I'm excited to share my journey through the LSAT with everyone today. I initially started my LSAT journey a few years ago, a bit on and off, but I've been studying for a little bit over a year. When I took the LSAT initially a few times on record, I kept scoring the 1.50s and I felt frustrated that I just could not break into my goal of breaking 160 for almost five months. And I thought, and now I'm hoping to break 170 this upcoming test, which I honestly thought I would never say at the beginning of this journey.
So I thought sharing with you all my journey and how I got there, get some how inspired, help anyone else to go through this process. I want to share with my main breakthroughs that helped me achieve 160s and beyond. I'm going to share with you my biggest mistakes from each section in lessons I learned moving forward that I think would be helpful for anyone else in this situation. And if I could go back in time and tell myself these overall types of issues I ran into, and these takeaways, I think I could have reached my goals a lot faster.
So the first section in logic games, logic games has always been kind of my best section because I have somewhat of a math background, but even then I had some larger issues that prevented me from achieving my full potential. One of my most significant mistakes I made beginning was just, in this all has to do with in a test taking situation was drawing out rules immediately and then going into the questions without really taking time to diagram. And I came to learn over time that taking the time to diagram and making inferences in your initial diagram will help you quickly answer questions later on. Another lesson that I learned throughout my process was to start doing the, not being afraid to do the questions out of order, particularly from local to global questions.
I know Steve and some of the other instructors have brought this up, but to me this means answering all the questions to start with if first and then moving on to questions that start with which and essentially the local questions will create new diagrams. For me that will help me answer global questions more quickly later. Logical reasoning section is probably the section I improved the most on throughout my journey so far. One of my biggest mistakes in logical reasoning was not actively engaging with the stimulus as I read it.
By this I mean I would identify the conclusion through indicator words and then I move on to the question stem without really thinking much else of the time between the evidence and the conclusion. Before I was just reading words on a page in a similar fashion I would do for school, which was kind of artificially learning information to reiterate it later, which is the type of reading strategy I came to learn would not be useful for the LSAT. One way I improved this issue was through visualizing the stimulus as a mental picture moving in my head as I read it. By this I mean I literally created an image in my head of what I was reading on the page and using my imagination.
Like if I, if the argument was about boats on ocean I'm literally picturing boats on ocean. This is a personal preference because I'm more of a visual learner so that helped for me. Next a huge breakthrough I had was breaking this argument down little by little. If I did not understand the first sentence of an argument I would not move on to the second sentence.
So I would rephrase the argument in my own words that helps keep the same ideas in my manner I can understand better. And third point as a personal preference I like to read the stimulus first and then go to the question stem. I know a lot of other people do the opposite way but this is my own view so I don't go some more engaged with the argument actively don't go in with the biased point of view of a certain question type. In most questions this is also a personal preference.
Most questions will have an argument with a gap in them. So I approach all questions kind of like a method of reasoning or flocking questions. By this I mean I'll actively think in my head what the author assumes or what the author overlooks that. Almost like a flaw point of view for all the argument types.
And I can always make a different presentation how I do that another time. And so lastly for reading comprehension reading comp head always been my worst section. I would say it's just something that I had to improve just like with practice over time. It's no doubt the most difficult section.
I honestly think it's one of the most personal sections on the LSAT. By personal I mean I think that the variance in high in the way that high level test takers approach reading comprehension is larger than any other section. I think my biggest mistake at first was worrying about finishing all the passages. And this approach may not be engaged with the passage and not double check my answer choices with information.
At first I said at first to fix this problem I slowed down to refree structure in the main point the way I now approach reading comprehension is having the mindset of why did the author write this and how he or she go about writing this. Which is my way of saying what's the main point in structure. Of course there are other features of the passage you need to know such as tone and viewpoints. But for me just thinking about why it was written and how it came to that point covers everything that I need in the time and now I don't focus on the details.
After reading a paragraph I also like to pause and think about what I just read and anticipate where the passage is going. This increases my level of engagement with the passage. And sometimes I'm right and sometimes I'm wrong about where it's going next but the anticipation is forcing an engagement that helps my understanding. And something that kind of helped more of my review was knowing that every answer choice will have some sort of support directly in the passage and to not choose an answer until you can point where in the passage that support comes from.
This really changed the way that I reviewed incorrect and correct questions. And then also this is something that I learned from Steve was to not be afraid to skip questions that are difficult and also do them out of order through the point in structure referring to lines and inference questions last. Yeah, and so then just overall I would say my lessons learned so far is this goes for not just testing strategies but also studying is that go for a quality over quantity and problems. And by this I mean the amount of questions you have does not mean anything if you do not have the takeaways from the ones you've done especially in logical reasoning.
