Self-study
Anyone else, once you consistently started scoring in 170s, have large swings & volatility?
After 6 months of grueling study I went from a 150 diagnostic to a 176 average in the past month across 15 tests. Very proud of myself so I don't intend to sound like I'm complaining. But I want to go to UCLA with a decent scholarship and my GPA in undergrad was low so it's a must I compensate for that with an amazing LSAT score of 175+.
But my scores are all over the place - in the past 6 days: 179 > 174 > 172 > 179 > 172 > 175. And my BR is always 178 or 180 so I'm convinced something's wrong with my test strategy or it's execution related.
I know factors like sleep, work distractions, eating play a part - but what other strategies, execution-wise, did you implement to score consistently 175+ without dips?
Any advice would be appreciated!
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10 comments
While a higher stable score would be great, you don't actually need it. Just plan to take the test multiple times. Schools care about the highest score which is what their rankings are based on, so you don't actually need to have a stable score. If you need a 175+, just take the test 2-3 times and you'll almost certainly have it with that score distribution. You'd actually be better off with a 172 and a 179 than with just a 175.
That said, since you might as well try to keep improving while waiting to take the official test, I think the most important thing that helped me as I went from an official 172 to a PT average of a 177.5 and then an official score of a 180 was retaking fresh copies of all of the questions that I got wrong about a month later. You aren't missing a lot of questions when you are scoring in the 170's so you need to learn as much as possible from them. That means you need to thoroughly review them, create a wrong answer journal that identifies what went wrong on your first try and what you noticed when you figure it out on blind review or with the help of an explanation, and then circle back to those questions and practice going through the process right when your memory has faded a little bit.
If you want, you could also post and try to find a study buddy or two scoring around 170 and meet up once a week to review your wrong answers together. Explaining questions is often very helpful to refining your thought process about them.
I also do agree with the poster who thinks you might be slightly over doing it. It's not as stressful or tiring to take PT's when you are scoring in the mid-170's, but a little more rest can prevent burnout and make you more engaged and less likely to make lethargic mistakes that you later see as easily avoidable. I think that is especially true as you get close to the test date. I would recommend mixing in days where you just do an hour or two of drilling along with the days where you are taking and reviewing a PT.
I also think that you should just keep doing what you are doing. Progress on the test is gradual. But, if you keep blind reviewing at 179 or 180, eventually, that is going to translate to steadier scores in the 175+ range.
Congratulations on all of the progress so far! You've put yourself in a great position.
@Kade_Katrak thanks man for the advice. I'll def slow it down on the PT's, and I really like your points 2 & 3.
@Marcus91 Same range and goals as you so always down to talk ab questions we missed!
If you took those PTs once a day, then I think a likely culprit to your problem is overdoing it. I'm not a 170s scorer, so I'm not in a position to tell you what it takes to get that 175+. But I am a guy who made the mistake of taking a practice test once a day like it's a Super Mario coin block glitch - thinking it's going to increase my score linearly. This test is anything but linear; you will find a lot of volatility in your PT scores, especially as you get closer to the 170s and that margin for error becomes small. Once I started treating PTs like a measuring tool that should really be taken max once per week, I was able to focus more on drilling to get my score up from the 140s to the high 160s.
Like I said, I'm not in the 170s myself so I'm not going to treat what I'm saying like it's going to be a magic fix. But I wanted to give my two cents if you found yourself having score volatility on top of taking a practice test more frequently than needed. Hope this helps and I hope you get that 175+!
@LukaDoncicForMVP appreciate it, I'm def going to slow it down and see if that helps stabilize things
what were your study strategies for such a big jump ? i'm trying to get to where you currently are tbh
@TiaraFulcher mastering RC really took my score over the edge. I was always missing like -6 to -10 on RC, so finally I stopped taking PT's and lr sections and just took like 20 rc sections in a row until I got better. I learned to read for the author's main point per paragraph, outside opinion, and the author's opinion since most questions are centered around these. I use a highlighting system, each color represents one of these. Getting RC inferences down was a little harder, so typically I POE these and verify in the text my correct answer. treat them like a MSS on LR. I read each passage for about 3.5 to 4 minutes to make sure I really understand it that way I just breeze through the questions.
my LR was decent from the start, missing like -3 to -5. now I'm down to -1 average per lr section. I think that's mostly due to doing stair stepper drills per question type, to ensure my strategy is solid for each. never misidentify a conclusion. and I learned to start pre-phrasing the answer before I even look at the answer choices. I read the stem first, then the stimulus so I know what to be looking for in the argument. and timing was the last big hurdle. you have to be fast while accurate, and I think that comes from just taking a lot of questions and getting better on each question type, drilling the ones you struggle with most. if I answer the first 15 questions in about 17-18 minutes, I know I'm in good shape. also mastering causal & conditional reasoning along with the set logic took my LR score over the edge. you have to learn to recognize it the minute you see it even if they don't use the trigger words you're accustomed to.
after 1 month, low 160s. after 2 months, mid 160s. 3 months, still mid 160s. 4 months high 160s and low 170s. months 5 & 6, 175 average. also I'd say until you are getting high 160s and low 170s don't take PT's too often. there's no point. take sections & drills most often
@Marcus91 What do you mean by stairstepper drills ? And did you hold a wrong answer journal? Thank you sososooo much for such a detailed answer!
@TiaraFulcher I didn't start doing a wrong answer journal until the last month or so, and I wish I'd done it sooner so definitely recommend. once you start scoring high 160s/170s, you're going to be missing a lot fewer questions, so I started including any flagged questions, even if I ultimately get them right, in my almost-wrong answer journal so I can keep a record of why I was unsure, what reasoning made me unsure, and how I can prevent in the future, same as a wrong answer journal.
stair stepper drills are where you drill a specific question type, let's say weaken, over and over again at each difficulty level until you get all the questions right at that difficulty level. then once you get 5 easy weaken questions right, do 5 more at the next difficulty level until you get those all correct, and then repeat increasing the difficulty each time.
I wouldn't recommend doing this for every question type & by the way this seems best for LR, not RC. I'd recommend looking at your trends across tests/sections and seeing which question types you're consistently missing. those are the types to stair stepper drill. if you have other question types like main conclusion for example that you never miss, no point is stair stepping those.
@Marcus91 oh I forgot, another thing that helped me is using chatgpt or any ai bot to do deeper analysis on my sections/tests than 7sage provides. for instance, I export my test/section results as a pdf, upload to chatgpt, and have it analyze by question type which questions I spend the most time on, sinking my time for other questions in the section. even if I ultimately get these right, I took the longer time to mean I struggle with these, and spent more time practicing/doing stairstepper drills on these to get faster. weaken and strengthen were hard for me to grasp, and I'd end up getting them right, but I was spending an average of 2 minutes on every weaken/strengthen question and that's way too long as each lr section can have like 5-6 of these.
feel free to DM me, I'm happy to help. I've been doing some free tutoring in my free time to gain lsat tutoring experience so I can charge for tutoring in law school and make some extra money.