Hi! Similar range here, taking in October, in PST, and would love to join as well.

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@ This is such a helpful comment and I am going to try this. If you don't mind me asking, is there a reason you use PP instead of word or something? Is that more convenient format wise?

I think the thing for me about slides was I was used to studying off of them. I was a sociology major in college who took a lot of history and philosophy as well - a lot of my classes were reading heavy and the professors would put pertinent passages on lecture slides.

I think I had really hyped up the reading comprehension section and decided I needed to do something to demystify it. By putting it on a powerpoint, it familiarized it and made it look a lot more like things I had studied for classes. Also, I realized that if I was able to read a slide of text in a lecture in 3-4 minutes then I could definitely read the passage with some semblance of understanding in 2-3 minutes.

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I'm not sure if this will help you, but I was in a similar position a couple of weeks ago and this strategy really helped me. At the end of each section, I would paste the passages into a powerpoint and just highlight the areas from which each answer came from. Then I would write out the tone of the passage, the structure of the passage, and its main point. This helped me get a general understanding of what the questions are asking for and what to expect from the passages. I realized that essentially the passages are quite similar and the questions are generally asking for the same sorts of things - once I got a general feel of what to expect I dropped from -6/-7 per section to -1/-2 per section.

Thanks for the suggestion. Just wondering how you'd copy and paste the passages? When I try to do so, it doesn't let me select the text.

A lot of the passages are on lsat forums and GRE forums online, another solution is to use the pdf form of the section and mark it up in Acrobat, Preview, etc. The key takeaways for me after placing them on slides was that the passages are generally around 500 words and only fill up one slide in Times New Roman, 12 pt font.

I had some difficulty with science passages at first, but after some time I realized that reading for every deatail in the first read in a passage is a bad strategy. Instead, I just skim passages for reasoning structure, to get a hang of where the information is, and be introduced to what the passage is about. I spend about 2 minutes or less doing this and then just jump into the questions. I look for proof in the text for each question. This strategy has really helped my science passage scores.

I'm not sure if this will help you, but I was in a similar position a couple of weeks ago and this strategy really helped me. At the end of each section, I would paste the passages into a powerpoint and just highlight the areas from which each answer came from. Then I would write out the tone of the passage, the structure of the passage, and its main point. This helped me get a general understanding of what the questions are asking for and what to expect from the passages. I realized that essentially the passages are quite similar and the questions are generally asking for the same sorts of things - once I got a general feel of what to expect I dropped from -6/-7 per section to -1/-2 per section.

I was listening to a podcast (can't remember which one now) and the speaker indicated that 47 out of 49 students score 4 to 5 points lower on their first official LSAT than their PT scores. His point was that most students are a bit loose on timing themselves and stimulating the stress of a real test day. As a solution, he argued that students should give themselves 2 to 3 minutes less per section and perhaps even listen to hard rock right before taking the test to increase heart rate and simulate stress.

I think what happened to you is just basic anxiety. If you were scoring between 159 and 163 on strictly timed practice tests then you have a good handle on the material. To prepare for the next take focus on really timing your takes and maybe even throw in a little bit of meditation every day (headspace is a really good app for that).

You're going to do great next time!