I would say in a non-testing situation when I was doing just practice problems one of my biggest mistakes was my concern with the amount of questions I was cramming instead of how much I was learning from each question I completed. And in a testing environment go for accuracy over speed as my familiarity with the test increased, my speed naturally increased as well. I was never able to complete a single section to begin with for a really long time and then naturally it just naturally started being able to finish each section with additional time. Also do not I take review really seriously.
Should you review like your wrong questions? You should review the ones you got right as well which kind of changed the way that I studied when I started looking at the ones I got corrected understanding the reasoning helped me get a deeper understanding of the test. Also don't be afraid to skip questions in a testing situation. Now I typically skip longer questions that will take me more time to do such as parallel reasoning since they just take time I'll come back to them later.
And I also skip my least favorite question types at first too such as weekend. And yeah that's it. Thank you. If everyone has any questions just let me know.
That was fantastic Natalie. Well done. I have a question I've ever gotten wrong. But also I would say that what really changed my engagement with the reasoning is the Socratic Review Method and that is just writing out like in your own words first rewriting the argument by evidence, filler, sub-pollutions, conclusions.
And then in your own words right the answer choices right and wrong as well. In another one of Steve's tips about restructuring an argument to do different question types also really helped me as well. And also the flaw in the reasoning question types in particular changing different answer choices to fit the flaw in question if that makes sense. I know Steve has a whole class on that too that I think that class really helped me.
So hopefully that makes sense. No one makes a lot of that. I think just watch that on our way today. So I was really close.
Yeah, yeah totally. So cool that one and it's really good. Thank you. Thanks for that Natalie.
I think for those who are curious about that class I think it was my second role of statement workshop in the logical reasoning section of the course where I'm kind of transforming a stimulus from one question type to another just changing the perspective. But I'm glad to hear that that was helpful. One thing that was to me Natalie there's so many things in your presentation but I think the accuracy over speed element is a really important lesson. I think too often students rush right into the time to work but in fact slowing down and focusing on accuracy first for a while longer than you might want to can actually help you speed up in the end by giving you that deeper understanding.
Is that kind of where you're coming from on that? Yes, that's like to the T of Y experience because at first, for my first my first starting I was just so frustrated I couldn't finish the section so then I had gone to a terrible habit of just speeding through just to say I finished at the end and then my score went down and that actually happened in a real test taking situation when I took the LSAT a few years ago, when I first started saying a few years ago. But yeah, once I finally slowed down and just took my time, the speed came automatically and it's kind of insane how that works and it's real and trust the process with that. Awesome.
And what you mind just sharing more about your overall time went up to this point? Yeah. When you started when you got your 169, what are your steps are after that? Yeah, of course.
Well, so initially I was, I started studying for the LSAT at the end of my undergrad in 2018 but that's because I initially wanted to go to law school directly after undergrad and I had been studying for maybe four or five months and I couldn't really break even a 150 and finally I went in after probably five months of on and off studying like self studying and scored like 155 and then try to go in again like a few more times and still getting, I got a lower score like a 154 or than a 157 and then at this point I ended up just taking a break completely from it and then picking it back up almost, oh my gosh my timeline is almost a year and a half later and just completely started from scratch and that's when I kind of did more of course and then that's when I also found Steve and I started self-setting over COVID and I took the test in July and I had had a canceled score but very first score on records since that 155 became a 165 and then I re-took the test in January and then got the 169 if that makes sense, sorry I'm like getting my own time on refused when you write it all down for it to be concise. You've been out for a while. Yeah, yeah. You got the 169 January.
Yeah. Then I think you took a break for a bit right to focus on school. Yeah, I'm in a graduate program right now so I take a break and also had some like health concerns going on so I had to take a break for two months so I'm kind of picking it back up now so hoping for the best for June but I think it's all kind of comes naturally if you've been studying it for a while. So basically if you put in tons of several months of study and countless hours it comes naturally and yet.
Yeah, but although I would say like if you feel like you're not ready definitely don't force it I think that was one thing I did during COVID that was mistake on my end I tried to pick it up back up April of 2020 and I was like I'll be ready for it but I can't remember I took the junior job test I'm like I'll be ready for I'm just gonna do my best I can and I ended up having to cancel the score that I did because I was just like that was a terrible test on my part was not ready at all so don't don't gaslight yourself if you're not ready you know you're not ready.