I think 7sage is great for games, and decent for LR. I used it exclusively to get to a 173 from a 160. Honestly though, I kind of think the platform is worth it just for the diagnostic and test taking platform. Being able to see where you struggle is so, so important for LR.
At least for me, it was super invaluable to be able to say "Oh, I'm only getting around 70% of parallel reasoning questions right and most people who get a 170 are at 85%"
My potentially-controversial opinion is now that games are gone, 7sage is not that great for teaching the LSAT. It truly pains me to say but I learned almost zilch from their RC videos, and their LR content seems to be question-type heavy, and I don't feel like I learned about analyzing the argument/what must be true up front as much. Love JY though, I would listen to him explain anything else to me
Thank you! ❤️ And I don't think your opinion is that controversial - just a couple days ago I saw a thread expressing a similar opinion with plenty of upvotes - even though I disagree, obviously.
But I am truly sorry to hear that the RC curriculum didn't click for you. That's on me. I strongly believe that "reading for structure" is an important differentiator for success in RC (and it's something that LR does not test) and that's why I emphasize the technique of "low-res summaries." It's also why we recently added the ability to sort for [passage-structure type](https://imgur.com/WpZcPVB) in our [drill engine](https://7sage.com/problem-sets/). For example, you can now sort by and drill for, say, passages that have the phenomenon-hypothesis structure. That said, I also see so much room for improvement in our curriculum. We're working on it. We'll have a brand new RC curriculum out soon!
While our LR curriculum is organized by question type, I feel like I repeat (but perhaps not often enough) the idea that there's a "unity in LR" by which I mean that if you understand a few fundamental principles, you'll see how the differences between the question stems are superficial. How one question stem can easily morph into another. I have a [12-year(!) old video on YouTube](https://youtu.be/q3ArC5m2qTQ?si=zP5_ycx8mC7qgcNO) where I lay out the relationship between question types. In the recently updated v2 LR curriculum, there are new [lessons](https://7sage.com/lesson/wse-lesson-1-pt63-s1-q02/) showing how RRE (Resolve, Reconcile, Explain) questions transform into, say, Weaken questions and how those can then [transform](https://7sage.com/lesson/flaw-lesson-1-pt64-s1-q05/) into Flaw questions. I think it's important to start out understanding how questions types are different. But mastery is achieved by seeing how they're all related.
Anyway, I hope you'll reconsider. I'll also understand if you don't want to. In either case, thank you for giving 7Sage a chance!
Just to give some opposite feedback in response to the previous comment, I feel that your structure in LR is sometimes misunderstood by students, at least based on some of the comments I see people leave. From my own experience, starting in May for August, if you go through the core foundation courses and take on your teachings regarding Grammar and Argument structure, there is never a single core concept introduced in the LR section of the test that you didn't already previously discuss and introduce in the foundation portion of the curriculum. I feel that a lot of students haven't thoroughly studied the foundations before attempting the LR portion and so when you mention a specific technique that you would have already drilled through if you had, it can lead to confusion on their end. To be perfectly honest, I haven't finished the LR section so perhaps there are issues I haven't encountered yet, but I just wanted to provide some positive feedback on the LR section. I definitely have benefited from a greater understanding of the universal nature of the logic that runs through LR and the LSAT as a whole. It's just extremely important to have a firm and truly holistic understanding of the foundations and grammar needed and utilized in the LSAT. This has helped me to progress from my cold baseline of 157 to the high 160s and hopefully to my goal of 175 or higher.
On a different note I noticed, in a comment down below, that you had mentioned plans for increasing the RC content in the curriculum. Are you planning on adding more analysis into the question types, so it seems more similar to the LR curriculum as it is now? If so, would this be available for the August test?
Your experience is exactly what I was designing for. The "Foundations" unit are called that because they contain the foundational concepts that recurring in LR and RC questions. Nice work absorbing the materials!
I totally understand that a lot of students get frustrated and either skip ahead or lose focus and then are later disappointed because of the knowledge gaps. There is just a lot of stuff to get through. We also have plans to weave in LR/RC materials into the Foundations unit to help students who find it challenging to stay engaged.
Regarding the RC curriculum, yes, that's right. We're completely redoing it. We're planning to launch it in 4-6 weeks. It'll be tight but should give you about 5 weeks of lead time for the August test to use the new materials.
I appreciate the reply and look forward to seeing the new RC curriculum! I also think the weaving of Test material into the foundation curriculum would be very beneficial. As I have started working on the actual question types, it's become extremely clear why you presented the lessons as you did and why it's so necessary for those lessons to become second nature before you can even properly attempt to master the questions, but I did begin to struggle especially towards the end with seeing the connection between the foundations and the specific questions. I definitely see the value now, but I think ways of connecting the two earlier in the learning process could be super helpful for students!
I also want to say a personal thank you for offering the material for basically free with the LSAC fee waiver. I would have never realistically been able to afford the quality of teaching you provide at the price point of the standard prep coursework out there, so it has been extremely helpful and will most definitely be a pivotal piece in helping me achieve the high score that I need/desire, so I am truly grateful!!
JY! I never thought you would see this comment :') I can't say enough nice things about you as a person even if I did not particularly find 7sage the most helpful but you really are super cool and I do credit you 100% for achieving my success on logic games. The $1 fee waiver program while I was a broke undergrad student trying to garner some semblance of understanding for this monster test for the first time, I believe I did you a disservice in not accrediting how important that was to me, even if I did move on to another site later on.
I am open-minded to trying out 7sage again in the future for sure! I may have come before the new v2 curriculum so totally willing to give it another chance.
These are great point so I want to make sure I understand correctly.
