Shooting for 170

MattDegz14

My diagnostic was a 139 back in May of 2021. Currently scoring in the high 150s with a goal of 170 on the June LSAT. Currently -8ish on LR, -6ish on RC and anywhere from -1 to -5 on LG. Currently I'm doing 1 LG section per night with either an LR/RC in addition. I also do 1 PT per week. Tips on best way to improve?

Cant Get Right

Congrats on all the progress so far. You're obviously working hard and effectively to have improved as much as you have already.

I tend to divide studying into three main phases based on PT/BR score comparison. The focus of the first phase should be to raise your BR score to a level where it is comfortably and consistently above your target score. For a 170 target score, I like to see BR's in the upper 170's. There tends to be two primary factors to this. First is fundamentals and second is commitment to the process. For most purposes, a half-assed review with solid fundamentals is just as bad as a committed review with weak fundamentals. The BR score, regardless of which factor it most closely reflects, is a really powerful indicator of where you are and what you need to be doing. So focus on this first. And don't stop at BR. Diagnose your errors afterwards. Figure out exactly why you missed a question in BR and, specifically, what you needed to have understood differently in order to have gotten it right. And remember that LR and RC are as much about language and grammar as about logic, so don't neglect issues arising from issues in language.

The second phase starts once you get your BR to where it needs to be. Now, your study goals shift, maybe dramatically, in order to bridge the gap between your BR and timed scores. At this point, you have to re-evaluate everything you're doing and question whether or not it is going to continue working at higher score levels. Especially when working your way up from a relatively low diagnostic score, the things that are helpful early on often become liabilities that need to be adjusted or abandoned entirely as you move up. A great example is mapping out conditional logic. While this is a great tool to learn about conditional relationships and a reasonable tool for testing at lower levels of testing, it is (with an occasional exception) a terrible way to approach these if you're aiming for the 170's. Top scorers don't map shit out; there's just not time for it. Instead, we rely on all the work that we put into learning it and trust our understanding of the relationship in question. If we struggle to understand in the first place, we may need to resort to mapping as a fall-back, but I've never spoken to anyone scoring consistency in the 170's who just starts mapping because they see the word "unless." So as you work your way up, you've got to question your tools and reassess their utility. This is why so many people plateau around the low 160's: They're trying to 170 with 160's tools and it's just not going to happen.

In addition to reevaluating your tools in this second phase, you've also got to reevaluate your general time management strategy. In phase 1, its mostly fine to just try to go really really fast to try to finish the section. The BR is much more important anyway, so whatever. Now, though, you can't just race the clock anymore. You've got to deliberately and effectively manage your time. That means a whole new method of analysis where you compare your inputs (as measured in time and effort) with your outcomes (right/wrong answers). You need to get comfortable with the fact that correctly managing your time will sometimes cause you to miss a question you would otherwise have gotten right and that incorrectly managing your time will sometimes cause you to get a question you would otherwise have missed. If you spend four minutes on your first effort on a question, that's a catastrophe and it does not matter at all whether you got the right answer. This is a hard mental shift to make, but it is absolutely necessary to understand.

Finally, phase three is when you've got your timed score up to your target score. From there, you want to build consistency and workshop the increasingly specific problems that may continue to come up. This is the time to build confidence and reinforce your strategies so that you can trust them on test day. The real test takes a lot of trust in yourself and courage in the face of adversity under immense pressure. To score your optimal score on test day, you really want some history of success with your methodologies so that you can rely on them when fight/flight/freeze situations occur. I never took an official test that I didn't straight-up panic at some point. In those moments, though, I had developed such absolute trust and confidence in my testing methodologies that my response to panic was to cling to them like a life raft. And that's what always got me through the test-day panic.

I hope this provides a helpful framework.

MattDegz14

Thank you so much for the feedback. What you said about mapping out conditional logic was very helpful because I do occasionally do that and it slows me down considerably. I will certainly incorporate these techniques going forward.

Jmenpac2010

@"Cant Get Right"
Appreciate the guidance.