I went from 168 in June to 171 this Aug exam. uGPA is 3.96, T3 soft (1-2yrs of WE in tech company), nURM (East Asian non-US citizen), with two degrees. I'm signed up for September exam which is right around the corner but I think even if I retook, the max I could score is 173. I've also exhausted every single practice exam so not sure what to use anymore for resource...

Dream school is Berkeley (median for 2023 cycle was 170; 3.83) - planning on applying ED but not sure if 171 is enough as the median was 171 in 2022 cycle but dropped to 170

My university hands out A+ (on official transcripts) but it's counted as a 4.0 and counts it the same as an A. When LSAC does my CAS report, will they count the A+ on my transcript as a 4.33 or use my school's grading guidelines and still mark it as 4.0?

I recently broke into my goal score of 172-3 last week on 3 PTs (88,92,93) and had been getting 166-168 before that but this week I took two PTs (85/87) and both of them I dropped down to 165-66...I'm taking the June exam and I'm so nervous...I usually don't really have an issue with timing (have 2-5 minutes after sections to go back and review) but on PT85 and 87 I had such a big problem with timing to the point that I had just 30 seconds left to answer the last LR and RC questions.

On PT85 I had gotten -2 on RC but -6/-7 on each LR sections while I got -7 on RC and -2/-6 on LR for PT87. LR and RC tend to be my weaker spots but usually at MOST I would get -5 wrong. Even LG games where I tend to get 0 wrong, I got up to 2 wrong.

I've been studying 2-3hrs everyday (I work full time) since February but had been studying 6 days a week since October. I usually take a PT every Sunday but have ramped it up to every Sat + Sun since last month. My weekday study schedule is switching between 2 timed LR sections + 2 RC passages + 1 LG game and 2 timed RC sections + 15 LR Q + 1 LG game.

I don't know what I'm doing wrong....I wasn't able to study as hard as usual this week because of work commitments but I still feel like a 7pt drop is pretty substantial.

Please if anyone has any insights to why such fluctuations happen, how to overcome, best practices, anything -- would appreciate it