It's great to see you again. How's everything coming along? It's good. I have some really good news.
So I hit an all-time score high. It was on Saturday. So it was my highest score ever. So that was really great.
I'm getting really close to my goal. So that's exciting news. I wanted to talk to you though today because I'm noticing that I had taken that exam like many, many months ago. And I'm missing the same questions, particularly on logic reasoning.
I mean, the exact same questions that I missed the last time, even though I went through and wrote down in a wrong answer journal, here's why I missed this, the exact same ones. And so I'm wondering what is the best approach so that I think I'm missing something conceptually, obviously. That's why I got them wrong again. But like, what's the best approach to not miss those same question types or some kind of questions again on the next practice test I take?
Right. Right. I mean, to me, it sounds like it's coming down to the depth of your process figuring out exactly what led you astray. So the fact that you're keeping a wrong answer journal is fantastic.
I'd like to know more about what's going into that wrong answer journal. Where are specifically, are you highlighting the things that might have led you astray? That's a great question. So I think usually what I do is I'll look at the stimulus and the question stem and I'll see like for I'm just making this up, but maybe on one question, I'll notice, oh, you read the question stem wrong.
That's why you got this wrong, because you didn't understand what it was asking for. Or maybe I'll look back at the stimulus and see, okay, did I really identify the premise and the conclusion? Did I really understand what it was saying? Was I tripped up because of wording within the stimulus?
So that's kind of sometimes what I write down other times to I'll see, okay, I missed the gap in the argument, totally just didn't get it. Didn't see that at all. Or other times I'll look at the answer choices and kind of think, okay, I picked the wrong answer, obviously. So why did I pick the wrong answer?
What was it about the right answer that I said, no, this couldn't be it. So that's kind of some of the ways I write down why I missed it. Great. I mean, that's exactly the kind of thing you want to do.
So what I'm curious now about is what you got it wrong the second time, were you getting it wrong for the same reason as you got it wrong the first time? Yeah, that's another good question. So yes, it was almost like that same wrong answer was tempting again, even though I have and it's strange because I'll notice too that I'll boil it down to the wrong and the right answer. And I'm still picking that wrong answer.
And in some cases too, I noticed that like I picked another completely wrong answer that wasn't even the one I picked the last time. It was just another one of the wrong ones. So in some cases it happens there as well. So yeah, I mean, I'm confused on my end because I'm thinking why did you pick this again when you knew the last time that this didn't make sense?
So I don't know if it's like, am I remembering something from the last time? I don't think so because I took that test back in January, the one that I just took. So I mean, that's a way that's a long time to go to remember anything whatsoever. Yeah, it is a long time ago.
And so I'm wondering, are you reviewing the wrong answer journal frequently? Are you redoing those questions? And then can we extract those key takeaways from what like you wrong on the earlier questions to then apply them to totally new fresh questions? And so are you still remembering how to avoid making those same kinds of mistakes?
Yeah, I think that I'll totally admit that when I do the wrong answer journal, I do it. And then I like move on, right? So I definitely think that I will certainly reopen that and check through kind of what I'm missing again on multiple exams, not just this one, for sure. Yeah, because I usually just like, I'm like, okay, I remember this the next time, not to miss this, but I mean, obviously, that's not what's happening.
Right, I should just return to it more frequently. So yeah, and I should, yeah, I definitely should redo, I mean, obviously the ones that I miss, I mean, I typically go back in the review and go through and really like mark down why and then also look at the ones I flagged, but I'll certainly go through and kind of redo all the ones from the previous exams, yeah, all together. Great, what else is going on for you? The other thing I wanted to talk to you about was more admissions related.
So I am getting back into writing my, well, rewriting my personal statement. And I just kind of had a question about like, what a successful personal statement looks like. I have one written, but it's more focused on like storytelling. And I'm wondering maybe if I need to focus more like, particularly on the latter half on the why question, meaning like, why am I going?
Why is this relevant to how I would go to law school? And so I wanted to hear your thoughts on that. Sure, yeah, it doesn't have to come across in that statement in particular, you just want something about your application to communicate why you want to go either directly or indirectly. But if the story you're telling in your personal statement, it just doesn't fit there, you can put it in a different essay either diversity statement or some other kind of optional essay or agenda.
