How long did it take you to score 170 or higher?

JPJ July2021

170 is my goal for September and I was curious about other people’s experiences.

LastLSAT

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Seeking Perfection

You can't base it on other people's experiences. For many its a long time. However, you could start in the 170's or take years to get there. The latter is probably more common than the former. You also won't necessarily get a non-biased sample. Some of us are prouder of our scores, our speed of progress, or our persistance than others and more likely to post.

That said...
My first take was a 168. A couple days later after starting to familiarize myself with logic games, I took my second and got a 173. It bounced around with mostly 172-174 until I took last February after 2-3 weeks and scored a 172.

I studied over the summer for 3 and a half months foolproofing logic games(by far my weakest section to start) and taking practice tests with blind review. I scored a 180 in September.

terrynicholasj

5 months total, fairly casual studying except for the beginning. @"Seeking Perfection" where are you going to school?

goingfor99th

@"Seeking Perfection" said:
You can't base it on other people's experiences. For many its a long time. However, you could start in the 170's or take years to get there. The latter is probably more common than the former. You also won't necessarily get a non-biased sample. Some of us are prouder of our scores, our speed of progress, or our persistance than others and more likely to post.

That said...
My first take was a 168. A couple days later after starting to familiarize myself with logic games, I took my second and got a 173. It bounced around with mostly 172-174 until I took last February after 2-3 weeks and scored a 172.

I studied over the summer for 3 and a half months foolproofing logic games(by far my weakest section to start) and taking practice tests with blind review. I scored a 180 in September.

I doubt many people start at 170. I think your perception of this test may be a bit skewed, Mr. 180. ;]

goingfor99th

OP: It took me about 9 months of dedicated study to go from a mid-140s diagnostic to 169 official with perfect LG and -1 LR as my best sections.

Seeking Perfection

@terrynicholasj said:
5 months total, fairly casual studying except for the beginning. @"Seeking Perfection" where are you going to school?

I'm leaning toward Michigan right now.

@goingfor99th said:

@"Seeking Perfection" said:
You can't base it on other people's experiences. For many its a long time. However, you could start in the 170's or take years to get there. The latter is probably more common than the former. You also won't necessarily get a non-biased sample. Some of us are prouder of our scores, our speed of progress, or our persistance than others and more likely to post.

That said...
My first take was a 168. A couple days later after starting to familiarize myself with logic games, I took my second and got a 173. It bounced around with mostly 172-174 until I took last February after 2-3 weeks and scored a 172.

I studied over the summer for 3 and a half months foolproofing logic games(by far my weakest section to start) and taking practice tests with blind review. I scored a 180 in September.

I doubt many people start at 170. I think your perception of this test may be a bit skewed, Mr. 180. ;]

Of course, but everyone's is skewed somehow and even starting near 170, I have never studied longer or harder for a single test than the LSAT.

LSATcantwin

Took me a year and a half to break into 170 ON THE ACTUAL TEST. As for PT’s it took about 8 months. I think it’s important to make the distinction.

westcoastbestcoast

What is your diagnostic? Usually the folks that took several months to hit 170 had a diagnostic of at least the high 150s to low 160s. If your diagnostic is lower, it will take you much longer. What is also important is your score breakdown. If most of your errors stem from LR and LG, you will have an easier time reaching the 170. RC definitely can be improved but if you are starting from a lower level you need to practice consistently and consistently read difficult material to bring your processing skills to par.

J.CHRIS.ALST

I'm in the same boat as you, @Emily2122 . I've been studying this thing for 9 months (a brief period where for three months or so I could only put in 10 hours a week, but the majority I've been in the 15-25/week); I feel like I have seen progress and just recently I took a PT for the fist time in months and I feel everything I learned just went to black. I'm thinking I need to focus on PTs more, now.

goingfor99th

@"J.CHRIS.ALST" said:
I'm in the same boat as you, @Emily2122 . I've been studying this thing for 9 months (a brief period where for three months or so I could only put in 10 hours a week, but the majority I've been in the 15-25/week); I feel like I have seen progress and just recently I took a PT for the fist time in months and I feel everything I learned just went to black. I'm thinking I need to focus on PTs more, now.

This sounds like a confidence issue.

J.CHRIS.ALST

@goingfor99th said:

@"J.CHRIS.ALST" said:
I'm in the same boat as you, @Emily2122 . I've been studying this thing for 9 months (a brief period where for three months or so I could only put in 10 hours a week, but the majority I've been in the 15-25/week); I feel like I have seen progress and just recently I took a PT for the fist time in months and I feel everything I learned just went to black. I'm thinking I need to focus on PTs more, now.

This sounds like a confidence issue.

You're likely right. I feel like I need to just start exposing myself to timed PTs (with proper BR of course).

Rip off the band aid so to speak.

JPJ July2021

@westcoastbestcoast My diagnostic was a 141, which I know is horrible but it was the first time I ever even looked at the test. That was all the way back in the summer and I feel like I've come a long way since then. I can also devote a lot of time to studying from now until September.

@J.CHRIS.ALST I wish you luck. Confidence comes with time and experience. Don't hesitate to reach out.

goingfor99th

@"J.CHRIS.ALST" said:

@goingfor99th said:

@"J.CHRIS.ALST" said:
I'm in the same boat as you, @Emily2122 . I've been studying this thing for 9 months (a brief period where for three months or so I could only put in 10 hours a week, but the majority I've been in the 15-25/week); I feel like I have seen progress and just recently I took a PT for the fist time in months and I feel everything I learned just went to black. I'm thinking I need to focus on PTs more, now.

This sounds like a confidence issue.

You're likely right. I feel like I need to just start exposing myself to timed PTs (with proper BR of course).

Rip off the band aid so to speak.

Could be. I took three PTs over the course of four days about halfway through my prep and that helped me to have confidence that I was actually learning by studying like I was.

Dallan89

Took me 2.5 years of studying on and off for a 156

nathanieljschwartz

Havent hit it on test day yet. But it took me around 11 months to break into the 173 range. And i still drop to a 168-169 every 3/4 tests. My diag was 147

m.c lshopeful

In 2017 I studied LG in Sept. and crammed hard for the LR/RC in Oct./Nov. before I scored a 164 in the December sitting... I didn't start studying again until after Christmas but I had a little extra time in January as I was preparing to move across the country. I wasn't working in January so I could just pack/study/sell stuff on craigslist. I moved from Oregon to Michigan at the end of January and took the Feb. 10th LSAT in Michigan where I scored a 172.

I probably did 1/10 of the studying for the Feb. test as I did for the Dec. test but I think that if you are someone like me who needed to teach himself a lot for the LG and LR then it just takes a certain amount of nights sleeping on the material... I crammed for 3 months really hard before the Dec. 2 test and the following weeks after the test up to Christmas I was waking up each morning with a new realization about the material! It was like my brain still had a backlog to work through...

According to my experience, the biggest piece of advice I would give is to consistently study over a period of 4-6 months. Don't go too fast... and don't go too slow... just find your pace and keep it. Also, you can never blind review too slowly. If I could do it over again, I would have spent 2x as much time blind reviewing as I did taking actual PT's when I first started studying... I probably didn't get the full benefit out of about the 15-20 PT's I took in October for speeding through my blind review too quickly. I literally took 2 PT's and 8 sections for drilling between the Dec. and Feb. test for my score improvement...

Maybe frequent napping could help you process more information in a shorter period of time? I don't know but I do know that it just takes time... And in my case, some of the time it took was me doing nothing at all!

Good luck!