scoring 157-159 Need Advice

sheila22

Hi all,
So I've been studying for the LSAT for the past 9 months. I started with a 138 and now PTing around 157-159. I struggled to balance studying with a full-time job until I decided to quit in April and focus mainly on the LSAT. Unfortunately, it feels like days are passing by and I'm not improving. I was usually pretty good at LR with -3 to -6 wrong on each section. I would get -5 wrong on the LG and would totally screw up the RC (my worst section). I began focusing on the RC and managed to get -8, but currently miserably messing up the LR. I've registered for the Sept. LSAT and really hoping to gtet at least a 163-165. please give me advice on what I should be focusing my time and energy on. Any tips or suggestions would be useful.

nycgal90

Just wanted to comment that I have the exact same problem! I've plateaued on my PT's at 156-159 and would love to get a 160 on September LSAT! Been doing 2-3 PT's per week, with blind review in between, and still not improving. RC is also my worst section. It's very make or break for me, on my best days I can manage a -7, on my worst days I've gotten as bad as -14! So I need all the advice I can get as well. Anyway good luck on your studying!

MissChanandler

First of all, you've improved by twenty points already!! That's no small feat. It sounds like if you put together your best performances in each section on one PT, you'd be at your goal score. When you study, do you prioritize one section over the other for a day or a week? If so, I would try to get used to switching between the sections rapidly. On a test you don't have much time to reset your mentality. Even when you're doing drills, I would recommend spending a half an hour on RC, then LG, or whatever.

sheila22

@MissChanandler said:
First of all, you've improved by twenty points already!! That's no small feat. It sounds like if you put together your best performances in each section on one PT, you'd be at your goal score. When you study, do you prioritize one section over the other for a day or a week? If so, I would try to get used to switching between the sections rapidly. On a test you don't have much time to reset your mentality. Even when you're doing drills, I would recommend spending a half an hour on RC, then LG, or whatever.

Thank you! So, I recently started devoting 3-4 days to RC to get a hang of what I should be doing/ my strategy and that's when my LR score started decreasing. But then again, I also started using more recent PT's, which felt a bit strange and foreign, comparing to the older exams I had focused on previously.
So, when you are reviewing after a PT or trying to increase your score in a certain section without ignoring the other sections, would you mind sharing how you divide your time?
Also, have you found it helpful to review the mistakes made on LR before bed or even before taking a PT?
Thanks in advance!

sheila22

@nycgal90 said:
Just wanted to comment that I have the exact same problem! I've plateaued on my PT's at 156-159 and would love to get a 160 on September LSAT! Been doing 2-3 PT's per week, with blind review in between, and still not improving. RC is also my worst section. It's very make or break for me, on my best days I can manage a -7, on my worst days I've gotten as bad as -14! So I need all the advice I can get as well. Anyway good luck on your studying!

That is exactly me with RC. It's all over the place. Thanks, wishing the same for you!

MissChanandler

If there's one section that you really want to work on and improve, I think it's more than fine to devote a bigger chunk of your time to it, but still brush up on the other sections every day. So let's say you really want to focus on RC for a bit. I would start my study day with say an hour of RC. You could take a section and BR it, or you could really dive into a couple of passages. Then, after that hour, I would do a practice set of maybe ten-fifteen LR questions, and then maybe two logic games. That would probably take about forty five minutes. At that point I would take a break for about fifteen minutes. Then you could go back to RC for an hour. At this point, you've done three hours of studying, two dedicated to RC, but you've still kept sharp on LG and LR and you've practiced switching between the sections. It also helps you improve your stamina. I have found that if I'm given one section and I know I'm only doing that one section, I'll do better (by a couple of questions) than if I'm doing a full PT.

When you BR a full PT, you should be reviewing every single section/every problem that you got wrong. Otherwise, you're wasting the fresh PTs and not getting the most out of your time. If your PT reveals that you need to spend more time on one section compared to the other, you can do so when you drill/study before your next PT. But every PT needs to be about the test as a whole.

sheila22

@MissChanandler said:
If there's one section that you really want to work on and improve, I think it's more than fine to devote a bigger chunk of your time to it, but still brush up on the other sections every day. So let's say you really want to focus on RC for a bit. I would start my study day with say an hour of RC. You could take a section and BR it, or you could really dive into a couple of passages. Then, after that hour, I would do a practice set of maybe ten-fifteen LR questions, and then maybe two logic games. That would probably take about forty five minutes. At that point I would take a break for about fifteen minutes. Then you could go back to RC for an hour. At this point, you've done three hours of studying, two dedicated to RC, but you've still kept sharp on LG and LR and you've practiced switching between the sections. It also helps you improve your stamina. I have found that if I'm given one section and I know I'm only doing that one section, I'll do better (by a couple of questions) than if I'm doing a full PT.

