I was in a similar boat a while ago. One of the biggest pieces of advice that I can give is that it is okay to take a break. I am taking it in November and i just took 5 days off to just rest and relax. Granted, i made sure to go to bed early, to hit the gym, and make sure i was still eating healthy. However, I gave myself a break from the LSAT.

Additionally, if you are scoring that high, I would recommend not doing drills. For me personally, once i hit the mid-high 160s i found that i was already pretty confident with the material. What I was having more time with was strategy and timing. Feel free to read what I wrote here https://classic.7sage.com/discussion/#/discussion/comment/216525 and here https://classic.7sage.com/discussion/#/discussion/comment/216302. While drills are great on honing in on specific questions you may not be great at, once you are strong everywhere it comes down to other strategies. My diagnostic started at a 154, I then was PTing pretty consistently in the high 160s-low 170s I plateaued for a little bit but after reevaluating, i just broke through 178 on a PT. You've got this!

Try to identify patterns beyond just the question type. Another commenter mentioned difficulty. While this is certainly a factor you want to look at, I can also suggest some other ways of looking at it speaking from personal experience.

I noticed that while i would get some wrong, on PTs that I did particularly bad at, I was getting clusters wrong. So rather than 4 or 5 spread out i noticed that i might get clusters of 3 or 4 wrong. So then I tried to look at the clusters and figure out what was going on in my brain during that time. And something I realized was that while the question types were different, they almost all had a Necessary Assumption question in there. However, just looking at it on the surface i wasn't getting NA any more wrong than any other type.

Then, the most important thing, I was honest with myself. When I sat down and reflected, I realized that if i was being perfectly honest, Necessary Assumption questions make me uncomfortable. I cannot tell you exactly why, but my brain LOVES sufficient assumption questions and very often it tries to revert to sufficient assumption when doing NA questions. So when i reflected more and more, I realized that what was happening was that I felt like i was spending too much time on NA questions which was causing me to feel a need to speed up on subsequent questions. This was causing me to make careless mistakes and get clusters wrong. So my solution? I skip all of the NA questions and leave them for last. If I read the stim and i see its NA, i don't hesitate for a second and i just skip it. Then I go back and do them all at once. By doing them all at once I can get my brain in "NA mode". Plus, I find that i can take my time on the other questions and i feel less rushed. It has meant that i had less time to review. However, by implementing this method i went from the mid-low 170s to scoring a 178 on my most recent PT.

Some general things you may want to look out for:

Are there times when you feel rushed? (I know the LSAT is always going to make you feel rushed but are there any times that you feel particularly rushed?) If so, maybe take a look at where you are spending too much time.

Are you making careless mistakes? Is there a trend beyond just the question types? I noticed that I tend to ignore when an answer choice conflates a sub group. For example, the passage will be talking about island monkeys, and the answer choice will mention monkeys in general and i tend to gloss over that detail.

Do you feel uncomfortable with certain question types? this is perhaps the hardest because it is a gut feeling. It is more than just saying you get them wrong or you spend too much time but rather do you generally feel uncomfortable. For me it was NA that was affecting my confidence in other questions

Are there subject types that you are bad with? For instance, when I used to take the SAT I found that I was worse at science heavy subjects and would get lost. So I started watching an hour or so of Sci Show on youtube or other science related channels. Funny enough, it is actually one of my best topics. So maybe the LR question types are inconsistent but maybe there is a topic that is consistent.

The most important thing to remember is that there is not one solution. I wish that it was possible to fix everything with just one step but that is impossible. Instead, try to find some issues and implement fixes. It could be timing, topic, etc. Dont feel discouraged that by implementing a fix you dont immediately shoot up in score. It is going to take a bunch of tiny adjustments to get there. Just know that it is possible!

Im interested as well. I am PT'ing in the mid-high 170s and i find that talking about problems helps me a lot.

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When I had encountered this issue, it was because I had essentially experienced burnout. Its really easy to develop a sort of tunnel vision with the LSAT, you start to miss the forest for the trees, so to speak. Everything you learn begins to just swim around in your head. What worked for me was dialing back my practice, or even not practicing certain days. A fresh mind makes a huge difference.

I also agree with the other poster, progression isn't linear, and when you change your thinking, you're going to have a regression before progression. If you went from driving automatic to driving stickshift, you're going to get worse at driving before better!

I love your driving analogy!

