Help Needed!

[jesse.hervitz]

When I took the Lsats a few years ago I rushed the studying and scored a 160 and decided at that time that Law School was out.

After finally deciding that Law School was a must, I am retaking the Lsats again in February in hopes of doing it the right way and bumping up my score. I am doing the LSAT interact and making sure that I do all the homework before I move onto to new lesson.

Despite now being on Lesson 10 and studying countless hours for the past month and a half, I have not been able to bump my score up any higher than my original diagnostic even though I know I have the ability to score much higher.

My LR sections are usually pretty strong averaging only 3-4 wrong answers per session. And my RC has taking a big leap from no focus to now consistently getting almost all of the questions right on the first three passages with about 5-6 left for the last passage (if I can speed up a little and get to the last with a little more time, I am confident I can ace the RC)

My main issue is logic games. While I have gotten much better in my ability to solve individual games much faster that when I started, I remain unable to execute during my three practice exams to date. I often find myself unable set up some #1 or #2 questions in a timely manner (or find myself unable to set them up do to missing a key detail) (or don't determine what type of game it is based on the prompt fast enough) and then leave little time for the other harder games.

This has resulted in a complete bombing of the LG section. While I feel I am getting better, always seem to miss a few key details or inferences that lead to complete failure of the section.

Looking for some tips or tricks on how to break into the next level and get me on the right track?

J

[christine.defenbaugh]

Thanks for posting jesse.hervitz!

First, congrats on making what sound like great structural improvements to your reading comp process!

The struggle you face against Logic Games is not an uncommon one. In fact, I think most of us have felt the way you do at one time or another!

The first step is proper diagnosis. You need to determine precisely what it is that you are doing wrong when you execute a game poorly (either missing questions or taking too much time).

For instance, if you fail to recognize the game type, highlight the language that should have been the tip off for you. Go back to other games you've done of the same type and highlight the tip off language in them. Why could you recognize it in one and not the other? What can you do to ensure you would recognize it again in the future?

If it's key inferences that you fail to make, explore why you were unable to see that key inference in time pressure. Ask yourself what about the rules should have been your hint: did two rules mention the same element? did one rule have a clear binary set of possibilities? did you fail to fully exploit a chunk? Ask yourself how can you ensure that you don't make the exact same mistake again?

As with the other sections, the key to our own improvement lies primarily in proper diagnosis of our errors: 1) what did I do wrong? 2) how could I have avoided this error? 3) how will I avoid this exact same error in the future?

Best of luck!