Self-study
At this point I think the LSAT is just fake, y'all. My last PT taken on May 16 was a 169, and somehow today (literally ~10 days later?!) I got a 179. All I did was some aggressive drilling in between and I've been studying lackadaisically since August 2025, seriously since January 2026. On top of that, when I last sat for the real LSAT in April, I got a 166, which was a major disappointment relative to where I though I'd been based on my drilling. And in the weeks I've spent studying since, I'd never gotten a PT higher than my 173 plateau from January-March, until today. I guess miracles do come true ;-;
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omg how does it feel to live my dream
ayyyy congrats.
Great Job. give us some tips please!
@Cristina180 Ok now that I've had a bit more time to think about it, I do think there were a few habits I consolidated between the 169 and the 179:
LR:
Read and understand every sentence of the stimulus before you move on. I would sometimes speed-skim because I'm stressed and think I'm understanding it, but I'm not. Investing the extra 5-10 seconds to really deeply understand the stimulus on the front-end meant that I could rapidly reject wrong answer choices and speed through the ACs very fast without needing to re-read or double-check in like 95% of cases.
Predict, predict, predict for every single question. I'd previously mainly tried to predict only on weakness, necessary/sufficient assumption, parallel reasoning, and main conclusion questions because I feel like that comes more easily there. But when I started pushing myself to aggressively predict even for causal strengthening, most strongly supported, weaken/strengthen/evaluate, and all other types of questions, it honestly felt like a game-changer. I think something about forcing yourself to predict the AC makes you think in a more efficient way. Instead of trying to remember the various rules you've encountered from your wrong answer journal every time you look at each answer choice, it puts you in a state of being able to immediately see why every AC is wrong except for the right one. And at least 2/3 of the time, the right answer is exactly the one you predicted. On top of that, I saw my speed on questions (especially easy ones) increase a ton as a result. It feels really effective at preserving mental energy and making sure you don't fall for trap answer choices. I honestly think this skill probably only comes from copious drilling, but if I'd tried it sooner maybe I could've broken through sooner.
If you have even the slightest hint that you need to diagram, you should diagram. I was previously losing some easy points because I thought I'd gotten good enough at conditional reasoning that I didn't always need to diagram, but the LSAT is designed to exploit that feeling and make you regret it. You can spend ~3 seconds glancing quickly at the stimulus and answer choices to tell if you need to diagram, and if it's not like the world's simplest single-arrow, two-variable conditional statement (and sometimes even when it is), just diagram it.
RC:
7Sage RC outlining method is generally helpful.
Similar to above, read and understand the purpose of every sentence, even if you're not slowing down to deeply process the information. There were times when I'd read a passage, have a very rough grasp of the factual claims it was making, but I hadn't read or dug deep enough to really understand what the author was saying or why they were presenting things in a particular way. I think that cost a lot of points.
At some level, you can also predict for RC questions, and I think I was just subconsciously doing that but I don't have a ton of insight into which questions that works particularly well for (maybe stated/implied?). I think the more you predict, the more you force yourself to understand the test, and that just has to be paying dividends somewhere.
@sagely Thank you so much for taking the time to answer me, and helping us with this amazing tips! best wishes!
Please teach me your ways.
My buddy and I also scored eight less points on our April exams compared to our PT averages.
@Jake1776 Darn! Something about that test!!
Nothing about your previous scores in the screenshot you provided suggests that the 179 on your most recent PT was out of the realm of possibility. All I see is a floor of 169 based on the data presented. Real testing results will often vary based on non-replicable test day stressors.
what would you say led to your real test being below your PT average, was it just a harder test than the PTs, test day nerves, or something else?
@Jdunni I honestly still don't know for sure. I finished each section with ample time left over and felt like I wasn't diving into the questions deep enough / falling for trap answer choices probably / not reading deep enough to really process the questions. I guess that all just boils down to test day nerves.
I think in the last 2 weeks especially, I've been drilling while really trying to practice consistently predicting the answer before I even look at the answer choices, and also slowing down to really read and understand every sentence of a prompt/passage (within reason, of course). My hope is that those skills, if drilled enough, can be a stronger baseline that holds up under test-day stress, but I guess I'll find out during my retake in June!
@sagely thanks for the insight, good luck in June!