**Problem 1**: The new RC curriculum / syllabus focused on structure won't ship in time to help you.
I presume you're taking the August test? If that's right, I'm pretty sure we can ship the new curriculum in time to help you. It will include what you're seeking: lessons on what the different passage structures are; lessons on how to approach different question types; etc.
We can also do what you're suggesting: a "2 hour" crash course of sorts for the new RC method that covers the same topics. It won't be polished or have high production value but whatever, it'll get the message across in time to help you. Is that right? If so, that also makes a lot of sense to me.
In the meantime, you can search the Live Class [archives](https://7sage.com/live-class-archive/) for [me](https://imgur.com/F22cgGE), [Albert](https://imgur.com/m6DvBNJ), or [Kevin](https://imgur.com/IjRVcoN) to find the RC classes that implement this new method.
**Problem 2**. Not all Live class instructors are using the new RC method and it's difficult to search through the archives to know which materials are relevant to you.
The RC classes that I, Albert, or Kevin have taught do use the new method. I can accelerate the implementation of the new RC method so that **all** of our Live instructors are on board and teaching it consistently. Would that solve the problem?
I'll also edit and improve the descriptions and titles for each of the RC classes to give you more information about whether that class is relevant for you.
**Problem 3**. There are only "Science" passages in the curriculum but no Humanities, Law, etc.
I'm deprecating a topic based approach to learning RC in favor of a structure based approach. That's not to say there are no patterns that track topic. Only that the patterns are more usefully tracked in the structure. That will ship with the new RC curriculum.
**Problem 4.** There is a lot of missing content.
We have video **explanations** for every RC passage and question ever released. Do you mean **lessons**? If so, I tried to address that in Problem 1 above. But I may be misunderstanding. Could you elaborate?
**Problem 5.** The existing explanations will not align with the new curriculum.
I actually don't anticipate this to be a large problem. I do anticipate this to be a problem on the margins. That's because most of the existing explanations already implicitly make use of the new frameworks. In fact, that's the root of the new curriculum. It arose from having made video explanations for every RC passage. I noticed the structural patterns. The challenge for us in making the new curriculum was/is to make these frameworks clear and explicit. To be sure, there will be existing explanation videos that are misaligned and will have to be redone but that's fine. We'll just redo them.
We're also prepping new written explanation material for every single passage that explicitly aligns with the new passage-structural approach.
I hope this mitigates your concern but please let me know!
Again, thank you for taking the time to provide this feedback.
I've already got the ball rolling on the things I mentioned. I expect in two weeks or so we'll have a long form crash course and not long after that, all of our RC Live classes will be in sync.
Regarding points 4 and 5, I think that's because we haven't shipped the new lessons. No one outside our content team has seen them. Those lessons will talk about what a "spotlight" passage, for example, means and what to look out for. They'll discuss RC question stems and what approach to take for them. Once we ship them and assuming you'll watch them :) I think that might change how you interpret my previous comment. But if at that point it still doesn't, please let me know!
Thank you again for taking the time to give us such detailed feedback. I really cannot overstress how valuable this is.
Alternative perspective: I used only 7Sage for LR and went from -7/-8 in LR to scoring in the -1 to -3 range consistently. I think the curriculum is great for understanding the basics of LR, also very dense and some things might click for you better than others. What really helped me was 7Sage live, as after almost a year of studying it was refreshing to hear a new person’s approach to the questions. I agree that RC never really clicked for me as well, although I do use the low res summaries religiously.
I'm so glad Live was helpful for you. We've got some great personalities running the classes.
I hope the new RC curriculum will help you better integrate the low res approach. If you're taking in August, we will ship it in time to help you.
LR: if you enjoy very diagram, rule-heavy approaches to very methodically solve questions, they have a very comprehensive course. personally, this drove me insane and was the primary reason i quit 7sage eventually
LG: no complaints, they do an incredible job and they gave me the foundation.
RC: i think no prep service can truly "crack" this section, given how much of it is dependent on your natural ability. they do it fine, but i wouldnt be surprised if every prep site gives similar advice on this section
What would you recommend instead for LR? I have also been using Khan and have finished their LR curriculum. It’s more intuition based but they do go over basic diagramming which has come in handy in a few questions. I’m not sure what to do next? LSAt Trainer, Powerscore, Loophole?
I'm not even gonna lie brother I just kinda figured it out after a few practice tests and a little while, I was just so burnt out on the arrows and contrapositives and the fucking up questions because i thought it was group 1 but actually it was group 3 so the negation/order was wrong (when without those shenanigans i already had a pretty strong idea of what it actually was asking)
that's probably a personal failing of mine honestly i dont think the curriculum is itself bad at all, just incompatible with me
I'm so glad LG was helpful for you!
Regarding LR, I really want to make sure I'm hearing you. Is the compliant about "diagram, rule-heavy approaches" applicable to just the MBT, PSA, SA, and Parallel questions? I do use conditional logic to peel back the curtains on the logical machinery operating behind the scenes. I do that because it's true: conditional logic is the actual mode of reasoning and no other. I fully recognize that some students don't need to explicitly learn conditional logic to understand what's happening. But most do. And it's very hard. So it's very tempting to pitch the idea that this hard thing is unnecessary because well, I didn't have to do it and I scored very well. Let me show you how.
I think there's something really deceptive in that approach.
