I know you mentioned that a 170 a month later than a 167 is preferrable in almost all situations. Would the same thing go for a 173 vs a 175 a month later? I have weak softs so i'm wondering if a better score would help balance that out or if it would be outweighed by the timing in the application cycle at most schools?

i actually experienced the exact same thing, down to the details, i got a 178 and a 177 and a 175 on the older band, struggled through 169-173 range on the newer band and couldn't break through, and then got to PT 156 and 158 and recently got 175 on both of them. I think a lot of it is mental, but a lot of it is literally the LSAT writers just mixing things up. I was missing 2-3 problems per test on the first 15 questions in LR sections, but overall just drill the misses you get, derive rules from your misses and don't let it get to you. I notice the LR curvebreakers on the newer tests take some getting used to, but you are using the same muscle you used to get 178 on the older band, just give it time and don't get discouraged. I do think there is a subtle switch in the way the writers write certain questions on the newer forms, but it's not objectively harder, it just takes some getting used to!

Well for MBT don't use any sort of negation test. I visually represent each individual fact, for example if the stim is a set of 4 sentences that are all conditional statements, some chaining together and others not, write them out in conditional logic A>>>>>B form, and then look for an answer that is forced by the stimulus. All firefighters are public servants, and all public servants work very hard. Now a Must be True, answer would be something as simple as, 'Nobody who doesn't work very hard is a firefighter.' (/Work hard>>>>>/firefighter, Firefighter>>>>work hard). these are simplistic, but as far as the 'assumptions' you mentioned, you just take everything in the stimulus as absolute fact, unquestionable, and the answers are what is up for debate. Now, many MBT questions are not conditional, but simple sets of facts. For sets of facts, look for facts that share a common term, or a similar idea, and connect them together to try to squeeze out an inference if there are no immediately obvious answers. Often, if you find two facts with a shared idea or term, and chain them together, you can draw a defensible inference, which is often the credited answer. The main thing to get here conceptually is MBT doesn't warrant a negation test because MBT questions are not an argument, they're simply sets of facts that can be used to draw inferences when combined. Now for necessary assumptions, that is where you use the negation test, isolate the argument into premises and conclusion, either visually or mentally, and then run the negation test in that gap between premise and conclusion. For example, "Student reviews of Mr. White have been slowly, but steadily decreasing from 4.5 stars to 2.5 stars over the past two semesters. Therefore, Mr. White's teaching ability has been regressing over the past two semesters.' identify how the premise supports the conclusion, here student reviews are used as a proxy for teaching ability. So a necessary assumption would be something as simple as 'student reviews are indicative of teaching ability in teachers', if we negate to 'student reviews are not indicative of teaching ability in teachers', the whole argument falls apart, as the student reviews are useless as a proxy. Remember to use the negation test on the answer options and use your prephrase to effectively narrow down the answers to 2-3 options, which you then can run the negation test on. Obviously, real LSAT problems are going to be much more convoluted than that, but it would do you a lot of good simply to isolate the premises, look at the premise that most directly supports the conclusion, see how and by what means does the premise support the conclusion, or why would the author think the premises support the conclusion, and run the negation test in that space. Often, the correct answer on NA questions is weaker and more timidly worded than you would expect, so don't reject answers for being modest or obvious. Hope that helps.

@emill1517 i would start by doing like 5-10 question drills on parallel flaw, must be true, sufficient assumption questions under conditional reasoning tags, so you get extra reps practicing drawing arrows and diagramming. do them untimed until you have very good accuracy. mainly focus on getting an intuitive sense of once you see a conditional sentence like 'no Y unless X' you can mentally picture that it means Y>>>X and /X>>>>/Y. overall well worth practicing because at least 5 questions across both LR sections depend on conditional reasoning in some way, even if its a simple sufficiency necessity confusion in a flaw question. the main way i realized i had improved was that i could instantly visualize what a conditional statement is saying quickly, which simply requires practice on the aforementioned question types. Good luck! tip: when i see a relationship like 'all Xs are Y', it helps me personally to think in 'if-then' form, so the sentence means, 'if X, then Y, if not Y, then not X'.

@Jaf299 i might go back to doing that tbh. i was at a consistent -1 and -2 on RC for like 5-6 tests but then dropped to -4-5 recently. i've also been taking tests after poor sleep and stuff but that probably only partially explains it. if u need help with LR tho let me know i have been consistently -2-1 across my last 10 tests

out of curiosity, what is your average LR compared to your average RC? -1 is insanely impressive

conditional reasoning is honestly something that you could fix and resolve within a couple weeks of drilling and is well worth it. are you missing the odd 'must be true' conditional reasoning questions or the parallel flaw questions? i basically stalled my practicing for 2 weeks just to drill purely conditional reasoning problems and now they're my stronger question type.

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...