When you BR a full PT, you should be reviewing every single section/every problem that you got wrong. Otherwise, you're wasting the fresh PTs and not getting the most out of your time. If your PT reveals that you need to spend more time on one section compared to the other, you can do so when you drill/study before your next PT. But every PT needs to be about the test as a whole.

Thank you so much! This is super helpful for me and I will start using this method from now on. Good luck on the applications process.

Peaceofmind

Hi I was stuck in 159 for a while too and I found the easiest way to break in the 160s is to nail the LG. Foolproof all games from 1-35, and aim to get 0/-1 on PTs , then ultimately on test day. Good luck!

sheila22

@Peaceofmind said:
Hi I was stuck in 159 for a while too and I found the easiest way to break in the 160s is to nail the LG. Foolproof all games from 1-35, and aim to get 0/-1 on PTs , then ultimately on test day. Good luck!

Thanks for the advice. If I may ask, have you taken the LSAT and what was your score? Also, if you had any difficulties with RC or LR, what methods/study routines did you find most helpful? I currently have less than a month to increase my score and hoping to find the most efficient way to do so.

Peaceofmind

@sheila22 said:

@Peaceofmind said:
Hi I was stuck in 159 for a while too and I found the easiest way to break in the 160s is to nail the LG. Foolproof all games from 1-35, and aim to get 0/-1 on PTs , then ultimately on test day. Good luck!

Thanks for the advice. If I may ask, have you taken the LSAT and what was your score? Also, if you had any difficulties with RC or LR, what methods/study routines did you find most helpful? I currently have less than a month to increase my score and hoping to find the most efficient way to do so.

Yes I took the real thing many times. Last cycle I got two identical scores in the high 150s, it was painful to see no improvement. For July I made a big jump to 164. I was happy with my score but also decided to retake in October for scholarship reasons. What I did differently before July was to foolproof+BR LG meticulously, also BR thoroughly for LR and RC. I did less PTs but spent more time BRing and I also tried to talk about the stimulus and why each wrong answer choices are wrong (no study partner so I talked to myself). I also made sure to use PTs from 70-80s because the LR and RC are much harder for me than those from the old tests. I was also able to fall asleep the night before the test for the first time and that definitely helped too (the key for me to overcome the anxiety is to realize that this test and what school I get into is NOT the most important things in my life).
You have only one month left so I'd prioritize LG since it's the easiest to improve. For LR my best advice is to BR. Check out Manhattan prep's LR explanations (free) and supplementing it with JY's. RC is my worst section too and I have no idea how I scored in that section in July but I found LSAT trainer and Manhattan prep's RC advice to be very helpful. Also keeping up with time markers (ex. finish two passages by 16 mins or so) helped me finish the section, too.
Hope this helps!

sheila22

@Peaceofmind said:

@sheila22 said:

@Peaceofmind said:
Hi I was stuck in 159 for a while too and I found the easiest way to break in the 160s is to nail the LG. Foolproof all games from 1-35, and aim to get 0/-1 on PTs , then ultimately on test day. Good luck!

Thanks for the advice. If I may ask, have you taken the LSAT and what was your score? Also, if you had any difficulties with RC or LR, what methods/study routines did you find most helpful? I currently have less than a month to increase my score and hoping to find the most efficient way to do so.

Yes I took the real thing many times. Last cycle I got two identical scores in the high 150s, it was painful to see no improvement. For July I made a big jump to 164. I was happy with my score but also decided to retake in October for scholarship reasons. What I did differently before July was to foolproof+BR LG meticulously, also BR thoroughly for LR and RC. I did less PTs but spent more time BRing and I also tried to talk about the stimulus and why each wrong answer choices are wrong (no study partner so I talked to myself). I also made sure to use PTs from 70-80s because the LR and RC are much harder for me than those from the old tests. I was also able to fall asleep the night before the test for the first time and that definitely helped too (the key for me to overcome the anxiety is to realize that this test and what school I get into is NOT the most important things in my life).
You have only one month left so I'd prioritize LG since it's the easiest to improve. For LR my best advice is to BR. Check out Manhattan prep's LR explanations (free) and supplementing it with JY's. RC is my worst section too and I have no idea how I scored in that section in July but I found LSAT trainer and Manhattan prep's RC advice to be very helpful. Also keeping up with time markers (ex. finish two passages by 16 mins or so) helped me finish the section, too.
Hope this helps!