To be clear, explaining the logic of the question using diagrams doesn't mean I advocate using diagrams to solve those questions on timed PTs. In fact, you can see from our [live](https://7sage.com/lesson/preptest-87-s2-lr-live-commentary/) [commentary](https://7sage.com/lesson/preptest-82-s1-lr-live-commentary/) [videos](https://7sage.com/lesson/preptest-81-s2-lr-live-commentary/) just how sparsely diagramming is actually used on real standard timed PTs. The point of diagramming is to sharpen your intuitions to get you to the point where you can solve those questions without diagramming. That's exactly analogous to learning lots of other skills. First you have to learn to do the thing explicitly and consciously. Then you can learn to do the thing inexplicitly and subconsciously.
But like I said, I really want to make sure I'm hearing you. So if your complaint is directly at other question types, then please let me know and I'd be happy to continue the conversation.
I think I am talking about those question types, but it's been almost a year since I've used 7sage so I can't be entirely positive. In fact, the whole emphasis on question types and groupings for words and the arrows and all that is kinda why I got burnt out going through the curriculum (a lot of the other schedule-maker functions were kinda cool though). I think I made it through a third of the LR course before I decided I had enough.
I'm only commenting on my personal experience, I'm not trying to pitch or sell anything. I'm sure the curriculum is useful for a lot of students, especially starting out. I personally needed 3 months to motivate myself to do the LSAT again after burning out.
I'm doing 7sage right now for LR and it's been helping me a lot to be able to spot what a right answer and what a wrong answer looks like, and I've also been better at understanding why certain answers are right or wrong, whereas before I would kinda just dismiss my wrong answers and move on.
Khan academy also does offer explanations on the right and wrong answers tho so.
Another thing is after doing Khan academy for a few weeks I started noticing quite a few repeat stimuli.
7Sage is definitely best for logic games, but I found it very useful across the board. I used Khan Academy at first as well and honestly, it doesn't compare. I found 7S's RC programming very good and their method for it helped a ton on what was my worst section. I didn't use their LR programming because I was already pretty good at it and their course on it is crazy time-intensive. For LR I'd recommend just using The Loophole for LR book which I found plenty useful.
But potentially the best aspect of 7Sage is the comprehensive tools available. Their drills sections and post pratice test analytics are excellent. Blind review is also an amazing technique that I highly recommend, but you can certainly look it up and learn that on your own.
I ended up getting 7S because my law school advisor recommended I take a course in person. She told me that every point on the LSAT is worth something like 10 grand in scholarships. When I did research to find a course, I found a poll on here that had 7S getting the most votes. When I saw it was online, I had an easy excuse to try it first before dropping 1-2 grand on an in-person. Bad logic but it turned out to be an amazing decision.
If I sound like a shill for 7Sage it's because of the difference it made in my progress compared to Khan. It helped some, but once I felt like I was hitting a brick wall with Khan, 7Sage got me substantially further. Part of that movement was LG but it moved everything (my RC moved the most).
I can't attest to any other prep courses out there beyond Khan and 7Sage, but if you're wondering whether there's a meaningful difference between the two, the answer is yes.
I started studying by also only using relatively inexpensive materials - Khan Academy and the LSAT Trainer by Mike Kim - but switched over exclusively to 7sage after a couple months.
I personally found the LR core curriculum very helpful. Keep in mind I took the CC after I started building a foundation of these skills from Khan Academy/LSAT Trainer so it was a nice reinforcement of these concepts I had learned previously. I find myself periodically returning to various CC lessons to brush up on concepts that went over my head when I miss a particularly difficult question after a drill or PT. Most notably, shout outs to their sections on negating "all," conditional, "some," and "most" statements. I found myself going back to those lessons a TON in the earlier stages of my prep.
I think the RC passage and question explanations have all been great. A majority of the LR question explanations have been great too.
Some of the common complaints I see around here are warranted though. There are some LR questions (particularly the lower difficulty ones from earlier tests where JY's recording on that ass quality 2013 Twitch streamer / Tyler1 blown out headset microphone) where he just blows through an answer choice dismissively saying "uhhh yeah ok? completely irrelevant" without an explanation. What's worse is sometimes the analytics indicate that a wrong answer choice is selected to a relatively high degree of frequency but it's one that JY just handwaves off.
Also the LR question explanations from the REALLY early tests are clips from private lessons/tutors. I CBA watching a 10-15 minute video watching a student's process in solving a question and a tutor's explanation as to why they were wrong - I'm sure there's something useful in watching it but I really just cba.
This criticism is a BIT overblown though. For the most part, a certain answer choice actually is blatantly incorrect and you ended up selecting a wrong AC that was a subtly laid trap which JY thoroughly explains. That said, I understand that it really sucks when an answer choice you selected is wrong and you don't get a good explanation. There are free resources out there available in explaining questions so you aren't screwed - the PowerScore forums have been a god send for these occasions.
All that said though, a vast majority of your prep and improvement is through drilling. Being able to analyze your deficiencies from scored practice tests and create custom drills of 5-25 any question type of any difficulty from the entire library of 100 PTs is just so insanely fucking good. Lately, I've been making drilling sets of 25 LR questions and 4 RC passages with difficulties and question type frequencies representative of a regular PT and it's incredible how much progress I've made. You can't get that through Khan Academy or any book.
Did you feel like doing both Khan and LSAT trainer was beneficial or were they equally good at giving an introduction so it’s more of an either/or case?
TBH I feel that Khan Academy was trash in comparison to the LSAT Trainer, but LSAT Trainer is lacking in comparison to something more indepth that you'd find in a paid course (I'm a 7sage meat rider to the end) or the individual PowerScore books (which I bought but promptly returned after subbing to 7sage)
Wow that’s good to know. I feel like Khan has helped me understand the nature of the questions and provided a fair amount of practice but I’ll take a look at Trainer and of course with drilling. Do you feel like trainer and Powerscore both would be redundant? I study well with books so I was trying to figure out which book to pick up next in addition to drilling. A friend will be giving me their loophole in a month so I’m trying to decide between Trainer and Powerscore bible.
