My PT's are getting worse and worse and I take my LSAT in 6 days

15ahrm

Hello guys, my first timed PT was a 161, I've taken probably 20 PT's since then and the most i've managed to improve is 162. I have read Mike Kim's LSAT trainer, studied my analytics and taken the 7sage Syllabus that correspond with my weakest answers, I've read PowerScore books, and more. I literally have learned so much since my first PT, I literally didn't know anything about relationships or diagramming, and now I can successfully diagram, finish with time to spare, yet I'm consistently doing worse in all categories. I am so disappointed and frustrated. What am I doing wrong???

jeff.wongkachi

Do you have to take July? Sounds like burn out/psyching yourself out. This might suck but you might need to take a break and re-evaluate, especially if you're not scoring where you want to score.

What interests me is that you've done 20 PTs. How is your BRing going for those? And your foolproofing for LG?

15ahrm

Honestly don't know what either of those are eek

jeff.wongkachi

@15ahrm said:
Honestly don't know what either of those are eek

Well, I think I see your problem! These are both key parts of the core curriculum/your study. Doing PTs is only one part of it, and not even the most important part. The most important thing is how to take your PTs and turn it into a training tool that helps build your knowledge, techniques, and comprehension of the material.

BRing is Blind Reviewing your PTs after you've done them before looking over the answers. So when you're feeling like you have trouble with a question, you flag it, and then you come back to it to see if you can solve the question untimed. You want to figure out why each answer choice that's wrong is wrong and why the right answer is right.

This is not just looking up the answers and going "yes that makes sense". You need to methodically go through the procedure of working it with your brain yourself, or else you won't learn how to do it. It doesn't matter if BRing takes a whole day (like it took me when it first started). if a question takes 20 minutes to figure out, so be it. You need to do this to ingrain the processes into your brain. There's only so many things the LSAT can ask you, and there's only so many different forms that this can come in. You spot patterns by forcing yourself to work it out yourself.

https://7sage.com/lesson/the-blind-review-is-a-habit/

Speaking of patterns, Foolproofing is doing games in the LG section over again to learn the inferences (not the answers). The goal isn't to remember the answers, but how you get to the answers because once again... there's only so many ways games can be made and set up. A sequencing chain is the same whether it's cats, CDs, courses, artifacts, paintings, etc. for example and results in the same inferences (the leader can't be in the last slot, the follower can't be in the first slot). LG is the most learnable section because if you do this honestly without just filling in the correct answer choices, you will build your sense of how things work as well as how to read the language of LG.

https://7sage.com/lesson/fool-proof-guide-to-perfection-on-logic-games/

You can do the Flex this time to get a feel for it (you've already signed up for it and can't cancel at this point anyway). Unfortunately, while I hate being the bearer of bad news, based on your current situation it's likely you're not going to get the results you want because it seems that you haven't followed some key improvement steps that the majority of people need to take to really consistently get better.

For the record, I started off at 159 (probably lower in fact... since I actually wrote the LSAT twice back in 2015-2016 before taking a 4 year break from it). Back then I did what you did and noticed very minimal improvement even though I was grinding out PTs.

This time I followed methodologies recommended and my most recent PT was a 175. I'm in the same boat as you, did about 20 PTs. It's all learnable stuff, and a 160~ is indicative that you have the capability. But if you don't study the 'right' way (or at least the way that works for most people), all that effort you put in is going to have a lower chance of producing significant results.