Marta

Introduction

My LSAT journey began in Summer of 2016. At that time I had no immediate plans to register for the exam, but I wanted to get a feel for what it entailed. In lieu of taking a blind diagnostic, I bought the standard fare set of LSAT books and read them cover-to-cover. I recall thinking, nothing on the LSAT seems to come naturally to me. This is just not how I think. I happily set the LSAT aside for the time being as I pursued a career in engineering.

A few years later, with a better idea of when I wanted to apply and matriculate to law school, I returned to my dusty books. From June through September 2021, I re-read them, this time typing up detailed notes and making flashcards to help me memorize things such as premise/conclusion and necessary/sufficient indicators. I learned how to diagram and subscribed faithfully to the methods described in the books. I purchased workbooks and worked diligently through every question. Over the course of these months, I did timed drills and revisited the questions that I struggled with until I "nailed" them. I had the fundamentals down... or so I thought.

In January, I started taking timed full-length PTs. I scored a 159 on my first PT -- a good score but far from my goal of a 168. I'm not too concerned, I thought; the more PTs I take and review, the higher my score will get. In January through mid-April, nearly every Saturday, I took a timed PT; the following Sunday, I spent hours on blind review. On weekdays, I reviewed my notes and flashcards. When I didn't see much improvement in my PT scores, I pivoted: I turned to a book that included all three sections in one unified approach. Finding these methods more intuitive, I swapped some of the methods I was employing for these new ones. When that also didn't quite do the trick, I subscribed to an online study platform. Despite all of my efforts, my PT scores typically fell between the high 150's to low 160's, occasionally in the mid 160's, and never as high as my dream score. The upward trend that I desperately wanted just didn't materialize. By April, I was frustrated and losing hope. I'm doing everything I'm supposed to be doing, but it's just not working for me, I ranted to a coworker at my law firm. He said, Why don't you reach out to a tutor I worked with a few years ago. Her name is Ellen.

I think of my LSAT journey as two-fold: pre-Ellen and with-Ellen.

April 12, 2021 -- Consultation

I had my consultation with Ellen.

You need to stop taking PTs, she said. Taking a PT was a checkpoint for me -- to figure out if the new methods I was trying out were working -- and the thought of not doing them consistently made me nervous. Ellen sensed my hesitation, but was adamant that what I was doing wasn't working. She was right, of course, but I was scared to abandon what I was used to doing. I knew parting ways with my old methods would be difficult, but I also knew I had to lean in and trust Ellen's process.

You can and will get above a 170, she said. I rolled my eyes, convinced I was going to prove her wrong.

April - May 2021 -- LR Translation

The with-Ellen era officially began.

I spent the first month and a half doing nothing but LR Translation drills. My drill took me just under an hour, but I felt very shaky and was constantly doubting my CLIRs. By the end of May, I was able to complete a drill in just over 20 minutes.

LR Translations proved to be a nice break from doing full length exams. And I was immediately captivated by Ellen's method. Previous test prep companies advocated for reading the question stem first, then the stimulus; as a true rule-follower, I religiously did as told. But I noticed that by doing that, I was focusing on the type of question more than the actual stimulus and this limited my understanding of the stimulus.

With-Ellen was a new era. For the first time, I understood just how flawed the logic in the stimuli was, and I quickly learned to love tearing apart the arguments. After about thirty sections -- approximately one drill every day -- I got my drill down to just over 20 minutes. (Ellen has students do this drill out loud, and after a few days, I was losing my voice. So, the with-Ellen era also spurred the tea-with-honey phase.)

Doing these exercises, I noticed I initially struggled to identify the conclusion in a stimulus. I would occasionally mistake an argument for a premise set (or vice versa); instead of identifying a loophole, I'd identify an inference (and vice versa). After each drill, I played back the recording of myself and compared my CLIRs with the CLIR Answer Keys. I took notes of every mistake I made, and jotted down ways I thought I could be more creative and robust with my CLIRs.

During this time, I read The Loophole. The book was a fun, light read, and it felt like I was listening to a friend. I made flashcards of common Loopholes (Chapter 5), Bad Causal Reasoning (Chapter 6), and Classic Flaws (Chapter 7). To help me solidify the concepts, I outlined approximately half the book, through Chapter 9.

May - June -- Mini-Cycle and RC Translation

On my first three Mini-Cycles, I scored -5, -4, and -3. Thereafter, I scored -3 or better, with many -1's and -0's, so long as I wasn't taking any significant breaks.

At the same time, I was doing RC Translation drills. I was able to quickly get my time down to 8-12 min per passage.

I attribute this improvement to the Daily Virtual Tutoring Sessions and Weekly Live Tutoring with Ellen.

As part of the Daily Virtual Tutoring sessions, every day I would record myself completing a full question out loud, and I would receive feedback from Ellen later that day. Ellen has an uncanny ability to pick up on patterns in my mannerisms that I couldn't spot even when playing back recordings of myself. She instructed me on how to improve my form and how to more smoothly transition from the CLIR to Mission to Answer. She also observed that I was often too stiff. She advised me to loosen up and engage more with the text. What does that mean? I thought. I'm reading the stimulus out loud, how am I not engaging with it? Ellen taught me to make my CLIRs more real, so I personalized nearly every one. Once I loosened up, I found myself often laughing while translating the stimuli; after all, I've come to realize that some of the arguments on the LSAT are just silly. With this shift in mindset, I saw the most improvement and consistency in my scores.