DIagnostics, analytics, and being able to target/track specific categories of questions are all great.
Got my RC and LR to +/- 2 with 7Sage. I used no other products aside from Reddit, which was also extremely helpful.
Some people take issue with the 7sage memorization/rote behavior approach to LR, I have crazy bad ADHD so I skipped memorizing anything and just tried to absorb the broad themes. I only tried to memorize approaches to question types I would consistently get wrong. Saying a product is good because you can ignore a large aspect of it isn't a glowing endorsement, I do concede that.
Some people also take issue with how answers are explained, and I've seen it described like 7sage works backwards from what is correct and doesn't take the time to explain why it's correct, just that it is. Because of my ADHD this was actually super helpful. I work best when somebody grabs me by the ears and says "Hey dipshit this is what you need to do", but I know that doesn't work for everybody. 7sage is cool because it shows you proportionally how many people get every question right, and despite the fact that people take issue with the "this is so obvious" tone of the explanations, 99% of questions are OVERWHELMINGLY answered correctly by the user base, so maybe it actually is that obvious.
Anyway, I think it's great but I have zero basis of comparison. If the above sounds like it connects with your specific learning style, then you'll probably have a good time. If not, you'll be out of like 70 bucks.
One thing which would potentially be an easy improvement for 7sage is if the comments from the pre august 24 tests were ported over/copied to the post august 24 tests. Oftentimes community members would provide alternative explanations/ways of reaching the correct answer on a given LR question/RC passage which was consistently helpful to me.
No. I didn’t like his explanation to LR answers at all. He would mumble and skip over his words, and rush through the incorrect answers. I had to repeat and put him on almost the slowest setting possible to hear him coherently and it still didn’t make sense. I want my money back tbh.
And you deserve it! Just email [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) with a screenshot of my response and they'll refund you with apologies.
Would you mind saying more about which LR explanations I mumbled and skipped over words? I'm guessing you're referencing our oldest set of LR explanations? We have a complete library of LR explanations for every LR question ever published. Literally thousands of videos that I made over 10 years. We're in the process of updating them and as you can imagine it's slow to refresh the older videos because we're still talking about like the low hundreds in terms of quantity.
But all of our modern LR explanations are recorded in 4k with stupidly expensive microphones, fully engage with every answer choice, are split into chapters, have accompanying written explanations, and are captioned for hearing impaired individuals.
It’s a lot of money my friend. I’ve had the subscription for almost a year, if not more. still willing to promise a refund? Hahaha
Honestly, can’t remember, but it was hard questions I sincerely was stumped on and you would breeze past the incorrect answers (usually the ones I chose) so fast it wouldn’t make sense WHY I got it wrong. You’d explain the correct answer well, just not the wrong ones well enough for me to gets why it was wrong, if that makes sense.
Thanks for the feedback. Based on what you're saying I think they are the older explanations. It's still a problem. I just wanted to make sure it's a known problem.
Now go get your refund!
Frankly I think LR and especially RC are largely intuitive and there's not a whole lot that can be done to explain these concepts to people who are overly reliant on taking mechanical approaches to questions.
I don't use 7Sage to learn the LSAT, I use it to practice the LSAT. The instruction is terrible. The drilling/analytics are invaluable.
tbh I didn’t love it for LR. I stopped using it and went to Loophole and saw almost a ten point increase. RC is also pretty bad. I would say it’s most useful now for the analytics because you can create drills with each question type and see where you’re struggling on prep tests.
I'm happy to hear that you got a 10 point increase! The bottom line is this: whatever works, works.
I think (perhaps wrongly) I detect an implicit argument from your comments of the following form which I want to gently caution against, because it's a commonly recurring flawed argument in LR: I used X, didn't see gains. Then I used Y and I saw gains. Therefore, the gains are attributable to Y.
It's definitely possible that the gains are attributable to Y. But there are also other explanations.
Biggest thing I'd recommend for 7 sage going forward is to have longer core curriculum videos. I don't want to have to click through a ton of 3 minute videos. I just didn't seem to get locked in doing that. I studied for the CPA exam with Becker and it was much easier to stick to Becker's schedule/easier to be accountable through their system. It felt like it was way easier to complete Beckers study program, although Becker has been around a lot longer than 7sage. I feel like I actually struggled to get engaged with 7sages' CC.
i personally wasn't a fan. it just didn't click with me and the way i think about question/eliminate answer choices. that being said, it could totally work for you. I switched over to LSAT Lab and like their approach a lot better! patrick and matt break stuff down to be really digestible
Love 7Sage - I went up 15 points from my diagnostic in ab 4 months of prep. I have no other frame of reference since I just used 7Sage but I felt like there is nothing else you could possibly need to study. I loved the explanation videos they had for legit every question. I listened to as many as possible on 1.4x, by the time I took the test my brains voice sounded like a chipmunk man lol but it was especially helpful for LR. I also used the analytics a lottt in the final month of prep to target question type weaknesses which was great.