If you feel like you are weak in the foundations it is probably wise to go back and refresh. There are a few times where 7sage will teach you something that won't entirely be clear until later; however, JY usually will preface it/say it explicitly. He will say something in the lesson like "this will make more sense in [XYZ] section". You can think about the logical reasoning a lot like math. Before you get to calculus you first have to understand algebra, and before you can do algebra you have to know how to add, subtract, multiply and divide. If you feel like your addition and subtraction is weak it doesn't make much sense to try to push ahead into calculus and brute force it. If you feel like you aren't strong in foundations it will affect your learning later in the lessons.

If you are getting ones wrong but of different types it may not be a content issue but rather a strategy/timing issue. Read what i wrote in this post and maybe this will help?

https://classic.7sage.com/discussion/#/discussion/comment/216525

I also read this article years ago when i studied for the SAT and it changed how i approach standardized tests. It is by no means the exact same as the LSAT but it is definitely worth a read.

https://blog.prepscholar.com/how-to-get-a-perfect-sat-score-by-a-2400-sat-scorer

@ said:

@ said:

What is your ideal score? I don't think doing october, november, january is a good idea if you are looking to score significantly higher. You are not allowing yourself breathing room to learn the material better. If your goal is only to get a few points higher than 149 and you are PTing in the 160-155 range then you might be fine taking january. Keep in mind that there are a limited number of times you can take the exam. https://www.lsac.org/about/lsac-policies/limits-on-repeating-lsat/

How does the limited number of attempts to take the LSAT impact a student's decision-making process regarding when to schedule their exams?

It should not impact which exams they take rather whether it is wise to take so many close together. The reason you take multiple exams is to hopefully see an increase in scores. If (for instance) you take the October exam and score poorly, and you immediately sign up for the November LSAT, the question you should be asking yourself is whether it is reasonable that you will see an increase in your LSAT score. If it is not reasonable, then why are you taking it so closely?? You are essentially "wasting" one of your LSAT attempts. As it mentions on the LSAT website, you can only take the LSAT 5 times in a 5 year period. If you take 3 back to back, you are now down to 2 more attempts allowed. You should ideally be waiting until you are PTing around where you want to score. That is why i mentioned that if they are PTing around 160-155 and want to score in the mid 150s then they may be fine taking the january LSAT. But if they are PTing around 160-155 and hope to get a 165+ then it probably isnt wise to rush the process. Rather, take a moment to breath and study.

Instead, it may be better to wait a few months until you are confident that you will see an increase in scores. Now this is not always the case. For example my cousin took the LSAT and ran into some issues during the exam that affected her stress and confidence. She was PTing at around a 176 and ended up scoring I believe in the 160s on that exam. She knew that it wasn't the content but rather the outside factors that caused her to score much lower than her PTs. So she retook the exam a month later and scored a 174 (right around where she was PTing). But like i mentioned, she was confident that she would see an increase in scores.

The reason why i mentioned that in my post was this is simply something to keep in mind. It is not the number 1 determining factor. As the original poster mentioned in their post, they scored poorly in October and felt they did not do well on the November test. Chances are that if they feel as though they did bad on both that there are some content issues that may need adjusting. It is by no means the end of the world, and everything is fixable. However, only giving yourself a month and half of serious studying may not be sufficient.

But i completely agree with one of the other comments who said to keep studying in the mean time. If the November score comes out and it isnt good and you feel like you can do well in january then sign up! and if you still dont feel confident it is okay to wait!!

You are going to do amazing on the exam don't be too stressed. My tip if you want to see a jump in scores is to 1) get used to working when you are tired and 2) being slow and methodical when analyzing your mistakes.

When I first took my diagnostic over a year ago I scored about a 155 (i dont remember exactly). I studied for about 3 months full time. I was fortunate to not have school or work. I ended up scoring a 169 on the exam. I then didnt touch anything to do with the lsat for an entire year. I decided a few weeks ago that i would try to bump my score since I knew I could do better, and i have only given myself one month before i have to take the exam (not advisable, but oh well). The other day I scored a 177 (with no blind review) which is the highest i have ever scored. And that is after only having re-studied 2.5 weeks (very very intensely). In two weeks i managed to do every single logical reasoning lesson and foundational lesson, on top of having a full time job. This was about 100 hours worth of studying on top of my 8-5 job. I was studying pretty much all day saturday and sunday. And from 6 PM - 11 PM every day of the week, even on fridays. My phone screentime went from a daily average of 6 hours a day, to 1 hour and 22 minutes. To be honest, it sucks lol. However, the reason I point this out is that I used to notice that i would get tired during the second half of the exam. However, since I have been training my brain for the past two weeks to focus on the material even when i am dead tired from work, getting through the exam fully rested on a saturday or sunday seems easy in comparison.

