I have been studying diligently, and my PTs have been around 165-170. My June LSAT was 162, so I was hoping in August, I'd get something above what I got in June, but when I checked the score, I received a 155. In June, I left the test center feeling bad, running out of time, forfeiting some questions. In August, I had some time left (Like 2 min) for most of the sections. I felt good about moving on with some questions and double checking the ones that I wasn't sure of. I have no idea what went wrong and I feel like the months of studying between June and August (in which I thought I made progress) just went down the drain. 155 is only 3 points away from the first ever diagnostic LSAT test I ever took in April. How did this happen, and what can I do to fix this?
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My first ever diagnostic was a 168, I studied for ~2 months, got a 176 on at least one PT... and got a 168 on test day. It happens. On the actual test day, I effectively ran out of time on at least one section, which had never happened to me with a PT. The higher stakes I can only imagine made me treat each question as more important than I would on PTs, slowing me down. On the very first section (an LR) I had 3 or 4 questions I had to make "educated" guesses in ~15 to 30 seconds on. Worse yet, these were the hardest questions, including lengthy parallel flaw ones.
Something I would highly recommend is focusing on speed. I started doing this with LR especially, trying to spend basically as little time as possible on the earlier questions. That doesn't mean I "rushed" them, but as soon as I knew I had gotten the answer, I moved on -- no double checking, no second guessing, no checking for traps. Just check it and move on. If you aren't sure of the answer after exhausting a reasonably short period of time (on these early questions), I'd recommend that you pick your best bet, flag it, and move on.
This strategy frees up your time for the harder questions later in the section. The second time I took the LSAT (this August), I had ~75% of time remaining by half way through, but by the end of the section I had maybe 2 to 5 minutes remaining, not nearly 25% leftover, since I had used a lot of that extra time for the hardest questions I encountered. This extra 2 to 5 minutes was intentional rather than accidental. With my early approach, I was fortunate if I had any extra time left on sections, but I had not intentionally designed my pacing to guarantee it. With my second approach, I guaranteed I would have LOTS of extra time by half way, and then I would strategically use up that extra time as needed. I put hard limits on how much time I would spend on any individual question before forcing myself to pick the best, flag it, and move on. At the end of the section I would use those 2 to 5 minutes to review the flagged questions (and I usually would not change those unless something overwhelmingly convinced me to do so).
Also, winning this extra time with speed is something that I found greatly reduced my stress, both on PTs and the actual test day, which overall is a bonus in terms of focus and accuracy.
This early-speed timing strategy applies pretty much exclusively to LR. For RC, you can't do this, since the passages don't necessarily get more difficult as you go. For RC, the passage length and difficulty of comprehension can maybe act as rough guides of how much time you should allot to reading it before forcing yourself to move onto the questions. As for the questions on RC, my best advice would be don't overthink things, flag the ones you're unsure of (but pick the best option, always), and then move on. Best case, you have time left over to review the flagged ones.
If you think about the alternative case, if you don't have time left over to review the flagged ones, then that means wasting extra time on the question would have deprived you of needed time for future questions. So in virtually any situation you should not let a question act as a time sink, since you'll either (A). need the time you'd have wasted, OR (B). if you don't need the time you'd have spent, then you'll get it back at the end of the section and can revisit.
This timing approach is the single biggest thing I changed in terms of my test-day strategy, beyond just studying the logical stuff itself. I got an 8pt improvement second time around.
Hi! I'm really sorry to hear about your 155. That would throw anyone off, especially since you've been consistently scoring between 165 and 170 on your practice tests. But one official score doesn't erase all the progress you've made, and it doesn't mean you're back at your starting point. Your practice test scores show you have the skills. They just didn't show up on this particular test day.
It's a good idea to think about why you had two minutes left, especially if you usually use all the time. You might have worked a little faster than usual and picked answers that seemed right without double-checking. Sometimes nerves, tiredness, or the testing environment can also affect how we do.
If I were you, I would take a short break to reset, then try a new practice test under real test conditions. When you review, check whether your mistakes happened because you rushed, misread something, eliminated answers too quickly, or didn't know the material. This way, you can see what needs to change without feeling like you have to start over.