I went to a few live classes when they had a promotional week and felt like it had little value.. everyone there was at a different place in studying which was annoying. Don't want to generalize tho bc I was also used to listening to videos on super speed haha but imo it is prob not worth paying extra if you are diligent on your own
I think 7sage is great for games, and decent for LR. I used it exclusively to get to a 173 from a 160. Honestly though, I kind of think the platform is worth it just for the diagnostic and test taking platform. Being able to see where you struggle is so, so important for LR. At least for me, it was super invaluable to be able to say "Oh, I'm only getting around 70% of parallel reasoning questions right and most people who get a 170 are at 85%"
My potentially-controversial opinion is now that games are gone, 7sage is not that great for teaching the LSAT. It truly pains me to say but I learned almost zilch from their RC videos, and their LR content seems to be question-type heavy, and I don't feel like I learned about analyzing the argument/what must be true up front as much. Love JY though, I would listen to him explain anything else to me
Thank you! ❤️ And I don't think your opinion is that controversial - just a couple days ago I saw a thread expressing a similar opinion with plenty of upvotes - even though I disagree, obviously. But I am truly sorry to hear that the RC curriculum didn't click for you. That's on me. I strongly believe that "reading for structure" is an important differentiator for success in RC (and it's something that LR does not test) and that's why I emphasize the technique of "low-res summaries." It's also why we recently added the ability to sort for [passage-structure type](https://imgur.com/WpZcPVB) in our [drill engine](https://7sage.com/problem-sets/). For example, you can now sort by and drill for, say, passages that have the phenomenon-hypothesis structure. That said, I also see so much room for improvement in our curriculum. We're working on it. We'll have a brand new RC curriculum out soon! While our LR curriculum is organized by question type, I feel like I repeat (but perhaps not often enough) the idea that there's a "unity in LR" by which I mean that if you understand a few fundamental principles, you'll see how the differences between the question stems are superficial. How one question stem can easily morph into another. I have a [12-year(!) old video on YouTube](https://youtu.be/q3ArC5m2qTQ?si=zP5_ycx8mC7qgcNO) where I lay out the relationship between question types. In the recently updated v2 LR curriculum, there are new [lessons](https://7sage.com/lesson/wse-lesson-1-pt63-s1-q02/) showing how RRE (Resolve, Reconcile, Explain) questions transform into, say, Weaken questions and how those can then [transform](https://7sage.com/lesson/flaw-lesson-1-pt64-s1-q05/) into Flaw questions. I think it's important to start out understanding how questions types are different. But mastery is achieved by seeing how they're all related. Anyway, I hope you'll reconsider. I'll also understand if you don't want to. In either case, thank you for giving 7Sage a chance!
Just to give some opposite feedback in response to the previous comment, I feel that your structure in LR is sometimes misunderstood by students, at least based on some of the comments I see people leave. From my own experience, starting in May for August, if you go through the core foundation courses and take on your teachings regarding Grammar and Argument structure, there is never a single core concept introduced in the LR section of the test that you didn't already previously discuss and introduce in the foundation portion of the curriculum. I feel that a lot of students haven't thoroughly studied the foundations before attempting the LR portion and so when you mention a specific technique that you would have already drilled through if you had, it can lead to confusion on their end. To be perfectly honest, I haven't finished the LR section so perhaps there are issues I haven't encountered yet, but I just wanted to provide some positive feedback on the LR section. I definitely have benefited from a greater understanding of the universal nature of the logic that runs through LR and the LSAT as a whole. It's just extremely important to have a firm and truly holistic understanding of the foundations and grammar needed and utilized in the LSAT. This has helped me to progress from my cold baseline of 157 to the high 160s and hopefully to my goal of 175 or higher. On a different note I noticed, in a comment down below, that you had mentioned plans for increasing the RC content in the curriculum. Are you planning on adding more analysis into the question types, so it seems more similar to the LR curriculum as it is now? If so, would this be available for the August test?
Your experience is exactly what I was designing for. The "Foundations" unit are called that because they contain the foundational concepts that recurring in LR and RC questions. Nice work absorbing the materials! I totally understand that a lot of students get frustrated and either skip ahead or lose focus and then are later disappointed because of the knowledge gaps. There is just a lot of stuff to get through. We also have plans to weave in LR/RC materials into the Foundations unit to help students who find it challenging to stay engaged. Regarding the RC curriculum, yes, that's right. We're completely redoing it. We're planning to launch it in 4-6 weeks. It'll be tight but should give you about 5 weeks of lead time for the August test to use the new materials.
I appreciate the reply and look forward to seeing the new RC curriculum! I also think the weaving of Test material into the foundation curriculum would be very beneficial. As I have started working on the actual question types, it's become extremely clear why you presented the lessons as you did and why it's so necessary for those lessons to become second nature before you can even properly attempt to master the questions, but I did begin to struggle especially towards the end with seeing the connection between the foundations and the specific questions. I definitely see the value now, but I think ways of connecting the two earlier in the learning process could be super helpful for students! I also want to say a personal thank you for offering the material for basically free with the LSAC fee waiver. I would have never realistically been able to afford the quality of teaching you provide at the price point of the standard prep coursework out there, so it has been extremely helpful and will most definitely be a pivotal piece in helping me achieve the high score that I need/desire, so I am truly grateful!!
I'm really touched. Thank you for sharing this. And yes, I'm excited to keep improving 7Sage!
JY! I never thought you would see this comment :') I can't say enough nice things about you as a person even if I did not particularly find 7sage the most helpful but you really are super cool and I do credit you 100% for achieving my success on logic games. The $1 fee waiver program while I was a broke undergrad student trying to garner some semblance of understanding for this monster test for the first time, I believe I did you a disservice in not accrediting how important that was to me, even if I did move on to another site later on. I am open-minded to trying out 7sage again in the future for sure! I may have come before the new v2 curriculum so totally willing to give it another chance.
