On top of Phoebe's recommendations, I'd suggest doing a lot of experimenting to see what works best for you. Mainly, play around with:

1) How much total time you're willing to allot to passages based on how difficult they seem

2) How much time you're willing to spend reading each passage

3) If you want to give yourself a hard cutoff on per question so you don't spend too much time deliberating

I've seen different advice for all three of these, and for me the optimal rules didn't align with all of the conventional wisdom. So I highly recommend playing around with those inputs and seeing how it feels for you.

@nr They give you six pieces of blank paper and pencils. The only items you will be allowed to bring in yourself are your ID and your login information.

LawHub doesn't have that feature anymore, unfortunately.

Are you effective at flagging questions? If you can identify questions that you're not fully confident on and flag them, you'll have 10+ minutes to go back and double check them. If your blind review is as quick as you're saying, this could be highly beneficial.

But, to address the root of your question, I would use the time to prove two things to yourself: 1) That your right answer is right and 2) That the wrong answer you were considering is wrong. To get a question wrong on the LSAT, you need to get both of those things wrong. So maybe you're too hasty to go with the first answer that you somewhat like, and you have extra time available to verify that the other answers are definitely wrong.

The last thing I'll say is that it seems like you know the answer to your question is that you need to trust yourself that thinking through an answer doesn't mean you're more likely to second guess yourself. So when that thought pops into your head, that's a great indication that you should push through and give more thought to it anyway. Eventually, that'll become habit.

@stronfire12 I think one is enough. I use the full test to work out the timing and strategy tweaks that I want to test out. But you only get enough information on what to tweak after a decent amount of review, which for me is more than a few days. In between full tests, I do drills and sections, with deep analysis on mistakes. Additional full tests would just overwhelm me and likely lead to less thorough review. One was always enough for me, and I didn't feel like that inhibited my growth at any point.

It seems like you have some room to do more intensive blind review. If your BR only increases 3 points, you probably aren't putting full effort into it. Which is understandable, since it's right after a full PT and you just want to be done with it. But, this is where you can really push yourself. Not only does it deepen your understanding of the test, but it also deepens your understanding of your weaknesses and where the easy gains are. I could be wrong and you just happen to score nearly the same time vs. untimed. But if this sounds like it applies to you, it could really help you get those extra few points you're striving for.

Great to hear! The drill is the easy part; the review is where the real work starts. Congrats on the mental dub!

I wouldn't count them, for the reason you're mentioning. They're not really representative of your accuracy on the question type when you it in the wild. You're being asked a question that pertains to the concept you just learned, which is hugely to your advantage. So I'd keep those as an educational exercise separate from the rest of your analytics.

I agree with you that it seems much fuzzier. What I'd recommend is reviewing those situations that you find fuzzy, and coming up with a sort of proof that the wrong answer choices are wrong. Find exactly in the text where it becomes unfuzzy, and the answer choice becomes definitely incorrect. Doing this in review will eventually give you a sense of what to pay attention to when reading the passage and what kinds of phrases signal evidence that makes it less fuzzy.

I'm assuming the wrong answers aggregate toward the end of the test? If that's the case, it probably means you need to speed up the first two-thirds of the test. There's a tradeoff between being absolutely certain on questions without ever rushing and going faster than you'd like but having enough time to get a reasonable evaluation of every question. It's worth experimenting with that tradeoff to determine if you can optimize timing a bit more. Try answering earlier questions with a lower degree of certainty so you can achieve a higher degree of certainty later on in the section. Getting it to the point where your accuracy on a question is independent of where it shows up during the section is probably more optimal than your current timing.

I wouldn't increase to multiple preptests per week unless you have a clear purpose in doing so. For example, I increased the rate when I was working on my timing, and wanted to do full sections to make sure my new timing strategy didn't break down in practice. But if you're just in practice mode, there are more targeted drills you can be doing to identify and study your weaknesses. Preptests are likely not your most efficient method, and they're more likely to burn you out. I was in a similar situation as you were about two months before my first exam, and I was able to complete your goal with only one preptest a week.

@iwillcrushthelsat I don't have any special insight into that. I'd recommend someone from 7sage admissions respond to this. Although, I believe LSD is solely based on the raw data regarding applicants with very close statistics, while 7sage uses statistical modeling to create a smooth model based on the total applicant pool. I don't know that to be true, though.

You may not know which ones are objectively the trickiest while taking it (by number of people who get it incorrect), but shooting for a 160 instead of 170 does give you some leeway that you can use in your favor. If you are able to develop a quick sense of how difficult a certain question/type of question will be for you, you can afford some skips. That's not just time you're saving that you can use on other questions, but also brain power on the overall test. For this to work, you need to really big confident in your ability to triage questions quickly, and then also be good at managing your time to know when it's effective to go back and re-evaluate the skipped questions or when to take your time to complete the section. So I'd say, certainly there are different ways to optimize the test when you're not attempting to be nearly perfect. But these methods are very personalized and can be risky.

