Self-study
I have been studying for the past 3-4 months but feel as if nothing is breaking through. When I drill, I am usually able to understand all my mistakes after review and am constantly note taking. But when I am doing PTs or longer drills- it feels like nothing is breaking through. I FEEL like I know so much more but my actual performance is showing other wise.
My PTs have been 145, 153, 152, 160 (which really encouraged me), 152 and 153.
I have not done the core curriculum or watched videos. I feel as if I am a fail, examine and learn, type of learner, but will of course consider this. Does anyone have any suggestions or any notes? I am so convinced I understand the logic and tricks soooo much more- but in practice it shows otherwise. I KNOW we can all do this, but super disheartened.
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4 comments
I earned a 515 on the MCAT (≈91st–92nd percentile) and a 170 on the LSAT (≈97th–98th percentile), and the biggest shift for me was realizing that understanding material during review and performing under timed conditions are almost completely different skills.
At first, I was exactly in the same situation: I would drill questions, review them carefully, and feel like I “got it,” but my full-length performance stayed flat. The breakthrough happened when I stopped treating review as the goal. Review only told me what was wrong—it didn’t train me to not do it again under time pressure.
What actually moved my scores:
I stopped relying on passive understanding and forced repetition under conditions that matched the real exam. Every missed question wasn’t just reviewed—I re-did it cold days later until I could consistently get it right without hesitation. That gap between “I recognize it” and “I can generate it under pressure” is where most score ceilings live.
I also stopped treating full-length tests as progress indicators on their own. A single PT meant very little. What mattered was whether the same mistake type was disappearing over time. When I noticed patterns—like misreading conditional logic or falling for LSAT trap answers—I trained those categories in isolation instead of doing broad, unfocused practice.
Another key adjustment was separating accuracy from speed. I first trained myself to get near-perfect accuracy untimed, then gradually layered in timing pressure. Trying to do both at once earlier just reinforced mistakes.
Mentally, what kept me consistent was not expecting every PT to improve. My scores fluctuated, but I tracked progress by error elimination, not raw numbers. Once repeated mistakes started disappearing, the score jump followed naturally.
The discouraging part early on is that improvement feels invisible. But at this level, progress is mostly happening in pattern correction, not in obvious score jumps until a threshold breaks.
More structure would definitely help you recognize what gives you more trouble! Isolating question types can give you more direction for your study and help focus your efforts where you’re losing points.
You’re starting at the top of bloom’s. You need to start from the bottom. My cold diagnostic was 169 and I still started at the bottom when I started studying.
Dude you for shnurz should do the core curriculum, or at least structure your practice around individual tags or question types. So much of this test is pattern recognition -- you're not doing yourself any favors by clouding the patterns looking at all of them at once.
Also, all LSAT tutors say "progress is like a staircase" millions of times because it's true. Very easy to get better at the core content and to have that make you slower, for instance. Keep chuggin along with conscious effort, and make your goal in each session to make new, interesting mistakes.