Additionally, one thing that I do, and this may be too much, is I hand write every single question that i get wrong. The entire question stimulus and stem for logical reasoning and the only the question stem for reading comprehension. Underneath the question I put what the right answer is. I then put a one to two sentence explanation for why that is the right answer. Then underneath that I write about one full paragraph about why i got it wrong. I hyper-analyze it. I truly try to get to the root of my issue. The trick i learned is to ask myself why five times. For example, "Why did you get [Question B] wrong? Oh i missed the word "not" in the answer choice. Why did you miss the word "not"? I was rushing. Why were you rushing on this question? Oh I had felt i spent too much time on the last question. Why did you spend so much time on the last question (Question A)? I struggle with RRE questions....". This is just an example of how this style led me to realize that my problem was not with question B but rather a completely separate question that i did get right. It wasn't that i was incapable of answering question B, it is that my lack of confidence on Question A types were the reason that I was messing up question B types. So once i got better at RRE, then suddenly i stopped making careless mistakes. Additionally, it usually means that if i fell for the test writers' tricks, i wont make that mistake again.

With that being said, also pat yourself on the back when you get a particularly difficult question right. Be your own hype-person!!

Like i mentioned, this is perhaps too obsessive for the goals you are seeking. However, I think it illustrates a larger principle that you can apply to your studies. The answer is not simply to go over the ones you get wrong but to truly self reflect and be honest with yourself. No one person is good at everything. If such a person exists, I have not met them. The goal is not to beat yourself up over your faults but rather to analyze your mistakes slowly and methodically. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. In my opinion, drills are good for when you know that you are rough on a specific question type. For example, I know I am exceptionally bad at questions that say "all of the following are correct EXCEPT". So when i see those questions, I save them for last. Once you have a solid foundation it is all about practice tests and reviewing those practice tests. I promise you, the more you sit down and try to analyze your mistakes, you will start to find trends in your mistakes. Train your brain to sit through the exhausting exam. Also if you haven't taken them already, save PT 148 - 158 for when you are feeling fully rested and in the same conditions you plan to take the real exam.

I am not sure if any of my advice will help but I hope it does. Just know that nothing is impossible and that I am sure you will do amazing on the november LSAT.

I have always been pretty good at standardized tests so hopefully this will give you some inspiration. Other than extensive studying, this is what I do to get a good score. While some of them may seem like superstition I have a reasoning for all of them.

At least once a week I treat my day like i would the actual exam and take a full practice exam in the exact same conditions i plan to take my real exam. That means following a strict schedule.

I wake up 4 hours before my exam start time.

If I am scheduled to take the real exam at noon, i wake up for my practice exam at

8 AM.

I eat the same thing for breakfast that i plan to eat on the day of the exam

two eggs, two slices of bacon, and some oatmeal. I do this because it's quick and the

oatmeal means i wont get too hungry, and i like bacon.

During this time, i allow myself to scroll tik tok or do any other mindless activities

It is now usually 3 hours before my exam start time

i then travel to my exam site (i like to take my exam somewhere other than at home. i do

it at my office)

Once i am at my "exam site", i will usually play some games that are brain stimulating but not exhausting. For example, I'll play a few 5 min chess games, the wordle and the nyt mini crossword, i dont stress about getting it quickly or winning my games.

this usually lasts about 30 min - 45 min

I will then allow myself about 10 minutes to set up any last minute things in my work station including my paper, water, and 6 ticonderoga pencils (my fav pencils), and one pen (in case all my pencils break)

Once everything is set up, i usually have about an hour and a half before my exam is set to start.

I will spend about an hour reviewing my notes and just jogging my memory. This is not the time to try to remember new information. If i feel like i forgot a topic, I review it but i do not stress over it. I have a cheat sheet that condenses all of my notes to about 4 pages of info. i usually read that.

After that, i have about 30 minutes before my exam. I will then walk outside into nature (not just outside the room) for 10-15 minutes

During this time, i dont look at my phone/social media. I dont look at my notes. I just reset a little bit. I try not to think about anything except maybe the trees im looking at or the birds that i hear.

I then go back into my testing environment. I do a few jumping jacks and wave my arms around (1-2 min) nothing too strenuous. This gets my blood pumping right before the exam. I then sit down, pretend like i am showing my room to the proctor, etc. just like i would during the real exam. I allot myself 10-15 minutes for all of this.

I then take my exam as normal including my break. During my break I do exactly what i would during the real break. I use the bathroom, drink a quick energy drink, eat a protein bar, and then spend 3 minutes laying/sitting down on the floor/couch with my eyes closed.