I also started Weekly Live Tutoring with Ellen. I'd flag any questions that stumped me throughout the week and review each one with Ellen on Saturdays. Again, Ellen was able to spot patterns in my mistakes that I couldn't, and we worked through them together.

In parallel, Ellen had me do RC translation. Ellen has a very unique approach to RC -- one that I never heard of before from any other test prep company. I initially struggled with remembering the sentence I had previously read, but doing these exercises helped my memory. I also applied the same mindset I had for LR translation to my RC translations and started engaging with the text. I thought of every RC passage as an exciting opportunity to learn something new. (Even to this day I recall facts about honeybee dancing, horse domestication, Chicano theater, fish farming, and perfumery -- pretty neat!)

July - August -- Inside-Out, Mini-Cycles, Hyper-skipping, Logic Games, and PTs

On my first Inside-Out, I scored a -3. I had never done this well on an RC section before. Shocked was an understatement. Thereafter, I scored almost consistently -4 or better on my RC sections.

The Inside-Out drill forced me to stop being married to the exact words in a passage, and allowed me to not overlook correct answers because of a technicality -- something that I had a tendency to do.

I continued with Mini-Cycles, too. I was scoring -1's and -0's with a sprinkling of -3s and a -4. Ellen wanted me to identify any differences in when I scored a -4 versus when I scored a -0. We realized it came down to mindset. Ellen wanted me to replicate the conditions that made me successful to improve my chances of being in the right mindset during the real exam. She also had me repeat mantras before each section and question. Lastly, she worked with me to refine how I was employing hyper-skipping.

Next, Ellen started me on Logic Games. Even though this was my strongest section, I never was able to achieve a -0 pre-Ellen. Ellen's approach to solving the games is unique, elegant and, most importantly, efficient. Because I had been working with other methods for so long, it was difficult for me to "break" my previous way of doing things. But once I did, and once I saw how quickly I dropped from -4 to -0, I decided Ellen's approach was far superior and stuck with it going forward. I scored -0 consistently on my LG sections.

During these months, I took very few rest days and was in the mindset that doing more was better. I was hung up on needing to do at least a handful of logic games or at least one timed section a day, as well as one PT weekly. Before my August exam, I took several full-length timed PTs, scoring 169, 171, and 179.

August -- Official Exam: 169

I scored a 169 on the August 2022 exam.

This was a great score, but on the lower end of what I was PT'ing, and I wanted a second chance. In a tutoring session after score release, I walked through everything that happened on exam day. Ellen identified several contributing factors, and we worked through ways to ensure these factors didn't happen -- and if they did, how I'd better handle them -- on my October exam.

September - October -- Inside-Out, Mini-Cycles, and PTs

This month was all about trusting my skills and feeling at home in maintenance mode. I dove right back into doing Inside-Out and Mini-Cycles with the occasional PT. At this point, I was focused on maintaining my skills while honing my mindset. (Additionally, my work schedule was brutal, and I often didn't get to start studying until very late in the evening.)

Go where the data takes us, Ellen said. During our tutoring sessions, Ellen noticed that my most recent scores on my Mini-Cycle and Inside-Out exercises were higher after I took a few days off. So I started incorporating rest days whenever necessary -- often taking a full weekend off. On my first PT after my August exam, I scored a 180. On the next PT, I scored a 173. So, I was elated when I found out I got a 174 on the October exam.

Concluding Thoughts

In hindsight, my journey pre-Ellen was full of anxiety, self-doubt, and darkness. I felt (and very much was) alone in the process. I was responsible for guiding myself. It is only now that I can fully grasp just how ill-equipped I was to do that.

Once I started working with Ellen, I immediately began to see light. Ellen was my cheerleader. She was always positive and upbeat, and believed in me and my abilities, even when I was doubting my self worth. (The LSAT can do that sometimes.) She customized plans to cater to my weaknesses, and it was such a relief to worry less about what I was going to do next or how I was going to do it; instead I focused exclusively on the now, fully trusting Ellen to guide me to my fullest potential. (That is not to say I worked any less. In fact, I worked harder. But it seemed like my efforts were much, much more efficiently orchestrated.) I looked forward to my weekly Saturday afternoon tutoring sessions. I loved rehashing RC passages with Ellen, or figuring out if she saw the same ridiculousness in an LR stimulus as I did. Dare I say it, the with-Ellen era was fun. I attribute my mindset shift wholly to Ellen, and that made all the difference. I'm so grateful for her help on this journey.

I strongly recommend all students join the Elemental family, but especially those who feel like they have done everything -- those who worked through all the well known prep books and test prep curricula and made a real effort -- but are still not seeing the score they want. Ellen is a miracle worker, and I wish an Ellen for everyone.

More specific takeaways:

• Camo is a great tool for those who have limited time in the day to study. It is a much more efficient blind review! (I shudder thinking back at the times, pre-Ellen of course, that I would spend up to 8 hrs per day on blind review.)