Ive been studying for a long time but have struggled to improve beyond high 150's/low 160's. Its difficult to assess how well I am doing when I take a full practice test or even a section with only 25-30% freshness. I dont remember that many of the questions but I still feel like its somehow easier.
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@AlexHaro, it doesn't really matter. I completely understand where you're coming from, but the PTs have too many questions for memory to play a significant role.
What I would recommend is to keep those 100% fresh PTs, fresh. I would save them until you're coming to an end in your studying. I would go as far to say that you may consider tabling taking PTs until your drilling and section averages mirror your target score. Most people don't do better on PTs than they do on drills or individual sections. Once you're approaching your target score in your drills and sections, I recommend taking those weekly PTs to build stamina.
The caveat to this is assuming you have the luxury of time. If you must take the LSAT in the coming months, keep doing your PTs to maintain/build your stamina. In this case, I would still keep those fresh PTs, fresh, using them toward the end of your studying.
I second this
I would argue that unless you're acing it, the familiarity can also act as a handicap because it can lead you to assume you know the right answer due to a vague familiarity. With RC, you're definitely not getting as hard of a lift if there's some familiarity but, between the question being very specific related to the passage and the handicap about it leading you in potentially the wrong direction if you aren't careful, I think there's a lot you can still gain from reusing sections or PTs.
I've been doing giant LR drills of 1-3 star question sets to improve my timing on easier questions and I think it's really helped me build confidence, even though it's on the back of things I've done before. I've also retaken 4 PTs as an "easier" PT to take as I've worked to preserve a few fresh PTs as needed. Just because I had done them before doesn't mean it wasn't worth while to do. That's especially true when you get back to blind review them because then you're untimed and can force yourself to literally go over EVERY AC and think about why it was the wrong/right one, what made one potentially attractive but still wrong, what made the right one clearly right, etc.
That being said, at your score range, I think you could benefit from focusing on doing some deep dives into your translating skills so that you can come out of the stim with a better orientation towards the answer. Spamming drills and PTs can lead to improvement but that's like trying to get faster, gain endurance, and more efficient at running by running a marathon all out every week. You'd probably gain there but you're going to exert yourself more and see less concentrated gains by trying to do it all at once.
If you have more fresh sections, you could do 3 sections and then convert it to an estimated score. I would recommend since you do not have much material left, when drilling be very intentional with the questions you do and take it slow and really think about the question, think about the trap answers and why they are appealing, but also what makes them wrong. I find taking the questions slow to help me a lot.
yeah i started transitioning to doing drills untimed just to focus on accuracy. Alternating between drilling + sections (and review) each day. Also Wolves gonna have a hella of a season with Melo