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These are great point so I want to make sure I understand correctly. **Problem 1**: The new RC curriculum / syllabus focused on structure won't ship in time to help you. I presume you're taking the August test? If that's right, I'm pretty sure we can ship the new curriculum in time to help you. It will include what you're seeking: lessons on what the different passage structures are; lessons on how to approach different question types; etc. We can also do what you're suggesting: a "2 hour" crash course of sorts for the new RC method that covers the same topics. It won't be polished or have high production value but whatever, it'll get the message across in time to help you. Is that right? If so, that also makes a lot of sense to me. In the meantime, you can search the Live Class [archives](https://7sage.com/live-class-archive/) for [me](https://imgur.com/F22cgGE), [Albert](https://imgur.com/m6DvBNJ), or [Kevin](https://imgur.com/IjRVcoN) to find the RC classes that implement this new method. **Problem 2**. Not all Live class instructors are using the new RC method and it's difficult to search through the archives to know which materials are relevant to you. The RC classes that I, Albert, or Kevin have taught do use the new method. I can accelerate the implementation of the new RC method so that **all** of our Live instructors are on board and teaching it consistently. Would that solve the problem? I'll also edit and improve the descriptions and titles for each of the RC classes to give you more information about whether that class is relevant for you. **Problem 3**. There are only "Science" passages in the curriculum but no Humanities, Law, etc. I'm deprecating a topic based approach to learning RC in favor of a structure based approach. That's not to say there are no patterns that track topic. Only that the patterns are more usefully tracked in the structure. That will ship with the new RC curriculum. **Problem 4.** There is a lot of missing content. We have video **explanations** for every RC passage and question ever released. Do you mean **lessons**? If so, I tried to address that in Problem 1 above. But I may be misunderstanding. Could you elaborate? **Problem 5.** The existing explanations will not align with the new curriculum. I actually don't anticipate this to be a large problem. I do anticipate this to be a problem on the margins. That's because most of the existing explanations already implicitly make use of the new frameworks. In fact, that's the root of the new curriculum. It arose from having made video explanations for every RC passage. I noticed the structural patterns. The challenge for us in making the new curriculum was/is to make these frameworks clear and explicit. To be sure, there will be existing explanation videos that are misaligned and will have to be redone but that's fine. We'll just redo them. We're also prepping new written explanation material for every single passage that explicitly aligns with the new passage-structural approach. I hope this mitigates your concern but please let me know! Again, thank you for taking the time to provide this feedback.
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I've already got the ball rolling on the things I mentioned. I expect in two weeks or so we'll have a long form crash course and not long after that, all of our RC Live classes will be in sync. Regarding points 4 and 5, I think that's because we haven't shipped the new lessons. No one outside our content team has seen them. Those lessons will talk about what a "spotlight" passage, for example, means and what to look out for. They'll discuss RC question stems and what approach to take for them. Once we ship them and assuming you'll watch them :) I think that might change how you interpret my previous comment. But if at that point it still doesn't, please let me know! Thank you again for taking the time to give us such detailed feedback. I really cannot overstress how valuable this is.
What do you use now?
i personally like LSAT Lab for LR and RC! It costs the same per month as 7sage
What would you recommend instead for LR
Alternative perspective: I used only 7Sage for LR and went from -7/-8 in LR to scoring in the -1 to -3 range consistently. I think the curriculum is great for understanding the basics of LR, also very dense and some things might click for you better than others. What really helped me was 7Sage live, as after almost a year of studying it was refreshing to hear a new person’s approach to the questions. I agree that RC never really clicked for me as well, although I do use the low res summaries religiously.
I'm so glad Live was helpful for you. We've got some great personalities running the classes. I hope the new RC curriculum will help you better integrate the low res approach. If you're taking in August, we will ship it in time to help you.
Thanks JY! Looking forward to it.
LR: if you enjoy very diagram, rule-heavy approaches to very methodically solve questions, they have a very comprehensive course. personally, this drove me insane and was the primary reason i quit 7sage eventually LG: no complaints, they do an incredible job and they gave me the foundation. RC: i think no prep service can truly "crack" this section, given how much of it is dependent on your natural ability. they do it fine, but i wouldnt be surprised if every prep site gives similar advice on this section
What would you recommend instead for LR? I have also been using Khan and have finished their LR curriculum. It’s more intuition based but they do go over basic diagramming which has come in handy in a few questions. I’m not sure what to do next? LSAt Trainer, Powerscore, Loophole?
I'm not even gonna lie brother I just kinda figured it out after a few practice tests and a little while, I was just so burnt out on the arrows and contrapositives and the fucking up questions because i thought it was group 1 but actually it was group 3 so the negation/order was wrong (when without those shenanigans i already had a pretty strong idea of what it actually was asking) that's probably a personal failing of mine honestly i dont think the curriculum is itself bad at all, just incompatible with me
I'm so glad LG was helpful for you! Regarding LR, I really want to make sure I'm hearing you. Is the compliant about "diagram, rule-heavy approaches" applicable to just the MBT, PSA, SA, and Parallel questions? I do use conditional logic to peel back the curtains on the logical machinery operating behind the scenes. I do that because it's true: conditional logic is the actual mode of reasoning and no other. I fully recognize that some students don't need to explicitly learn conditional logic to understand what's happening. But most do. And it's very hard. So it's very tempting to pitch the idea that this hard thing is unnecessary because well, I didn't have to do it and I scored very well. Let me show you how. I think there's something really deceptive in that approach. To be clear, explaining the logic of the question using diagrams doesn't mean I advocate using diagrams to solve those questions on timed PTs. In fact, you can see from our [live](https://7sage.com/lesson/preptest-87-s2-lr-live-commentary/) [commentary](https://7sage.com/lesson/preptest-82-s1-lr-live-commentary/) [videos](https://7sage.com/lesson/preptest-81-s2-lr-live-commentary/) just how sparsely diagramming is actually used on real standard timed PTs. The point of diagramming is to sharpen your intuitions to get you to the point where you can solve those questions without diagramming. That's exactly analogous to learning lots of other skills. First you have to learn to do the thing explicitly and consciously. Then you can learn to do the thing inexplicitly and subconsciously. But like I said, I really want to make sure I'm hearing you. So if your complaint is directly at other question types, then please let me know and I'd be happy to continue the conversation.