Then i finish my exam

I am sure that what i gave you was a much more long winded answer than you were looking. But the main things i want to point out is that having an extremely regimented pre-test schedule is important because it decreases your anxiety on the day of the exam. The reason is because when you get to the exam, it will feel like just another practice day. It wont feel particularly special. The reason i warm up with some mental games is to get my brain stimulated before i sit down to review things rather than reviewing the second i wake up in the morning. When I review my notes I am switching my brain into test mode. I then go outside to relax a little bit and get out of my head. But its important that during this time Im not using social media/doing other things so that I don't get out of test mode. And finally, i do a super quick workout just to get the blood pumping in my brain.

I hope this helps!

What is your ideal score? I don't think doing october, november, january is a good idea if you are looking to score significantly higher. You are not allowing yourself breathing room to learn the material better. If your goal is only to get a few points higher than 149 and you are PTing in the 160-155 range then you might be fine taking january. Keep in mind that there are a limited number of times you can take the exam. https://www.lsac.org/about/lsac-policies/limits-on-repeating-lsat

In your change from -3/-4 to -9/-10 have you learned new information that may be affecting the way you approach RC? I found that as I learned, my scores actually didn't progress linearly. I am going to explain why I think why the number of questions you got wrong went up despite the fact that you technically know more than before. Spoiler, I don't think it is because you're reading comp skills have gotten worse. I am a math person so visualizing your progress like a graph personally helps me. I experienced a similar situation and i will try to explain what was happening with me. Maybe this can shed some light on what you are experiencing. If you go to https://www.desmos.com/calculator and type in the function y=-x(x-3)^{2}+5 you can follow along with my explanation. The x axis (horizontal) of the graph represents the amount of "information" i knew about the test and the y axis (vertical) represents the number of questions i was getting wrong. It obviously isn't an exact representation but helps with the explanation.

When I fist started out, my X (information) was 0. Because I hadn't learned anything, I got about 6 wrong. Which makes sense. Then as I learned a little bit, my score started to go down. Also make sense. But then you'll notice as I learned even more, the number i got wrong started going up. That didn't make sense to me at the time. But then eventually, i reached a hurdle, and once I crossed it, my score started going down again, eventually I got so good that i could consistently get -0/-3 per RC section.

So my explanation for why my scores got worse despite the fact that I was learning more info is because I was learning more information but I hadn't yet mastered how to apply that information.

When you first start out, you are going purely off of instinct. You don't yet know anything. That explains why you generally do worse on your diagnostic.

Then as you learn a little bit of information, your score drops because know you learn a few techniques that will help you prevent getting some question wrong. For example, in LR learning how to draw Lawgic diagrams meant that i could pretty consistently get sufficient assumption questions, where as with my knowledge being 0 I was relying purely on intuition.

Then as you learn more and more, problems start to arise. The problem isn't that the information is bad, the problem is knowing when to apply it. When I first did my lessons, I got really good at Lawgic diagrams, so I started drawing Lawgic diagrams for pretty much every question. The problem is that eats into your time. As I got to the midpoint I had less time than previously and therefore had to rush through the second half. So even though I was technically better at the material and knew more, I was actually getting more wrong. You see, while I knew the techniques, I still wasn't able to master when to apply them and when to save time by using intuition or doing it in my head without writing out the problem.

Once, i learned when/how to do that, my score started dropping again.

While i noticed a more drastic example in my LR score, my RC score mirrored it a bit. You see, what happened with me was that as I got good at LR, i started getting really good at breaking down argument structures. So what was happening was that I was spending too much time breaking down the argument in the RC section. I started overanalyzing and therefore struggled to fully break it down. I had effectively abandoned my earlier technique of not trying to fully understand the passage before diving in. If you want an understanding of how i approach RC sections take a look at my comment in this discussion post. https://classic.7sage.com/discussion/#/discussion/comment/216591

What i would recommend is maybe try comparing your tests where you did particularly well on a RC section with those that you did bad in. See if maybe you are spending significantly more time on certain sections/question types than you were before!

Additionally, I will say that sometimes you can get a bad test or not be fully rested or a million other factors that can affect your performance. Don't let one errant score affect your confidence. Just try to understand the factors that led to your low score and take it from there. Best of luck on your LSAT journey.

I am scoring in the mid/high 170s and i can confidently say that you should be devoting all of your energy into LR over reading comp, given the info you provided. I was also in your boat a while ago. I was good and consistent in reading comp but my LR sections were variable. Trust me when i say that every sections is going to vary in difficulty, so going from -2/-3 down to -0 is a lot harder on a section than the jump from going consistently -8 down to a consistent -2. It sounds a little counter intuitive because you would think oh going from 8 down to 2 is a 4 question difference so surely thats harder. But that just simply isnt the case because not all questions are weighted the same. If you are getting -2 in RC i can almost guarantee that those are some of the toughest questions on the entire test. So it is not simple to "just get those right". Instead, there are probably tweaks you can make to your strategy in LR to squeeze out those few points. I did it in about a week so it is definitely possible. Take a read through my other comments to see some of the tweaks i made and hopefully one of them can help! Either way, dont stress to much I am sure you will do great on the real exam!

