Why do I feel like I'm the only one not improving?

Comments

• rcscott590 Core Member

  August 30 5 karma

  This doesn't help. But I'm the same as you.
• 11 Likes

  im_sat. Live Member

  August 30 edited August 30 56 karma

  this was me three months ago, defeated and exhausted, thinking i couldn't break into 160s, until i did... and then three more times after that. it gets better. don't give up now after all the work you're doing. there's no benefit in wallowing in the sadness. and i don't mean that harshly. feel your feelings, take a walk, and get back to it. if there's any advice i can give, it is to breathe. SLOW DOWN. do your untimed review and ~really~ be able to explain to yourself every. single. wrong. answer. and. right. answer. even if it means sitting down with one question for an hour. pay attention to patterns. drill down your conditional indicators until it's second nature and you can chain premises in seconds. you can do this, i promise. don't read reddit or fixate on other people's progress. it's you against you. focus on your journey. (corny but seriously). focus on your weaknesses and drill them. again. again. and again. spend a whole day on a question type if you need to until you get what it's asking you to do and look for. do untimed sections or one RC passage at a time to take the pressure off at first. study each question thoroughly. i really sympathize with your comment, because it was me. i was panicking too. still do sometimes lol but i meditate, go on a walk, and then sit down and do it again. you ARE capable. this IS learnable! i really wish you the best. you will make progress, even if it's one point at a time. small wins are still wins! I don't know who you are, but I am so rooting for you!!!!
• 3 Likes

  Claire_E Live Member

  August 30 edited August 30 34 karma

  I want to qualify this by saying that I'm of course no expert- but it took me a while to start to show improvement as well and my diagnostic was right around yours. For me, I had to figure out what the underlying issues actually were to get out of the mindset that it was all situational- I also used to feel like each answer had a unique reason for being wrong and therefore had no idea how to study for it. Rather than spend too much time overprocessing my wrong answers, I went back to basics.

  I slowed down and took some time to go through the core curriculum again for certain areas. First, I realized that I really didn't always have a great understanding of conclusion vs premises and why. I did live classes on MC and argument part and spent time reviewing those concepts until I was really solid on that. Then, I reviewed argument structure- spent a lot of time really understanding conditional reasoning (I used outside resources for this) and the causal reasoning structures/common arguments. Taking all of that together, my SA, PSA, strenghtening, and weakening all improved dramatically and suddenly. It's like something finally clicked.

  Finally, doing the 10 questions in 10 minutes (or I actually do 15 questions in 15 minutes) on the LR section was so helpful after re-building my foundation. Now, I move through those questions really quickly so I have plenty of time for the harder questions later on. A mindset shift for me was: there is only one right answer, no close to rights answers; and if I don't see the answer clearly, I'm missing something. If it's not clear, I go back and re-read the stim and each AC to pick apart what it might be. What helps me there is identifying what is different between AC and how they are different.

  For RC, though that was my strong section from the beginning, I was using too much brain power on those sections and tiring myself out before LR. To get stronger there, I spent more time reading passages and doing the low-res summaries, and reading a wide variety of of materials outside of the LSAT to increase my fluency so I'm not getting stuck on terminology or vocabulary during the test. My study in argument structure for LR also helped me here.

  Again, no expert, and I still occasionally have bad PTs. But overall my score has improved and become more consistent in the last month or so after many months of effort and I'm finally regularly crossing my goal score. But it took a while for that to actually happen. Also, when you have a higher diagnostic like that, consider that you might also be contending with undoing habits and assumptions that get you a decent score but hold you back from really taking it to the next level, rather than just building knowledge from scratch.

  Tl;dr: I went back to basics and spent a ton of time on argument structure. Then I layered everything back on.

  Good luck and don't give up!
• 1 Like

  LMlockedin Core Member

  August 31 3 karma

  I have been studying since last August and I stayed at the same score until this past June when I shot up 8 points and have been increasing since. I felt so discouraged and so defeated seeing everyone around me apply last cycle when I had originally intended to. And honestly, I don't believe this curriculum helped me. The access to the drills and PTs was huge in helping me solidify what I learned from another book I purchased in March and that's what caused my score to shoot up. If you have been trying this curriculum and things are not fitting into place I highly suggest looking for other resources! 7sage still provides me with useful explanation videos and drill options, but the way the curriculum is set up simply did not work for me. AND THATS OKAY!!
• Axelotl24 Core Member

  September 1 15 karma

  You can't just be blindly doing questions you need to truly learn from them. If you can't break into the 150s you also probably still don't have a good grasp regarding the fundamental things you need to know for this test.
• aidenwrights Live Member

  September 1 25 karma

  I think there might be some fundamental things you are missing, before doing any of the syllabus I was PT'ing around 158. It was only when I went back and really grasped the fundamental concepts of lawgic that I was able to jump through the 160's and into the 170's for my practice tests.