Careless mistakes have always been my bane, especially on the LR, so I did the following and am improving slowly but surely:

1) Make a list of your most common careless mistakes. Add to the list as you come across new ones/remember others

2) Read the list several times before you begin your studying for the day and intermittently throughout the day

It seems obvious and trivial but it has actually been pretty effective for me. Good luck!

Got it, thanks again!!

Ah, thank you so much to both @ and @-1 for the fast, comprehensive and friendly replies to my ignorant question!!

I was hoping the -10 meant we could get that many incorrect and still have a 180. If only right, haha.

I've actually taken every pt in existence save for June 2006 and still have no idea what my score will be. My nerves made me skip too many questions and so I didnt have enough time to read them all thoroughly when I went back. My average is usually around 168-172 but I feel like I could've scored muchh lower.

But given I have no more pts to work with (Ive thoroughly reviewed them all), I really am at a loss for what to do. Advice?

I.. have a really dumb question. What does it mean for a curve to have -10 or -12?

I'm not sure if I'm being hard on myself or if I should cancel my score. I wish they would at least tell us which section was the experimental a few days after the test so we know how to better predict our scores :(

I may be preaching to the choir here, but one lesson that can be learned from comparing answers (A) and (B):

Both (A) and (B) are tempting answers. When you find myself in this type of a situation for a necessary assumption question, it is essential that you ask yourself this question: which answer choice is more fundamental and basic?

In this case, (A) is the more fundamental. We first need to accept the fact that genetically modified crops are not as harmful to insects (which is what A says) before we can accept what (B) says. For (B) to be applicable to this situation at all, it actually needs to assume that (A) is true. Because if we don't accept (A) and don't say that genetically modified crops are less harmful, then what would it matter what fate greets the insects if less insecticides are used, when. for all we know, the genetically engineered crops are just as dangerous?

(B) is tempting because it strengthens the argument as JY said. But it isn’t fundamental to the argument. (A) is the basic foundation you need in order to stack building blocks (like B) and truly begin to strengthen the argument. Many necessary assumption questions will have strengtheners to tempt you. When in doubt, try to imagine which answer stacks on top of which.

Even if (C) doesn't rule out the possibility that the brain damage isn't caused by some (non-neurotransmitter) chemical leaked from oxygen-starved or physically damaged nerve cells, doesn't (C) still weaken by ruling out at least the other neurotransmitters as alternative explanations?

After all, weaken questions don't require us to destroy the stimulus, but just weaken it anywhere from 1-99%.

I know law school admission officers communicate often with each other. Also, from the way undergrad admission officers had access to the list of schools applicants applied to (a fact that is not readily made public knowledge), I'm going to guess the same might very possibly apply here.

Wow, thank you so much for taking the time to write out an in-depth explanation!

My issue with this question was identifying the fluff, something you so effortlessly knew what to do with. I've only seen one other LR question (about a farmer being rich, poor and honest) where one of the sentences was fluff so I'm rusty :(

I never 'stopped' studying though I did lay off on the full PTs after seeing my score drop by up to 10 points before the September administration. There was a point when I would read the words and not understand a thing.

I think your 1 PT a week is fine. That's what I'm doing now. I learned the hard way last time that reviewing is so much more important than taking PTs especially since we're now within a month of the exam. My mindset had been "I want to see every single question before I take this test so I'm familiar with every unusual question type" but in retrospect I see that it would have been better for me to think "I want to understand every question I have seen till now." At this point, it's just about not getting bored, drilling and keeping our brains flexible!

I had a professional LSAT tutor give me advice two weeks before the September exam and she just told me that on the last week, to NOT do any new full PTs. Just take one timed section at a time. Burn out is real :(

I do that too. I sometimes run out of time at the end of the RC sections and I'd rather rush through a passage with less questions than one with more questions (= less questions to get incorrect because of no time).

I personally never quite understood the 'do the passages you are best at' advice because that to me sounds like spending precious time skimming through the subject matter. But hey, to each his own!

That happened to me as I prepared for the September exam (cancelled score, retaking December). Because I was taking a full PT every 3 days and studying 24/7, I knew it was a result of burning out.

The more you stress, the worse you may perform. Try incorporating exercise into your daily routine or just let yourself get away from the LSAT. I don't think you should take a full week off just because the December exam is so near, but maybe a day of just resting/reading light materials/exercising? Also, like synergy_101 said, you might have just come across a few really unlucky tests.

Don't stress out. Shake it off, and move on. (We're all there with you!)

TLS is chock full of success stories and detailed guides. I think there's also a document somewhere there that detailedly describes what a bunch (15+) of top scorers did. Don't get obsessed with TLS (it is unnecessarily intimidating) but do take the time to look around as you'll find a wealth of information. Below are 3 posts written by 180 scorers.

