Devastated by my October score (10+ pts below PT avg) need some inspiration

juniorsmith95

I was averaging 169-173 on PTs just under a month going into October, which was going to be my first ever LSAT. Idk if it was the nerves or lack of sleep but I ended up making very costly mistakes on the LG. I usually bank on getting -0/-1 on LG to get my PT average, as my RC score can be inconsistent. I ended up misreading a conditional as a regular rule on one of the games, which was obviously a HUGE mess up. This took me about 7 mins to figure this out, as I went to straight panic mode. This was very costly because I usually finish LG right on the nick of time (around the 34 or 34.5 minute mark) for most of my PTs, so missing 7 mins made a huge impact. I probably had to take educated guesses on like 1/3 of the last two games because of the time I wasted, which really sucked cuz I even had the last and hardest figured out w/ the proper inferences, but just didn't have time to attempt all of the questions properly. This was my first section and it left me in shock mode for the rest of the test, and I ended up scoring 160.

Luckily I'm signed up for november and I have been studying after october cuz I basically knew I performed poorly due to that mess up (tho I thought I'd score a bit better than this). I'm still pretty much scoring the same, tho I think my LG and LR have gotten just a bit more consistent. But emotionally this has taken a huge toll on me... I'm starting to question my abilities and I'm having major doubts about myself. If anyone has any stories/anecdotes of similar situations w/ a good score on a retake, or just any words of encouragement/inspiration, I'd GREATLY appreciate it. Thanks for reading, I really appreciate the 7sage community here.

VerdantZephyr

@juniorsmith95 That really sucks, I do not want to minimize that at all. With that said though, look, you made a silly mistake that happens to us all from time to time. It does not mean that you suddenly suck at the LSAT. You had some test day nerves and a dumb glitch happened in your thinking. You can absolutely kill the November test. You do not even need to improve, just get your usual score. You got this.

I had this happen to me on a PT once, and that was a huge wake up call. Your paper does have to be blank when you enter, but the first thing I wrote on mine was "Check your rules" just to remind me to be careful. It definitely helped, because with every problem I saw it staring back at me. Maybe do that to ease your mind and have a reminder next test. Regardless, you should have this in the bag. You got your nerves out of the way, now go kill the next test.