I don't have advice, but I'm also coming from an undergrad with a P/F system and feeling a lot of frustration about how that makes it impossible for me to predict my cycle. The only advice I've gotten is to kick butt on the LSAT and make sure essays and resume reflect an interesting and academic story.

Hopefully we'll both be fine!

Focus and endurance were definitely major problems for me and, honestly, during the actual exam I was so filled with adrenaline that I was hyper-focused all the way through.

Build your endurance, but don't underestimate how you'll rise to the challenge during game time.

Take another PT. And another one. One data point is not enough to gauge where your weaknesses are, or what you truly need to do going forward. Maybe this test had something that particularly played to your strengths, and your actual average is lower. Maybe this test had something that weakened you, and your actual average is higher.

And then, no matter what the numbers look like, study. There's no schedule for how fast someone can or will improve, and every situation is unique to the individual. The only way to do well is to do the work.You got this!

Oh my goodness, go you! Congratulations!

Take the June 2007 test (available free online) using strict timed conditions through a proctor app (available free from 7Sage) to get an idea of your starting point.

And then start. 7Sage's starter package is great, or the Powerscore Bibles might be good for you.

@ said:

Great work! What do you think helped improve your accuracy?

In part, luck. Hovering around 169 for so long, it felt like if I wasn't sloppy on just ONE question, I'd finally hit 170. But also, I'm nearly through CC and have been applying the work from that. I totally bombed this LG section, so now I've got to refocus on that so I can push my score up more reliably.

@ said:

I'm done with the LSAT now, but I'm working on typing speed for law school exams. I just got so I can touch type as fast as I could type while looking before.So I won't face any more pressure to quit, take off my blank keyboard cover, and start looking again.

Smart planning!

@ said:

I didn’t cry when I totally bombed an RC section lol and just took it as a sign that I need to actually finish the RC curriculum so I can maintain my 170. Maintaining a positive attitude throughout all this is new for me

Heck yeah. It's hard to be patient with yourself through difficult sections and mistakes. You'll get there!

This is unrelated to your question, but is the MFA in creative writing or another field? A Michigan MFA in poetry is my DREAM. I'm applying for it alongside law school this year, and would love to hear your experiences.

@ said:

I'm really sorry this happened to you and it sucks so much. Do you still remember what answer choices you chose during the exam? How do they match up with your recorded answers on the LSAC report? I would make a decision about hand-scoring after seeing whether it's possible the pencils screwed you over. It has never occurred to me that a 2B pencil would be different from a #2 pencil. Maybe you could ask LSAC about the possibility of a pencil causing scantron reading problem?

As I took an international exam, it was nondisclosed. I don't have access to any of my test materials, just going off of my memory and my memory tells me that I certainly did not somehow miss more than a dozen questions over my usual. It wouldn't make sense.

I do wonder about the pencils! I didn't think it was a big deal and I literally couldn't find any other kind of pencil when I was wandering the city frantically looking before the test...

I feel like a scantron error or a bubbling error are the only two real options?

@ said:

Retake

I live abroad. I paid hundreds of dollars for flights to this test center, and I had to take days off from work to make it happen. I won't be able to retake until next June at the earliest due to the massive expense of taking the test from abroad. If I have to retake, so be it, but that would mean delaying my cycle a year or more which seems absurd given that I was PTing in the 99th percentile before scoring this way on this exam.

Meditation, talking things out with a friend, yoga (at home in pajamas, because on a bad mental health day there is no way I'm leaving the house more than necessary), essential oils in a diffuser, and taking a break from all non-essential human functions (yes, "non-essential" includes taking a break on the LSAT. No, "non-essential" does not mean taking a break on eating and sleeping).

You are your first priority. You're not going to be a good LSAT studier if you're tearing yourself to shreds in the meantime. Give yourself the time and space to breathe, and talk to someone for help if you need that.

I think this is a situation where you just can't count your chickens before they hatch. No one here is going to be able to tell you how many times you'll need to retake the LSAT to move off of a waitlist, or even if you'll definitively be on all of the waitlists that you think you will be.

Right now, instead of planning for June 2019, work to kick butt on the next test you're sitting for, not the one (or two, or three) after that.

I had a 163 diagnostic and managed to study 15-20hrs a week for four months despite working full time, having very limited internet access, and planning a national conference for youth. My PTs lead up to the exam were around the 173 mark (plus or minus one point).

My score comes back tomorrow (international exam woes). I really, really hope I did well. I worked harder on this than seemed possible, given that I literally live in a jungle in a very rural part of a new-to-me country.