I think the answer depends more on your LSAT circumstances than on the outside factors. Increasing your LSAT score will certainly help with receiving scholarship money. So the question really is about how likely you are to improve your LSAT score. If you have no reason to believe you've gotten the highest score you can get, I would say absolutely keep on attempting to improve. Even in the case of this school you're targeting, being slightly above LSAT median and slightly below GPA median is not moving the needle as much as those 18% probably are. Of course there are other considerations, but work for the score that'll make them and their competitors competing over you.

So I don't know the exact formula 7sage applies to the data, but I can think of a couple reasons why this might be the case. Some schools may be more willing to take "super-splitters." Some schools might weigh GPA relatively more, while others might weigh LSAT relatively more. Some may weigh stats less altogether. So being farther away from a school's median compared to another's in one or both stats shouldn't necessarily lead to worse odds.

One thing you might want to do is acknowledge that you're aware it's been a while. If they think you're expecting the most vivid, detailed rec letter five years out, they may be hesitant to agree to it. If, from the beginning, you say that recognize a lot of time has passed, but you're happy to provide any assignments, updates, resumes, personal statements, zoom calls, etc., I think you're more likely to get a positive response.

@UcraniaMerino If the trap answer is forcefully eliminated, that means that you're not including correct questions in your blind review. That's an important setting to keep on, since it will keep you honest for wrong questions. That may not be enough, though, so you might want to go extra blind. By that, I mean re-doing all flagged questions that you think are potentially wrong before looking at the answer. Getting more practice picking between those two choices without any indication could be very important for you. Not only for improving your accuracy in selecting between the two, but in improving the speed it takes to resolve the two. Being faster and more accurate in those two-choice situations pays dividends throughout the test, as you pick up extra time for later difficult questions.

Just to add to the discussion, if you need to cancel a score in the future, you're going to be glad you didn't cancel this one. A 158 won't hurt you much, but having multiple cancellations may raise some doubts. I'd keep it on as a "diagnostic" type score, and reserve cancellations for if you truly need them in the future.

My first score was below what I had gotten on my previous five PTs, but my second score was above what I got on my previous five PTs. There's tons of volatility on this test. It'll work in your favor at some point. In the meantime, you can raise your average PT so that a "disappointing" score is where your PT scores currently are and your upside score is well above it. Keep at it!

This doesn't completely solve your feature request, but there is a new "Build my school list" feature in the admissions section. If you ask it to estimate your chances at schools with part-time programs, it would be able to provide that data for you.

If I were you I would dissect the questions you get wrong. Not just a wrong answer journal entry, but a full write-up. Break it down into its simplest parts and figure out the high level error it made. This will lead you to notice all sorts of things you aren't noticing. Basically, open up a google doc and start writing a sort of proof about why the correct answer choice must be true and why the answer you selected must be false.

Being at the school's target median essentially gets them one person closer to hitting it. Being above the school's target median also gets them one person closer to hitting it. But it also gives them a chance to potentially push their target median one score higher. So, probably it's diminishing returns, with "at the median" being by far the most important, one point above the median being slightly more beneficial, and then each point after that being far less important. That being said, a higher LSAT score correlates with a greater chance of success in law school, so admissions officers will still care about higher scores on the individual level, not just shaping their class on a statistical level. I'm no admissions expert, though, so I'd be interested to hear what someone who has been inside has to say.

Just to echo what Phoebe said, the admissions officers are already well aware that test scores don't define you. They all have seen and accepted people below their school's 25th percentile LSAT scores. Graduating near the top of your class at an Ivy League school will speak for itself. Writing an essay about why your score shouldn't be factored in as much, without a specific reason, probably won't convince anyone and may waste the time they could be spending on the best aspects of your application.

If your first score was a 161, I'd assume as an admissions officer that a second cancelled score was worse than a 160. The 160 not reflecting your potential is unfortunate, but reporting a score one point below the score you already have will not hurt your application. Reporting a cancelled score may introduce some doubt that you have no need to introduce. It feels annoying to have to report a score lower than your PTs because of a distraction, but retaking and scoring higher will erase that PT more than cancelling it would. Plus, in the event you need to cancel a score in the future, it will look better to not have any previous cancellations on record.

This isn't based on any science, but I think it would have to be at least 10 points below where I was PTing. If I were an admissions officer and saw a cancellation, I personally would assume that the person scored at least 10 points below what they eventually got as an official score. That being said, I'm not an admissions officer, so I'm sure there are more qualified people who could answer this.