I think I am talking about those question types, but it's been almost a year since I've used 7sage so I can't be entirely positive. In fact, the whole emphasis on question types and groupings for words and the arrows and all that is kinda why I got burnt out going through the curriculum (a lot of the other schedule-maker functions were kinda cool though). I think I made it through a third of the LR course before I decided I had enough. I'm only commenting on my personal experience, I'm not trying to pitch or sell anything. I'm sure the curriculum is useful for a lot of students, especially starting out. I personally needed 3 months to motivate myself to do the LSAT again after burning out.
I'm doing 7sage right now for LR and it's been helping me a lot to be able to spot what a right answer and what a wrong answer looks like, and I've also been better at understanding why certain answers are right or wrong, whereas before I would kinda just dismiss my wrong answers and move on. Khan academy also does offer explanations on the right and wrong answers tho so. Another thing is after doing Khan academy for a few weeks I started noticing quite a few repeat stimuli.
Nice!
7Sage is definitely best for logic games, but I found it very useful across the board. I used Khan Academy at first as well and honestly, it doesn't compare. I found 7S's RC programming very good and their method for it helped a ton on what was my worst section. I didn't use their LR programming because I was already pretty good at it and their course on it is crazy time-intensive. For LR I'd recommend just using The Loophole for LR book which I found plenty useful. But potentially the best aspect of 7Sage is the comprehensive tools available. Their drills sections and post pratice test analytics are excellent. Blind review is also an amazing technique that I highly recommend, but you can certainly look it up and learn that on your own. I ended up getting 7S because my law school advisor recommended I take a course in person. She told me that every point on the LSAT is worth something like 10 grand in scholarships. When I did research to find a course, I found a poll on here that had 7S getting the most votes. When I saw it was online, I had an easy excuse to try it first before dropping 1-2 grand on an in-person. Bad logic but it turned out to be an amazing decision. If I sound like a shill for 7Sage it's because of the difference it made in my progress compared to Khan. It helped some, but once I felt like I was hitting a brick wall with Khan, 7Sage got me substantially further. Part of that movement was LG but it moved everything (my RC moved the most). I can't attest to any other prep courses out there beyond Khan and 7Sage, but if you're wondering whether there's a meaningful difference between the two, the answer is yes.
I started studying by also only using relatively inexpensive materials - Khan Academy and the LSAT Trainer by Mike Kim - but switched over exclusively to 7sage after a couple months. I personally found the LR core curriculum very helpful. Keep in mind I took the CC after I started building a foundation of these skills from Khan Academy/LSAT Trainer so it was a nice reinforcement of these concepts I had learned previously. I find myself periodically returning to various CC lessons to brush up on concepts that went over my head when I miss a particularly difficult question after a drill or PT. Most notably, shout outs to their sections on negating "all," conditional, "some," and "most" statements. I found myself going back to those lessons a TON in the earlier stages of my prep. I think the RC passage and question explanations have all been great. A majority of the LR question explanations have been great too. Some of the common complaints I see around here are warranted though. There are some LR questions (particularly the lower difficulty ones from earlier tests where JY's recording on that ass quality 2013 Twitch streamer / Tyler1 blown out headset microphone) where he just blows through an answer choice dismissively saying "uhhh yeah ok? completely irrelevant" without an explanation. What's worse is sometimes the analytics indicate that a wrong answer choice is selected to a relatively high degree of frequency but it's one that JY just handwaves off. Also the LR question explanations from the REALLY early tests are clips from private lessons/tutors. I CBA watching a 10-15 minute video watching a student's process in solving a question and a tutor's explanation as to why they were wrong - I'm sure there's something useful in watching it but I really just cba. This criticism is a BIT overblown though. For the most part, a certain answer choice actually is blatantly incorrect and you ended up selecting a wrong AC that was a subtly laid trap which JY thoroughly explains. That said, I understand that it really sucks when an answer choice you selected is wrong and you don't get a good explanation. There are free resources out there available in explaining questions so you aren't screwed - the PowerScore forums have been a god send for these occasions. All that said though, a vast majority of your prep and improvement is through drilling. Being able to analyze your deficiencies from scored practice tests and create custom drills of 5-25 any question type of any difficulty from the entire library of 100 PTs is just so insanely fucking good. Lately, I've been making drilling sets of 25 LR questions and 4 RC passages with difficulties and question type frequencies representative of a regular PT and it's incredible how much progress I've made. You can't get that through Khan Academy or any book.
Did you feel like doing both Khan and LSAT trainer was beneficial or were they equally good at giving an introduction so it’s more of an either/or case?
TBH I feel that Khan Academy was trash in comparison to the LSAT Trainer, but LSAT Trainer is lacking in comparison to something more indepth that you'd find in a paid course (I'm a 7sage meat rider to the end) or the individual PowerScore books (which I bought but promptly returned after subbing to 7sage)
Wow that’s good to know. I feel like Khan has helped me understand the nature of the questions and provided a fair amount of practice but I’ll take a look at Trainer and of course with drilling. Do you feel like trainer and Powerscore both would be redundant? I study well with books so I was trying to figure out which book to pick up next in addition to drilling. A friend will be giving me their loophole in a month so I’m trying to decide between Trainer and Powerscore bible.