Whatever happens with my actual score, I'm really proud of myself.

"Why do people settle for less and allow a 50-hour a week paralegal job (for example) prevent them from reaching their goals?

Financially, those 50 hours are much more valuable when used studying for the LSAT (considering how many hundreds of thousands of dollars you'll potentially save with a 170+ Lsat score)"

Financially, working 50 hours a week is much more valuable because it allows me to have food to put on a plate, and also a plate, and also a roof over my head in the kitchen where I can eat my plate of food.

It's not that folks who haven't quit their jobs aren't thinking about their goals. My goals require me not to be literally homeless. I can't care about hundreds of thousands of dollars in the future if I starve right now.

This reeks of privilege. I understand that the thread comes with the caveat of only applying to those who are financially able to do so, but so few people truly are, and it's not even a matter of "things will be tight but I won't buy my coffee from Starbucks daily and I'll make it through." This post vastly underestimates lower-class and middle-class life, and makes generalizations that sound like those of us forced to work simply don't want a good score badly enough.

I work full time, so I feel you.

I wake up every morning and say "174" to myself. When I want to binge movies instead of studying, I think "174." When it's been an awful day and I don't want to do anything, I consider how much more awful my day would be if I opened my email after the exam and saw anything less than the score I know I could earn if I tried.

I also have tried to reimagine the LSAT as a game that I am able to win. All the questions are puzzles. PTs are competitions against the curve. It's gotten a bit fun that way, honestly.

They're undisclosed because the tests may be reused for future administrations. That said, I also took an international test and I'm super bummed I won't get to see the full breakdown of my score when it's released next week :(

Do you diagram everything? Do you diagram most things? I only diagram parallel reasoning and parallel flaw questions, and I've been getting -0/-1 since employing that strategy. My LR sections are usually not marked up after a test because I hardly need to write things, I have seen enough of these questions and know how to reason through them enough that I can do it all internally.

If you're writing more than you need to on the paper, it may be slowing you down. Your BR score shows that you know the answers, so now you just need to get through the whole section fast enough to get them down. Take those easy questions, and zip through them.

As with other things on the test, the easiest way to speed up does seem to be practice. If you've seen this question a ton of times before, you can hopefully fly through it without putting pencil to paper for anything other than filling in that bubble.

A premise indicator is sufficient to indicate the presence of a premise, but it is not necessary! Context is the text within the argument that fills in the spaces around the argument, but it doesn't do the work of linking premises to conclusion. If you ID the conclusion of an argument and ask yourself "why is this true?" the portions of the stimulus that answer that question are the premises.

Have you tried meditating?

I find that a quick time to breathe and practice mindfulness before every section (especially the one right after the break) helps me recenter and see the test with fresh eyes.

167 is a great score, but if the issue is fatigue, if you can push through that then you'll have something even more incredible on record. Good luck!

You need more data points. Three tests is not enough to say with any certainty what's going on. A high BR score is promising because it indicates that you understand the material when given more time, but again, just three tests isn't enough to clearly see what's happening.

PT more, BR more, and hopefully you'll keep moving upwards! A BR of the high 160s is super promising :)

No idea how many points you can improve (it depends what your issues are, how many hours you're willing to put in, and how quick a learner you are). I know I didn't see the benefit from the CC until a few weeks after finishing it, once the lessons fully percolated and I could apply them better.

You should definitely plan on doing PTs and BR. BR, not drilling, is where the learning's happened for me, and you may find the same.

I'm an American and I took the LSAT abroad on a tourist visa this year, and it changed absolutely nothing about my testing experience

Three weeks isn't enough time to complete 20+ PTs without doing your head in, but it is enough time to do some foolproofing! You can make serious gains by improving your LG score, so that's where I'd put my time and energy if I was you.

You PT, BR, and review in the same day? I'd space that process out. Do your two (or three, if you must) PTs a week, but dedicate one day to PT, the next to BR and review, and then restart the cycle. You don't want to BR on a super tired brain when the idea behind BR is getting to that clarity that will show you the right answer.

@ said:

Then when answering the questions, I would write the line number that supported the correct answer, taking as long as needed to find the right answer.

This is my strategy also. You should be able to cite exactly where your answer comes from within the passage, and doing that successfully will help you check your comprehension, decrease sloppy mistakes, and gain those points.

I really love Simple Habit. They have a Before an Exam meditation that I used today before a PT and it was super helpful. They also have specific anxiety meditations, and study break meditations. I much prefer guided meditation over silent (or nature noise) meditation because I get distracted unless there's someone walking me through the whole thing