Completely agree with @SerinJeon! I'd also add that this early on, there's tons of volatility. You don't have the full understanding yet, you haven't gotten your timing down, and you have numerous other things you're working on. So, your PT isn't irrelevant, but it's very early for it to be meaningful. Consequently, I wouldn't be discouraged by it. It would be more productive to focus on your average PT score going up over time, instead of focusing on one score early on while you're balancing many new lessons. You now have a bunch of new lessons that you can take from this PT and bring into the next one. It won't ever be a linear journey to higher scores, especially not at the beginning.

The same thing happens to me. But I started to notice that this phenomenon got a whole lot worse when the first two-thirds of a section took longer than average. At that point, I've used more energy and have less time for the trickiest questions. Practically, this means you need to get as good as possible at the early questions. Not just getting them right, but getting them right quickly and without expending much effort. And then when taking PTs, getting through the first 15 as quickly as I can. Then, mentally, my LR section has begun with hopefully about 20+ minutes left for 10 questions. When I get in that situation, I feel much more mentally prepared for the end of the section. So, maybe it's more about practicing making the easier questions easier, so that the harder questions aren't as hard. The good news is it looks like you're fully capable of doing this, since you only got 1 question wrong on the back half of the test. That makes me think it's less of a burn out issue, and more of a consistency with timing issue.

Maybe try doing these untimed. The timing wasn't all that important to me when I was doing the reinforce drills. I more so wanted to verify that whatever lesson I was supposed to take from the question was still in there. Whether I could speed through them was not really the point. And maybe without worrying about the clock on these, it actually makes you speed up by accident. I'd try that out and see if it works better for you before giving up on it.

@SydneyGriffith Just to add one tip to Sydney's very thorough response. After completing an RC section, I'd do a detailed review of all the main point questions. Focus not just on exactly where in the text the right answer was supported, but also where each wrong answer went wrong. If you can start picking up on where the wrong answers overstep or are inaccurate, you'll form an intuitive sense of what correct answer entail. As you said, main point questions are worth spending the detailed time on, since confidence in the main point question can push you in the right direction on the rest of the questions.

You can also drill the specific priority tags that you've already gotten through. Not as relevant for the "Foundations" section, but once you get to LR and RC lessons, this will probably be useful. There may be overlapping concepts within each priority tag, but at least you can start getting some reps in on questions you should mostly have been introduced to.

It's an update to the UI that reflects how the LSAT will be starting in August. In order to X out wrong answers, you need to press the "slash over the eye" button on the right hand side of the screen. This will put you into "Xing out mode" which will allow to you X out wrong answers by clicking on the letters. Then, you will have to press the button again to exit this mode and select the answer. It's a pretty annoying update, but this is how the LSAT will be moving forward.

I recommend getting into the weeds of how much time you spent on each question. Each time you do a practice test or full section, find the questions that you rushed and got wrong. Identify the type of question and a specific reason why you thought it was a question you could rush through. Then, also look at the how you're doing against the clock at different points of the section. For example, did you feel you had to rush in the middle portion of section 3 because you leisurely went through the opening ten questions? These are the question-level and section-level questions I'd want to ask myself to diagnose issues more specifically. Once you've named these problems, you can have one or more of these focuses in the back of your mind until it becomes part of your natural pacing.

First of all, congratulations! That's an awesome first PT. Two things stand out to me from this test:

1. You're clearly capable of crushing LR sections, but also you're not fully consistent yet, given the -4. I'd be interested in breaking down what happened during that section. After each section of a PT, I jot down some brief notes on what went right and what went wrong. Seeing if anything could have been avoided timing-wise to prevent the -4 LR is where I'd start.

2. The questions you still got wrong after blind review are definitely worth spending a lot of time on. Maybe write them up with breakdowns and how you'd explain how to get the right answer to someone else.

Overall, I think you're at the point where you have a great grasp of the test, and it's mostly about making timing tweaks to improve consistency/give you extra time to consider the toughest questions. That's what will probably get those -4s down to -1s and bring your score forward.

I think I'd probably delete the test, then go into Settings -> PrepTest pools and remove it from all of the available pools. You'd lose the three mostly unaffected sections from your stats, but it would solve your other problems.

Not to talk my own book, but have you gone through the whole 7sage RC lesson library? When I was studying for the LSAT, that's how I got my foundational approach. I was surprised to see that I had such a significant missing foundation for RC. The wake up call for me was that I was getting a huge portion of main point questions wrong. I was so confused, since I figured these should be the simplest. Once I got to that section of the RC lesson library, I learned that I mostly need to be looking for when the author chimes in with their take on the situation. I pretty much instantly halved my errors on main point questions. If you haven't gone through it yet, I highly recommend doing that before anything else. So much of RC for me was discerning what was crucial to pay attention to and what I could move on without a complete 100% understanding of on the first read-through.