And what are you thinking about for your personal statement? So I have a story about a time where I faced a challenge and I really had to humble myself in that space. It was in a professional situation. And just kind of showing that because I was persistent, but also I reached out to someone for help, I was able to reach my goal at the end.
And so like at the very end, the way it structured is I tell this story, you know, and then at the end, I'm like, and this is why I would be a great lawyer. So yeah. Cool. Does it does it fit?
Does that ending fit with the rest of the story? I think it does. I guess I want to be sure that maybe I need to expound upon if there's something else I need to expound upon. I know that the tie in that I had was that I thought it fit because it was like, well, I want to practice first amendment law.
And this is how this applies. But I'm wondering if it would be more successful to put in a little bit more of why kind of that story that I told and that persistence would help me be a great lawyer, if that makes you know, sense the cliche that's coming to mind for me here is show don't tell. Yeah. So I hope that this I would trust that the story stands well enough on its own to communicate that idea.
And if it doesn't, call that out more in the story, but don't call it out in the abstract. Still show it through the way that you tell the story. Okay. Yeah, that's great advice.
Okay, I will. I'll leave it alone then for now. I mean, I'm going to do some re edits, but yeah, I don't want it. I want to show for sure.
And that's out. My other question was about I'm thinking about other essays as well, and one of which is, and we talked about this before, but you know, this will be my fifth LSAT. And so I know that I probably will need to write like a score essay as well. And so just thoughts on kind of drafting that now.
And obviously the goal is to get a higher score, of course. And I expect this one to probably be a larger increase and just how does one kind of go about that essay because I don't want it to be cliche that, you know, like here I am with my five scores, and this is my story, you know, and yeah. Sure. Sure.
I would just be very simple matter of fact. If you want to devote a lot of words to telling about the reasons why you might have taken it five times, you could just be okay, well, my first take, I'll just make things up here and you can feel whenever makes sense for you. But sometimes people take it cold because they've heard that from a pre-law advisor or somebody else take it cold, just to see how you'll do or sometimes something goes wrong on test day either with in-person LSATs of the past or tech issues with the online LSAT or nerves or anxiety might have gotten better if you one time are a shaky internet connection. But then you study really hard, you buckle down, you change your approach, and then that's what you put into your final take.
But just very simple, just a sense or two for each, just have to be a whole lot. Okay. Yeah. I guess how long of an essay is it like one page?
Would that be sufficient? I don't want to go on and on about? Yeah, more than enough. Yeah, I would think just a couple hundred words at most.
And it's really just to leave no questions unanswered. So if they were thinking why should take it five times, this would address that. Okay, that's all you need to do. And is there any, I've heard this before, is there any need to like mention like SAT or any kind of previous exams and like how that measures my performance versus how I did an undergrad or no?
Well, what do you want to say about it? Well, I think probably what if I were to mention this, because I think there's probably a lot more to cover about why I've taken it this many times than that. But I think maybe what I would say is like I didn't do so hot on the evidence that I never made them, but like I didn't do as well on the SATs, but I still performed very well in undergrad. And that wasn't maybe a measure of my overall performance going in.
Yeah, that's a great argument to make. So if you could say that my SAT score was this, but my GPA was relatively much higher on a percentile basis, for example, than whatever your LSAT score turns out to be, whether you're happy with it or not, you could say presumably if these are roughly analogous, then my one L grades should be that much higher. So even if you got a 170 on the LSAT, you could say, well, that then suggests I'm going to do fantastically well in law school because I outperform when it comes to GPA. Okay, awesome.
That's great. And I guess in terms of other questions, just on that kind of essay is like, like I said, I suspect there is going to be a score discrepancy. So is it just better to address that by saying because I buckled down and studied harder? That's why you see like this jump in scores.
You could say radically change my approach. I invested significantly more time. I also changed the nature of my prep as well. I've learned from previous mistakes or I tried something different that worked much better.
Okay, awesome. Yeah, I will do that as well. Fantastic. I have any other questions for today.
I think that's it. Yeah, for now. Awesome. Well, I'm really glad we had the chance to meet again.
Just keep at it. And if you need anything, reach out and happy to help. I will. Thanks so much, Steve.
Thanks for tuning into the show. Please subscribe if you haven't done so already, to be notified of new episodes as I release them and feel free to reach out if you need anything at all so you can feel with your prep. I'm happy to help however I can. In the meantime, I wish you all the best and take care.