Self-study
I am constantly scoring in the mid-low 160s on PTs and drills. I am trying to break 170 but always seems like there's trick questions that get me. Any strategies/tips from anyone that broke into this score range that really helped them do so? More hours? Specific resources? I take the August and have been studying the past three months.
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5 comments
I just got a 172 on the April test, but I plan to retake in August and try for a 175+( best PT was a 178). My diagnostic was a 165 and I got stuck around the 168-170 range for a good while before finally breaking into the 170s. I never really learned "lawgic" or theories or whatever bc that part was sort of intuitive to me, and things like a wrong answer journal or writing or logic chains never helped me, so maybe take this with a grain of salt, because I know those things r super important for most people.
Anyways, a few things really helped me break into the 170s. I'd echo the other comment and say focus in on the underlying patterns. Try to pair that with a conceptual knowledge of the problems rather than a formulaic one though. I struggled early with flaw problems, but once I got a specific pattern down for attacking them, they became free points 99% of the time. Look through your analytics and focus on the problem types that give you trouble and just break your process down and make it automatic. You want to instantly know what a question stem is asking and then that understanding should trigger a specific question in your brain. At the same time. I feel like too many people try to make their process find the correct answer, without really understanding it, and that kills you on questions that want to trip you up. Your primary goal should just be understanding the stimulus, you can worry about the correct answer after.
Another thing you might find helpful is to focus on your timing, I also felt like it was little trick questions that were getting me and locking in on timing really helped. I was always finishing with around 5 minutes left, I tried to slow down and started barely getting through sections, and I finally found a sweet spot after trial and error. I check in every 5 questions and I have a specific number in my head that I want to be at and I felt like that clock kept me on task and focused and helped eliminate silly mistakes. I had a tendency to lose focus in the middle of the section and make a silly mistake that an increase on timing fixed.
Most importantly though, I would sift through your PTs and really zero in on your 2, 3, and 4 star question misses. You can worry about 5 stars once you crack 170, but you should have the mindset that cannot afford to miss 3 star questions imo. I was so frustrated that I would have a miss or two in the lower difficulties and by lowkey obsessing over them and forgetting about the really hard ones, I fixed that issue. I almost always found that my 3 star misses especially were due to either a mental error or a faulty understanding of the question, and by really focusing constantly on them I became much more aware of those issues and less likely to make the same errors. You could of course do that for every question, but oftentimes the hard ones are just really hard and it is not a super productive use of your study time.
I have no clue if this is helpful insight or just surface level advice you have already gotten, but I hope it helps! You've got this!
(PS. my scores also went up when I made a conscious effort to take some pressure off myself, it's important to remember you're already at a pretty impressive score)
I found that after breaking through 160, what becomes of the utmost importance are patterns. I feel like I got up to the 160s with like intuition, general knowledge, or like after the core curriculum. Breaking 170 required me to come up with patterns and specific approaches to questions, and being able to identify patterns in the stimuli which allowed me to prephrase the general direction of the question. I just think of it as the LSAT and logic can only have so many types of questions to throw at you, so once you identify the patterns, even though they change the variables, the structure stays the same.
Another thing that I had to learn the hard way was to be humble and take the LSAT beatings lol. I was devastated after scoring way below my PTs on my LSAT attempt, and I really had to take it from scratch and learn all over again. Write out your logic chains, do your low-res summaries, do your wrong answer journal. Everything that sounds cliche, works. IMO, be the robot that LSAT wants you to be, at least logically.
And finally, I'd highly suggest NOT studying alone. I went through undergrad with a lassez-faire attitude and it really bit me in the behind studying for the LSAT. Staying on top of your studying, as well as maybe tutoring/studying with other people to really solidify the concepts you have.
Good luck! Keep grinding you got this
@MarcusTsang Thanks so much for this insight
@MarcusTsang this is so helpful thank you! Can I ask what a wrong answer journal is? Do you do it for every question you get wrong, or only on PTs?
@listening A wrong-answer journal is like a record of a question that you got wrong, and then writing why you got it wrong, and what to improve on. I don't necessarily write out my own wrong-answer journal now, but I do look over all my wrong answers and make a note on why I got it wrong, what the pattern of the correct and incorrect answer was, and the overall pattern of the question.