1) http://www.top-law-schools.com/how-i-scored-a-180-article1.html

2) http://www.top-law-schools.com/how-i-scored-a-180-article2.html

3) http://www.top-law-schools.com/how-i-scored-a-180-article3.html

I struggle with weakening and flaws q's too. You all may do this already but as soon as you read the conclusion, think of the anti-conclusion so you can get the ball rolling (toward weakening the argument in any way possible). So if the conclusion is: birth weight affects appetite, your anti-conclusion is birth weight does NOT affect appetite. And maybe take a second or two to quickly think of any reason how the anti conclusion could come about.

I think the most important thing in Weakening/Flaws is to NOT get persuaded by the stimulus. And that's difficult to do given how well created some of the arguments are. Try to break and reverse the tendency to agree with the conclusion by immediately negating it.

If you have spare tests left, do some sets of 2-4 LR questions under 2-4 minutes depending on their level of difficulty (judged by what number they are). This is just to keep your brain familiar with bursts of pressure while not tiring it out. And I think focusing on logic games is a good idea; they help warm your brain up the most and give that much needed boost in confidence!

Hey,

No need to feel screwed. I was in a similar situation as you after I finished my Blueprint course a year ago (biggest financial mistake of my life yet, don't do it). To be frank, I didn't even go to the classes or watch most of the videos because they dumbed the LSAT down so much, so the fact that you even finished a prep course says something about your willingness and drive!

When are you planning to take the LSAT? I empathize with your concern that you don't have many PTs to work with. I was there too! I studied carelessly and without a set plan for about 6 months, so by the time I began to take things seriously (5 months ago), I had maybe 10 PTs left (biggest study mistake of my life, don't do it). But you know what the great part about having so little PTs is? You get to review ALL of them THOROUGHLY without fear of spoiling a question! Plus, since you've seen all of the different types of questions the LSAT can throw at you, all you need to do now is to develop breadth and depth. Yes, you may remember the answers (I did too), but most likely, you didn't go through them in as much detail as the LSAC would have if they were to give you an explanation for each of the answer choices. Look at the super prep books (did you know there were super preps!?) and see how much effort the LSAC puts into each and every question - make that your standard. Pretend you're teaching the LSAT to someone else and go through every answer choice to spell out precisely why one is right, and the others are wrong. In doing so, you'll find yourself connecting dots you didn't know were there, and that you didn't know you knew. I legitimately looked like a crazy lady in the library talking to myself as I explained the answer choices to my invisible student - but it helped me improve. Channel your inner JY ("So what?!" "No, just no.").

Simply burning through PTs will not help you improve your time. Return to the basics and really, really understand each question type be it a LR, RC or LG question. This way, as soon as you read a question, or read a keyword in the stimulus, you see the general structure of what you're supposed to do for that question. What really helped me was to read my notes from 7Sage lessons/PowerScore/Manhattan books from time to time so I could see how the lessons' content applied to the questions I had difficulty with.

Also, don't feel the need to oil your full-PT performance by taking a PT every week. It is much better to thoroughly review for like 2 weeks, and THEN take a PT to see if your new methods have been working. Change can't happen overnight so give yourself time to improve. The LSAT writers probably take at least a week or two to complete an entire test and they've been doing this for years, so don't be so hard on yourself if you don't improve quickly.

For reference, I'm taking the December LSAT and have been averaging in the high 60s, low 70s. I ran out of PTs so I haven't been able to measure my improvement, but I'm still reviewing and learning new things. Hope this helps some :)

@ woww, great catch. The one you found is definitely more tricky to understand, but I feel like the word 'most' is in fact still central to the answer choice, and implied by the conclusion (and more specifically by the words "no better than").

If you negate it to say "less than half of the jobs will not demand that you be an expert at machines," then you can no longer conclude that education in technical expertise isn't better than education without. If say 49% of jobs don't care about your technical expertise while 51% do, you surely can deny the conclusion and say that technical expertise will give you a leg up in the employment race. Does that make sense?

@, yeap, 'most' worked in that case because the argument core hinged on the fact that there was a majority. Otherwise, I think it's fairly safe to assume that the word "most" is generally unnecessary in NAs.

Thank you all for your input!

I actually found a NA question that did in fact have "most" in the correct answer choice. As was predicted, the stimulus implied the necessity to have the correct answer be qualified with 'most.' If anyone is curious, the question is PT70, S4 #6.

1) Assumes (without warrant)

2) Doesn't consider the alternative

3) Doesn't consider the alternative

Thanks for replying!

Hmm I feel like it's not that 'most' isn't strong enough for NA questions. After all, if you go one level higher, you get to "all" and that is definitely generally too strong for necessary assumptions ("all" is typically used for sufficient assumptions!).

I thought the significance of using 'most' to eliminate answers on NAs was just on the fact that the difference between having 49.8% of something and 51% of something is rather trivial UNLESS the stimulus said otherwise (and most don't). What do you think?