Thank you so much for the Advice!!

DivineRaze

@sheila22 I was in your shoes few months ago but I have passed my plateau and now i'm striving for 174 on test day. My RC was my weakest point but after I started consistently doing passage after passage and really enjoying what I was reading and not just trying to rush through the passage, is when I started getting around 1-4 wrong on it max.

I strongly strongly strongly believe that if you actually read the passages like your reading something that you truly enjoy and understanding what the question is asking you, there is a slim to none chance that you will get the question wrong. If you read the passage like you enjoy it you wont have the pressure on you to try and memorize certain aspects and/or lines of text. By no means rush through the text to get to the answers since the important work is done up front when you read the passage. Sure you might get one or two answers correct on the passage but you will miss a lot of MSS and author opinion questions for example that require you to make some subtle inferences.

As @"Cant Get Right" gave me some very good advice and I hope he doesn't mind me sharing this but I feel like you would benefit from this.

You need to ask yourself these questions as to why your getting questions wrong and fix it:
1. Passage Density. Are you missing points because you didn't absorb vital information which was in a dense paragraph--one containing a lot of detailed information the understanding of which is actually important to understanding the larger issue under consideration.
2. Critical Details. Are you missing points you didn't pick up on critical details like author's tone/perspective or context?
3. AC subtlety. Are you missing points because you didn't appreciate the precise meaning of the AC's as indicated by very precise and deliberate word choice and phrasing?

Just remember to do thorough blind reviews on all your PrepTests, don't just half-ass it because it will reinforce correct reasoning and help you realize what you need to change and/or focus on more in depth when trying to answer questions.

As far as logic games I usually get 100% on all games every-time. This came to me after doing numerous practice and reviews of the games. Since they all follow the same type of format once you master each style you can adapt easily. I didn't have to reprint and do them over and over again, I did that maybe for one or two games.

I feel like LR is the hardest section to actually make dramatic improvements on after you have a thorough understanding of the material. I think at some point you just have to have supreme concentration and be able to pick up on subtleties in the text. All in all there is no magic formula per se. You just have to polish your skills to the point where you leave no gaps from CC or otherwise to let little things that are important in the text slide past your reasoning.

kaikdame

@MissChanandler said:
If there's one section that you really want to work on and improve, I think it's more than fine to devote a bigger chunk of your time to it, but still brush up on the other sections every day. So let's say you really want to focus on RC for a bit. I would start my study day with say an hour of RC. You could take a section and BR it, or you could really dive into a couple of passages. Then, after that hour, I would do a practice set of maybe ten-fifteen LR questions, and then maybe two logic games. That would probably take about forty five minutes. At that point I would take a break for about fifteen minutes. Then you could go back to RC for an hour. At this point, you've done three hours of studying, two dedicated to RC, but you've still kept sharp on LG and LR and you've practiced switching between the sections. It also helps you improve your stamina. I have found that if I'm given one section and I know I'm only doing that one section, I'll do better (by a couple of questions) than if I'm doing a full PT.

When you BR a full PT, you should be reviewing every single section/every problem that you got wrong. Otherwise, you're wasting the fresh PTs and not getting the most out of your time. If your PT reveals that you need to spend more time on one section compared to the other, you can do so when you drill/study before your next PT. But every PT needs to be about the test as a whole.

I agree with all this! I like to start my day with one or two logic games because it's my favorite section and they're a good warm up. If I'm focusing on LR for a day, I still squeeze in at least one RC passage or review a recent one I found challenging. If I'm spending a few hours on RC, I drill a set of 5 questions of the same LR "type" to break up the reading.

DanielMacTavish

@Peaceofmind said:
Hi I was stuck in 159 for a while too and I found the easiest way to break in the 160s is to nail the LG. Foolproof all games from 1-35, and aim to get 0/-1 on PTs , then ultimately on test day. Good luck!

I've found this to be very true. My LG was (is) seriously lacking. Like, -10 lacking. Embarrassing to admit, but all I've done is LG for the past 3 weeks or so in order to lock in some kind of foundation. Figured considering my average PT is between 154-157, I can easily break into the 160's if I brush up on this section.

franklin

I've seen my biggest jump in rc recently i feel like the best advice i can give is to try to absorb the info and not go crazy taking notes, especially if your truly not getting anything out of them I'm at -3 now but i keep making silly mistakes on lR any tips I'm currently hitting at -5 -6 with 1 month of prep left any tips on how to get better ???