166 Diagnostic in August 2025 -> 168 in June 2026 Official -> 169 in August 2026 Official
I posted this on the 7Sage subreddit and am posting it here as well.
I am at a point with this exam where I just do not know what I am doing wrong. I have a PrepTest average of 174, have taken PT123+, and have extensively drilled the rest. I thought I had learned from my mistakes and had gotten much better after June. I isolated everything that went wrong, worked on it, drilled extensively, and performed my best ever on PrepTests (consistent high 170s, though some were not completely fresh).
And then I got a statistically indistinguishable score on the real thing in August (168 on the June exam, 169 on the August one).
I am starting to wonder whether I have just hit some sort of cap on what I can achieve.
As a result, I drilled tons and tons of 4* and 5* LR questions, requiring myself to get 25 correct in a row.
What other mountains are left to climb? Or should I just not apply this cycle?
The only thing I can think of is trying to rigorously train the process of elimination on LR, but I can't think of a way to drill it that doesn't just end up with me doing questions the way I normally do.
Update for 7Sage:
I've been going through the older questions and finding that older LR actually helps me with my process of elimination because I have to make a lot of tough calls down to two choices in a way I usually don't in the newer ones. However, the current test still feels like there are "two trap answers" instead of one, and I thought it might be my nerves, but I tried to feel a lot calmer in August, even though I was a bit tired. I basically feel like I know this test too well to walk away with a score like 169 when I think very deeply about its mechanics, found a lot of it intuitive to grasp, and obviously have done nearly 4,000 questions at this point.
I tried going to tutors on here, but I was pretty much just told that they don't know how to help me because I know the content very well and that I just need to execute better because it's infeasible the actual exam's LR is much harder.
If anyone has a similar background and eventually got out of it and now works as a tutor, please let me know. Specifically, someone who felt like they knew the test ridiculously well but for some reason could not hit their PT average.
7 comments
Something to consider for @antitrust_fan and @businessgoose
Have you tried screenrecording explanations before? I know @businessgoose writes many explanations in the comments, but there might be something different about saying an explanation out loud that unlocks something. It's a bit closer to a real-time articulation of how you'd approach something.
You won't be able to do this with a regular section under timing, but maybe you can do a section with unlimited time and talk through an entire section. Try to get out loud what you'd be thinking if you were doing the section under timed circumstances.
@Kevin_Lin Thank you so much for your response! I am going to try this.
@Kevin_Lin Hi Kevin, I’ve tried this exercise and had an LLM generate a transcript, but do you mean that we should try to watch it back and look for patterns / inefficiencies? I firmly believe earning time on the clock could make a huge difference, because sometimes I do bank too much on a question I’m sure is the hardest in the section even though optimally I should’ve moved on and came back (though with so many flags on test day it’s hard to remember who I actually need to come back to!)
what question types do you routinely miss on LR and do you miss more questions on LR or RC? i find theres certain techniques where you can get to a point where theres only 3-4 questions on LR where you legitimately are torn between trap answers. im in a similar spot, but i havent take an actual test yet but was around 178-175 PT range until last week and my scores on the newer band have been 173, 170, 169, 168. also these tests all have my RC at -4-5 with LR at 0-2, so thats kind of a wall im trying to break through myself...
I am in the EXACT same boat, especially of people telling me that they don't know what to advise anymore in my shoes. Know the test what I believe to be really well yet continuously doing lower on the real deal. If you are given any advice that changes things/seems to help a lot please please do share. Regardless here to chat and help eachother!
@businessgoose
From the quality of the analysis in your comments all over the decades of LR questions we’ve both been doing, I fully believe you also know this test really well.
I think there is just a mindset / execution gap that we’re missing, like we need to “zoom out” and try to start reading LR more intuitively again. Cause I am fairly confident I am perfect scoring (or -1ing) RC which means I’m literally getting -5/LR per section which never ever happens to me in practice.
@antitrust_fan Right! I have no clue if I'm getting that many off in RC or LR… I guess a lot of it boils down to reading word by word, line by line, fact checking if we can. Also maybe not letting our knowledge of the test carry too much? Because I was thinking I maybe got some wrong by choosing what I'd "know" the LSAT to be insinuating or leading to but it seems nowadays the test tries to fight against that actively. We got this!