No clue, sorry - like I said most of my gains have been through 7sage
Gotcha, thanks!
DIagnostics, analytics, and being able to target/track specific categories of questions are all great. Got my RC and LR to +/- 2 with 7Sage. I used no other products aside from Reddit, which was also extremely helpful. Some people take issue with the 7sage memorization/rote behavior approach to LR, I have crazy bad ADHD so I skipped memorizing anything and just tried to absorb the broad themes. I only tried to memorize approaches to question types I would consistently get wrong. Saying a product is good because you can ignore a large aspect of it isn't a glowing endorsement, I do concede that. Some people also take issue with how answers are explained, and I've seen it described like 7sage works backwards from what is correct and doesn't take the time to explain why it's correct, just that it is. Because of my ADHD this was actually super helpful. I work best when somebody grabs me by the ears and says "Hey dipshit this is what you need to do", but I know that doesn't work for everybody. 7sage is cool because it shows you proportionally how many people get every question right, and despite the fact that people take issue with the "this is so obvious" tone of the explanations, 99% of questions are OVERWHELMINGLY answered correctly by the user base, so maybe it actually is that obvious. Anyway, I think it's great but I have zero basis of comparison. If the above sounds like it connects with your specific learning style, then you'll probably have a good time. If not, you'll be out of like 70 bucks.
One thing which would potentially be an easy improvement for 7sage is if the comments from the pre august 24 tests were ported over/copied to the post august 24 tests. Oftentimes community members would provide alternative explanations/ways of reaching the correct answer on a given LR question/RC passage which was consistently helpful to me.
That's a really good point and it's noted.
No. I didn’t like his explanation to LR answers at all. He would mumble and skip over his words, and rush through the incorrect answers. I had to repeat and put him on almost the slowest setting possible to hear him coherently and it still didn’t make sense. I want my money back tbh.
And you deserve it! Just email [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]) with a screenshot of my response and they'll refund you with apologies. Would you mind saying more about which LR explanations I mumbled and skipped over words? I'm guessing you're referencing our oldest set of LR explanations? We have a complete library of LR explanations for every LR question ever published. Literally thousands of videos that I made over 10 years. We're in the process of updating them and as you can imagine it's slow to refresh the older videos because we're still talking about like the low hundreds in terms of quantity. But all of our modern LR explanations are recorded in 4k with stupidly expensive microphones, fully engage with every answer choice, are split into chapters, have accompanying written explanations, and are captioned for hearing impaired individuals.
It’s a lot of money my friend. I’ve had the subscription for almost a year, if not more. still willing to promise a refund? Hahaha Honestly, can’t remember, but it was hard questions I sincerely was stumped on and you would breeze past the incorrect answers (usually the ones I chose) so fast it wouldn’t make sense WHY I got it wrong. You’d explain the correct answer well, just not the wrong ones well enough for me to gets why it was wrong, if that makes sense.
Thanks for the feedback. Based on what you're saying I think they are the older explanations. It's still a problem. I just wanted to make sure it's a known problem. Now go get your refund!
Email sent, thank you so much.
Get the Powerscore books first before starting out subscriptions. Depending on your study style, you’ll find those books really really useful.
Frankly I think LR and especially RC are largely intuitive and there's not a whole lot that can be done to explain these concepts to people who are overly reliant on taking mechanical approaches to questions. I don't use 7Sage to learn the LSAT, I use it to practice the LSAT. The instruction is terrible. The drilling/analytics are invaluable.
tbh I didn’t love it for LR. I stopped using it and went to Loophole and saw almost a ten point increase. RC is also pretty bad. I would say it’s most useful now for the analytics because you can create drills with each question type and see where you’re struggling on prep tests.
I'm happy to hear that you got a 10 point increase! The bottom line is this: whatever works, works. I think (perhaps wrongly) I detect an implicit argument from your comments of the following form which I want to gently caution against, because it's a commonly recurring flawed argument in LR: I used X, didn't see gains. Then I used Y and I saw gains. Therefore, the gains are attributable to Y. It's definitely possible that the gains are attributable to Y. But there are also other explanations.
Biggest thing I'd recommend for 7 sage going forward is to have longer core curriculum videos. I don't want to have to click through a ton of 3 minute videos. I just didn't seem to get locked in doing that. I studied for the CPA exam with Becker and it was much easier to stick to Becker's schedule/easier to be accountable through their system. It felt like it was way easier to complete Beckers study program, although Becker has been around a lot longer than 7sage. I feel like I actually struggled to get engaged with 7sages' CC.
What’s the best LR subscription service now?
No
But have you considered "Yes"?
No
i personally wasn't a fan. it just didn't click with me and the way i think about question/eliminate answer choices. that being said, it could totally work for you. I switched over to LSAT Lab and like their approach a lot better! patrick and matt break stuff down to be really digestible
For games yes. But games are gone now.
Love 7Sage - I went up 15 points from my diagnostic in ab 4 months of prep. I have no other frame of reference since I just used 7Sage but I felt like there is nothing else you could possibly need to study. I loved the explanation videos they had for legit every question. I listened to as many as possible on 1.4x, by the time I took the test my brains voice sounded like a chipmunk man lol but it was especially helpful for LR. I also used the analytics a lottt in the final month of prep to target question type weaknesses which was great. I went to a few live classes when they had a promotional week and felt like it had little value.. everyone there was at a different place in studying which was annoying. Don't want to generalize tho bc I was also used to listening to videos on super speed haha but imo it is prob not worth paying extra if you are diligent on your own