Yes, in general, schools will automatically consider every applicant for merit scholarships. There are sometimes specific named scholarships that you can apply for, but these are based on different factors like intended area of law or background. For an idea of how LSAT scores affect the automatically-considered scholarships, you can play around with 7sage's scholarship predictor: https://7sage.com/admissions/scholarship-predictor

@junda It seems like you're exiting the "beginner gains" phase, but still pretty early on. It probably will take more time to gain points than it did when you were still working through the core curriculum and finding out your biggest weaknesses in drilling. As a result, I'd probably want to see one of those two practice tests land at 173 before feeling confident you'll be prepared to score that 6 weeks later. Especially since you weren't planning on applying this cycle in the first place, it sounds like there's no major reason to rush it. That being said, it's certainly feasible. I would evaluate the benefit of obtaining the score you want in time to apply this fall vs. the possibility that you use up one of your five chances and the exam fee. Those weights will be different based for each person. In my mind, I would be counting both of those as very realistic possibilities if you signed up for the August exam.

The LSAC FAQ's section says this about post-exam discussion:

What information about my LSAT experience am I allowed to share with others?

You may share general information, such as how you felt about the test-taking experience, the exam overall, or a section of the test.  Sharing more details, such as information about a particular passage or a particular question and how you answered it, is prohibited.

Like others said, I wouldn't take any risks of violating that policy.

This may seem very simple, but it helped me a lot when I started physically moving my finger through sentences. For some reason, actually pointing to each word at some point made me more likely to process the entire stimulus, as well as maintain a quick pace.

Other than that, I would just say that this is a really tough test to stay focused on. It takes practice to develop the ability to read actively for extended periods. Pretty much everyone struggles with mental fatigue, but you will get better at it over time.

@junda I'd need to know more regarding the two considerations I asked about to get a more realistic sense of whether it's a good bet. But, regardless, I'd use these next two weeks very wisely. Go through weak spots in the core curriculum, drill your weakest areas, and take two more practice tests to get better data by the 25th. If you think your understanding of the test and practice test performance are moving at a good pace, it's probably a decent bet that you can improve your score four points by the August test. I'd really highlight, though, that whether you're applying in this cycle and whether you've already achieved significant beginner gains are crucial factors in this determination.

I think that's very reasonable. Two considerations:

1. Is this your first time studying in-depth for the test. If it is, you should be able to get some beginner gains within that time frame. If you've already done an extensive amount of studying, it may be more difficult, although of course still doable.

2. Are you planning to apply this cycle? In order to submit applications by the first priority deadline, you probably want to start getting scores on the books. If you're planning on waiting for the next cycle, there's no real need to rush your first attempt. In that case, I'd wait until you're actually PTing in your goal range before signing up.

That being said, I was able to accomplish a similar jump in that same time frame, and it's definitely possible with focused studying.

You click on the "slash on the eye" button on the right hand side. This puts you into scratching out mode. Then, you click it once again to get out of scratching out mode. This is less convenient than it used to be, but it reflects the new interface that's being implemented starting with the August LSAT.

All of the previous advice looks really helpful. I would just add one thing. The test got a whole lot less stressful for me when I set manageable expectations. When I was trying to complete every question with lots of certainty, it was always a big race against the clock. This makes you feel like every second wasted is a punch to the gut, and as soon as you start losing time, the panic spirals. If you have more lenient expectations for where you're at - answering every question with at least 80% certainty, being okay with occasionally not answering the most difficult one or two questions, etc - it feels like less of an anxiety-inducing time crunch. Ironically, this usually leads to me finishing the section in less time than I would be if I were striving for perfection. Basically, create an approach to the test with enough time cushion that panic doesn't set in as soon as you hit a small snag.

In addition to the tips already offered, I would recommend considering the tradeoff between certainty and time. What's better: spending 3 minutes becoming 99% certain that an LR question is correct, or spending one minute becoming 90% certain that it's correct and then moving on? If you have the understanding to get 24 questions correct, you're probably not optimizing this tradeoff. Experiment with moving on faster when you're pretty sure you're right so that you have more time on the more complicated questions. Shaving time off of easier questions and not spending too much time debating the more difficult questions will likely help you narrow this 10-12 question gap.

Another strategy you could try is to more specifically diagnose the issue. While you're reading through the passage, catch yourself when you're stuck and write down some notes about why you got stuck. Was it a mechanism you didn't understand? A very technical definition? Hopefully when you have a large enough database, you can see which parts of it are giving you such a hard time. From there, you'll be more able to determine mental traps you need to avoid.

If your PTs are plateauing, I would try messing around with different timing and certainty strategies. I was able to break out of a certain range just by experimenting with speed and confidence levels. It sounds like you have fairly rigid rules for how long to spend in different situations, and it might be worth challenging those rules. I'm sure you have good reason for arriving at these current parameters, but maybe things have changed as you've improved. Here are some things you could play around with:

1. How quickly to read through an RC passage depending on the difficulty level

2. What percentage certainty you need to have to move on in an LR question

3. What percentage certainty you need to have to move on in an RC question

4. In which situations it's actually more efficient to stick with a tough question that you've already spent 90 seconds thinking through

That's not an exhaustive list, but it gives you a good sense of the thresholds you can tweak. For me, reading through RC passages quickly and answering the RC questions with much less certainty ended up making me more consistent. I then had enough time to search through the passage on tough questions or go back and understand certain parts of the passage better if I needed to. This may not be the case for everybody; for some, it might be necessary to slow down when reading the passage. But, the idea is that there may be optimizations still available to you that could break you out of that plateau range.