Feeling gutted/advice needed

trusttheprocess00

Some context - I took the Lsat in January and got a low 160s score for the third time. Each time a new section would throw me off (I’d walk out of the test thinking I got destroyed by a section because I genuinely didn’t understand a passage, figure out a game or felt that the LR was hard question after hard question). My official scores were always on the lower end of my test practice anywhere from low to high 160s.

Feeling discouraged, I decided to take a couple weeks off and prepare to retake again this June. I hired a private professional tutor who helped me focus on fundamentals like being extremely precise with my reading and understanding of passages and stimuli where I saw consistent improvements in my practice. By fully understanding the questions and the all the ACs I was able to improve my accuracy a lot. I began timing myself when I could consistently get -2/-4 on LR and -3/-4 avg on RC. I was taking one full timed exam a week and reviewing/taking timed sections during the week. I repeated this up until June where my pts ranged from mid 160s to low mid 170s. I was -2/-4 on Lr, -1/-2 games, and -3/-5 on RC on average on full tests timed. Many misses were from timing on Lr/RC from skipping the PR/PF/insane diagramming or just running out of time. I’d also make mistakes from falling for trap answer choices. I’d always make one small error on LG from misreading or guessing.

This June, I blanked on a game guessing on 4 questions and thought the Lr questions were were difficult to understand especially in the beginning. RC I felt rushed toward the end but I understood all the passages. I’m really upset that I blanked on the game because it was a fair game that was similar to something I remembered in my practice. I don’t know what caused me to miss out on making the necessary inferences and falling apart. ( I had 8-9 mins so I definitely had enough time for this game).

Overall I didn’t think the test was hard and in fact I thought it was easier than the other ones I took. I also don’t believe that a hard test is a reason for not doing well since all the sections end up balancing out. If I had to guess I’d say I missed 5 on lg, maybe 7-9 on Lr and probably at least 3/4 on RC. As you can tell I’m falling way below my average with LG and Lr.

As a result I ended up doing a lot worse than my PTs and didn’t see any improvement from January. I feel confused because I spent so much time, energy, resources studying, and I’ve fallen short so many times.

In terms of my goals I’m not even aiming for a certain score at this point - all I want is to see some improvements. But after so long and so many misses I’m not sure how to move forward.

I’ve done every game multiple times timed, read each passage either from cc or timed sections/test and also done and reviewed almost every LR except for some super old ones. I want to give it one more shot but don’t know how to prepare given what I’ve already done and don’t want to see the same result repeat. Appreciate any advice. Thank you!

canihazJD

Don't give up. Identify your problem areas and design specific strategies to fit the. Increase the depth of your review. If you've seen nearly every test, I'll tell you right now, unless you've been prepping for like two years, there is no way you got all the value there was to be had from that content. Listen to some of the podcast episodes and hear what it took for some of us to make that jump into our goal score ranges. The test is unforgivingly consistent at exploiting our weaknesses, and you just haven't figured out what needs to change yet. You'll get there. Just don't give up.