I was considering taking a final PT on Wednesday but not scoring it until after I take the actual exam. That way I can practice / warm up without letting the score trip me up and it'd give me something to score after I take the actual test to help relieve some of that WHAT DID I GET anxiety haha.

My biggest tip would be to change your attitude. Right in your question you emphasized that you think the passages are boring. If you find something boring, it's almost impossible to fully focus on it. And if you can't focus on something, you don't have a snowball's chance of fully comprehending it. To improve on RC, you want to pique your own interest in the passage. And, in fact, they are often pretty interesting! You want to be a lawyer, lawyer's have to learn new things all the time, and these RC passages provide a rare opportunity to learn something new about a topic you otherwise would likely be unfamiliar with.

For me, my biggest consistent increase in RC came when I stopped looking at it as a chore and started looking at it as an opportunity to learn something new. To jumpstart this perspective shift in my brain, I scan for the main topic of the passage (often revealed in the first sentence or two) and when I identity it I think to myself "oh, cool! I get to learn about X."

For me, this made me go from missing an average of 7 per RC section to missing an average of 2. Hope it helps you as well!

If you haven't already, see if you can get accommodations for extra timing with LSAC. Your ability to properly read the questions quickly shouldn't be what is messing with your score and you deserve to get the accommodations you need to perform on the test to the best of your ability.

Shut the fuck up, Bauer!

@ said:

It's not arbitrary whether or not you can be focused -- it's a choice. You can, and must, choose your focus and interest level by appropriating the right attitude to the task going in.

Rather than approach RC as a matter of 'I need to be focused' try going in with a more positive perspective. Try going in with the view of learning something new. Most of the time the passages are probably not on subject matter you are familiar of. Simply looking at it as an opportunity to 'learn something' can be all you need to organically 'keep focused'.

Try this: When the passage comes up, read the first line or two, then pause. Tell yourself some version of "Oh awesome, I'm going to learn about....French pastry design!" Then, before you start critiquing the validity and interest of that, quickly remind yourself that this is the first and perhaps the only opportunity you will ever have to learn about French pastry design. Remind yourself that following this exercise you will be smarter than you were starting it. Then start reading. Aim to learn EVERYTHING about it. Because why not?

I don't know if that helps or not, but in my opinion this is necessary. At the end of the day, nobody can teach you how to be interested in something, but I guess if one finds a few passages on some 17th Century Feminist Space Explorer or whatever uninspiring then they're going to have a really tough time with some of the dry stuff they will need to read at law school :)

I can't tell you how much this little distinction of my perspective has helped. I have always tried to identify and clearly define the main topic of the passage after the first couple lines but since your recommendation I have taken the extra second to try to get myself excited about the topic after I've identified it (even if it's literally just thinking "this is interesting!"). Since I started doing this, I've been much more consistently missing ~2 on the set. Occasionally I'll have an extra hard passage that throws my average off, but as a whole I've been much more consistent and I'm pretty sure it's literally just because I stop and take a few seconds to try to convince myself that the passage is interesting (and sometimes it genuinely is!). Thanks for the tip.

I would often wake up early to take practice tests before work so just due to a lack of time I wouldn't add in an experimental. I made sure to do a few tests with an added section before game day just to get the feel of it. I struggled a little bit with stamina while practicing, but in the actual test my adrenaline was going and I never felt any fatigue.

I thought the Mali and the Frederick Douglass sections were similar in difficulty. That said, I really hoped Mali would be experimental because my dumb ass panicked and changed a right answer to a wrong one with like 5 seconds left on the clock because I got way too in my head about things. Whoops. A bit pissed off I cost myself the point, but ultimately felt confident about the RC section. Short stories had a couple hard questions, but ultimately I found it to be pretty moderate.

LR felt easy to me too, with the exception of one question that I kept changing my AC on. First three LGs were super easy and I got to the duet game with 13 minutes left on the clock and still had to guess on some questions.

Still, feeling pretty good about things. Probably got around a 170, although I'm holding out hope my guesses on the last LG were good ones and I got a 173 or higher!

Had 13 minutes left when I got to that section and still bombed it haha. Should've spent more time prepping for misc games.

And fuck folk, gospel, and jazz while we're at it.

It was pianos. Fuck the pianos. Fuck the violins too.

It'll probably be between -6 and -9 depending on the curve. Hard to say. I personally think the curve will be somewhere in the middle for my test. It had some pretty challenging curve breakers (imo) but overall didn't seem to be a particularly difficult test.

I didn’t even type in the chat that I was leaving. I just left. Probably wouldn’t hurt to send a quick message though.

I had LG-RC-RC-LR. Fortunate to have had no proctor or connection issues.

I'd attempt to. I just now am noticing that lawhub is back up. My advice Victoria would be to just stay the course and try not to worry about this shitstorm that's going on right now.

As a fellow Sunday taker, my advice would be to just try not to worry about it as much as you can. You can't control what will or won't happen, you can just control your attitude and response. Best thing to do is just not stress. Still, absolutely bullshit this is happening and I'm super sorry for all the test-takers dealing with this rn.

I took my last PT yesterday (I take it on 10/10) and I took PT91+ on lawhub. It was helpful for me to take my last one on lawhub to get familiar with that platform over 7sage.

Thanks for the advice everyone!

Thank you! Taking Sunday too. I've been following your posts for awhile and very much appreciate all the charts and motivation you've been sharing. Best of luck to you. I'm sure you're gonna dominate this test!

Also, UCLA is a top choice for me. I dunno if you currently go there or are hoping to but feel free to hit me up either way if you wanna talk UCLA.

Good advice! Thanks!!

I think you should do what works best for you. I'll do this if I know it's a NA or SA question, but otherwise I tend not to consciously break up the stim into its component parts (although I often do this unconsciously while reading). The trick is just finding whatever method helps you answer the questions as quickly and accurately as possible.

I don't even think it was particularly hard, I just kept falling into time sinks I knew the answer to for whatever reason.

The LR section on 92 absolutely demolished me. I've been consistently going -0 to -2 on LR on my last four prep tests and this one murdered me to the point where I just trashed the test and redid it without scoring. I know that was probably bad form, but I was a week away from test day and didn't want to totally demolish my self-esteem that close to the test.

I'm going to score above a 173 on the October LSAT

I think it's beneficial. Even if you don't end up having a game that resembles any of them, it helps train your brain to stay calm when you see something novel on the test and teaches you to keep thinking critically instead of just falling into memory mode. So even if that particular game would not be seen, it still helps you train your brain in a manner that's very beneficial for the test.