: 3 month game plan Forum

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King of the North

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Postponed to Feb: 3 month game plan

Post by King of the North » Tue Nov 07, 2017 11:52 am

Alright. So I was originally signed up to take the Dec. test and I decided to postpone til Feb. I was consistently scoring 157s on PTs and I'm shooting for 10+ points higher than that on the real test. My breakdown is a little funky because I can go -3 on LG two weeks in a row then have a -7 day, and on RC I average -9 and LR will fluctuate between -6 and -10, -10 being the worst I ever do.

What's the best strategy here for me to lower these numbers? I've gone through the Trainer LR and the Manhattan LG and RC. I'm thinking I'll go through the Manhattan LR and as I study the chapters for specific question types I'll drill the Cambridge sets alongside them. For LG and RC, LG will just be a matter of practicing more and more games until I'm comfortable and familiar with them. RC I'll probably explore another book, or maybe go back through the Manhattan. The biggest thing here is I don't have a good strategy for either approaching questions or for annotating, though my annotating has become better/more beneficial.

I know it's possible to reach the score range that I want in the next 3 months. I know it's going to require a lot of focus and hard work. And now that I've postponed the Dec. test I almost feel relieved; I was really upset at first. But I'm motivated to kill this test. So how does my plan sound? I'm open to all discussion/suggestions constructive criticism. I would also love to hear anyone's story about applying with a Feb. score and how that went for them.

Thanks everyone. And good luck to anyone taking the Dec. test.

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cahwc12

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Re: Postponed to Feb: 3 month game plan

Post by cahwc12 » Wed Nov 08, 2017 1:56 am

If you are missing that many on LG you should drill LG until you're consistently -0/1 with time to spare

For RC, I recommend picking up all the old RC sections from a site like cambridge LSAT or other means and for the very oldest of them, just do a passage here and there whenever you have spare time, then drill sections as experimental 5th sections in your other PTs. You need to re-wire your brain to think in terms of RC mode. There are a lot of strategies, but doing a lot of RC is going to help you the most.

For LR, take the last few PTs you've done and tabulate the missed questions by LR type and also by numeric range. Are you missing questions all over the place, early on, in the middle, at the end, a specific type? Understanding this will help you prioritize how to attack it. Most likely you are missing a some specific types and you should drill those. I recommend studying a single type at a time and mastering it, then moving on. A long time ago I had an 'LR by type' tree but idk where it is anymore. I'm sure there's something better now, but anyway you should drill the easiest type like 'must be true' first, and work your way to the more cumbersome question types.


When you drill LG, don't worry so much about this company's method or that, but rather in developing your own personal shorthand language that you can effortlessly pen down, and master that. Probably you'll take elements from multiple company approaches which is what I and others have done. No single company can give you the best strategies because they can't copy any parts of each other, and each one has different elements I would consider best.

RC I would focus much less on book strategy and focus much more on doing more passages and comprehensively reviewing your mistakes. You can even repeat passages a few weeks out and even knowing the answer still go through the motions because it'll help you better identify patterns.

I also would not overlook LR since you're missing 6-10 and that is 50% of the test.

King of the North

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Re: Postponed to Feb: 3 month game plan

Post by King of the North » Wed Nov 08, 2017 2:12 am

cahwc12 wrote:.
That was helpful thanks. I went through the 7 PTs I did and tallied how many I missed of each question type on LR. I’m working my way from there through the Manhattan book.

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Rupert Pupkin

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Re: Postponed to Feb: 3 month game plan

Post by Rupert Pupkin » Thu Nov 16, 2017 11:43 pm

cahwc12 wrote:If you are missing that many on LG you should drill LG until you're consistently -0/1 with time to spare

For RC, I recommend picking up all the old RC sections from a site like cambridge LSAT or other means and for the very oldest of them, just do a passage here and there whenever you have spare time, then drill sections as experimental 5th sections in your other PTs. You need to re-wire your brain to think in terms of RC mode. There are a lot of strategies, but doing a lot of RC is going to help you the most.

For LR, take the last few PTs you've done and tabulate the missed questions by LR type and also by numeric range. Are you missing questions all over the place, early on, in the middle, at the end, a specific type? Understanding this will help you prioritize how to attack it. Most likely you are missing a some specific types and you should drill those. I recommend studying a single type at a time and mastering it, then moving on. A long time ago I had an 'LR by type' tree but idk where it is anymore. I'm sure there's something better now, but anyway you should drill the easiest type like 'must be true' first, and work your way to the more cumbersome question types.


When you drill LG, don't worry so much about this company's method or that, but rather in developing your own personal shorthand language that you can effortlessly pen down, and master that. Probably you'll take elements from multiple company approaches which is what I and others have done. No single company can give you the best strategies because they can't copy any parts of each other, and each one has different elements I would consider best.

RC I would focus much less on book strategy and focus much more on doing more passages and comprehensively reviewing your mistakes. You can even repeat passages a few weeks out and even knowing the answer still go through the motions because it'll help you better identify patterns.

I also would not overlook LR since you're missing 6-10 and that is 50% of the test.
Agree with all of this! some great advice.

As far as tracking your PT progress i definitely recommend using 7sage analytics and it shows your question types and areas (plus much more) that you need to work on. This is much more helpful and easier than using an excel doc (like i did for the longest time). Make sure you are taking the time to review PTs and questions properly. I recommend also looking into 7Sage BR method for reviewing as well as the Fool-proof logic game method for good "study techniques."

I found the LSAT trainer to be the most helpful for RC in term of mindset, so Id recommend reviewing that and like the poster above mentioned, try to do a passage every day and eventually it just kinda trains you to think the proper way. I even write out in a word doc the summary of each paragraph, the tone, the main point, purpose, author opinion when i do those so that when i go and do a passage in a section or PT I may not being writing well-thought out notes deliberately but your brain automatically tracks for all those things and you are able to actually translate what "Reading for structure" actually means. I find actually writing these out in practice like described to be extremely helpful. This has helped a ton in finding my groove in RC.

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