@ said:

I had to really shift the way I read. In the core curriculum, and most all LSAT courses, they tell you to focus on structure and purpose but that just doesn't come natural to me - I get focused on the details even if I know I shouldn't be. Two things have been helping me:

Force myself to forget about the details (reading faster helps with this)

Work toward getting that gut feeling of understanding

There is a gut feeling you have when you really get something you're reading, when you kinda get it, or when you are lost. I know what that feels like for me, so I make that the goal that I work toward in every passage. These are the prompts that I use to practice:

First Paragraph

What is the thesis? (If none, then you're reading background - keep looking)

Where is this going?

Each subsequent paragraph

What is the point of this?/Why is the author talking about this?

After Final Paragraph

ID the passage: Is it a Phenomenon-Hypothesis, Profile, Clash of viewpoints Problem, or are they just telling you about something?

Quickly review the structure - what is each paragraph doing?

If I know these things I find that I'm better set up for the questions - even though if feels wrong/scary not having a grasp on the details. I find that most of the time the questions are asking about these things anyways. If there is a question about details then I can go find it. Also, knowing these things helps you eliminate 4 wrong answer choices just as often as it makes the correct answer choice stand out.

I am going to join in on this one and just say that this is largely how i do this too. When I first took my diagnostic I only got 7 wrong on the RC section. I used to tutor the SATs and I just used the same exact method that I did for the SATs. After going through the 7sage curriculum I took some of the new strategies, especially their passage A passage B strategies, but other than that I focused on timing and just honing my skills. Now, I can pretty consistently get 0-4 wrong per RC section.

The biggest thing I used to teach during the SATs is DO NOT READ... ok... maybe thats a bit misleading. But from my personal experience, I have a hard time retaining information. I would often find that even if I fully read a passage, I still had to re-read large portions when answering questions. This ate into my time really bad. So, my SAT tutor at the time, taught me the trick of skimming the passage. Your goal the first read through is just to generally understand what the passage is about and what each paragraph about. My trick was to read about the first sentence and last sentence of each paragraph. I would usually skip the fluff/detail. I would take some minor notes like P1: talks about the thesis P2: talks about X detail, P3 talks about Y detail... I can sometimes read a passage in about 1 minute. (the only exception to my skimming technique is the passage A passage B combos. For those, I use 7sage's method of fulling reading passage A then crossing out each answer choice for each question)

Now you'll immediately notice in using this method that by the end of reading the section, you know barely anything about the passage and that is okay! You see the trick is that the test writers are out to get you. They know that you have barely read this passage/probably didnt read it correctly. So what do they do? The very first question is going to be what is the main point/conclusion... you have no idea! you barely read the passage! so what do you do? you SKIP the first question(s).

What I will do is pretty much always, without hesitation, skip the first question. Instead, I immediately jump around until I find an "easy" question. Early you mentioned having an intuition in LR as to the difficulty of a question, this is kind of similar. I look for questions that I think I am going to have the easiest time finding a direct quote to support. So for example, if the passage talks about plate tectonics and the question says "which of the following is an answer regarding plate tectonics that the passage has sufficient detail to answer." I can be pretty confident that i can find a direct quote to find the answer. So I start re-skimming the passage. I sometimes use my notes because maybe I took a note that paragraph 3 discusses how plate tectonics work. Once I find my answer, I skip around until i find the next easiest question(s) - such as "the author uses X phrase to mean", "the author would most likely agree with"... You'll notice that with each subsequent question you need to re-skim less and less.

By the end of the easy questions you have now basically read this passage multiple times. ONLY NOW can you answer the main conclusion/main point questions. The other reason i leave those for last is that the test writers are always going to ask you important questions. Very very rarely are they going to ask you about some irrelevant BS. So, by doing the other questions first, you have now actually re-read all of the important parts.

I will fully admit that the skimming method takes a while to get used to. It feels wrong to barely read the passage and the amount that you need to read the first time to feel comfortable is different for every person. So I am not sure if 1 week is enough time. However, if you decide to wait for law school/retake the LSAT at a later date I highly recommend this strategy. It has worked wonders for my brain.

Can you provide an example of a question? i want to make sure i am thinking about the right thing before i send you my method.