158(diagnostic) --> 171 Aug LSAT, prep while working full time

Plsnologic

Hi everyone, just received my first LSAT score and wanted to share my thoughts on what helped me get there. Like some people on this forum, I started prepping late and was working full time while doing prep.

I started prepping for the test in May 2022 with the intent of taking the test in August. At first, I thought "nah I have so much time", so I took the entire May to just slowly work my way through Powerscore's LG bible. I then did my first PT, scored a 158 and was sort of encouraged by this score because I needed a 166 to get into my target school, and I wasn't quite aware of how hard/easy it is to increase your score. I was also working full time through the summer, though my job was chill so I wasn't coming home feeling like I'm done with life, which I'm sure helped with the prep. My weakest section was LG (when I started, it would take me about two hours to complete one logic game), and my RC/LR were generally in the -2 to -6 range from the start (my undergrad was in philosophy so I suspect it helped).

My main issue was getting overwhelmed with the LGs. I would get stuck on a question, then start freaking out that I'm spending too much time on this question so I won't finish the section on time, so I might as well just quit. My PTs quickly went into 165-166 but then I stayed there for two-ish months, then I slowly started getting 168-169, and just the week before the test I scored my first 170. I then did my actual test and received a 171 this morning.

With this out of the way, here are some things that I believe helped me score a 171 on the test day:
1. No PTs on the test week. I knew that if I scored low, I'd be discouraged and it would impact my test day performance. My mental fatigue was starting to show, so I knew that even if I did several PTs on the test week and did well on them, I would get super tired and my brain would turn into mashed potatoes on the test day. Whatever gains were promised by trying to develop the stamina during the final week didn't seem to justify the risks.

1. Eating a big, delicious breakfast on the test day. This one might seem like a very minor point, but once you consistently score within your target range, then you have the ability that you need to do well, doing well on the LSAT comes down to winning the mental game. Eating breakfast sausages with bacon and eggs really helped me win the mental game and feel good before the test.

2. Don't burn through the study material just because you feel like a loser. This one was big for me. I would take a PT, then score 3-4 points below my average, then I'd get mad at myself for being stupid, then I'd take another PT, do even worse, then the cycle repeats. By the end, I have wasted the study material and learned nothing valuable. You can spend hours doing really inefficient prep and learning next to nothing just because you feel like "I must keep prepping! My life=prep, nothing else matters". This was my mindset very often, and it only made me feel worse for not progressing faster. Instead, what I found helpful was to allow your mind to really rest. My best PT performance was after taking a week-long break and doing zero prep during this week, and I think that doing something similar during the week before the test helped me immensely.

3. Having a game plan for when you're experiencing test-day paralysis. If you're like me, then you worry that you'll get stuck and unable to progress through the test, which will start a chain of psychological events that make you shrivel up on the inside and want to terminate the test right then. Acknowledge this and develop an action plan for what you do when this happens. For me, it was a very deliberate breathing exercise, where I would take 15-30 seconds (yes, you must sacrifice time to gain something more valuable -- a clear mind and an ability to keep going) and do deep breathing.

4. Understanding that the LSAT is not a mysterious magical ritual. This one was by far one of the most helpful things in winning the mental game. To do well on the LSAT, you don't need to grasp some deep mysteries and hope that it works. The LSAT made by humans like you and I, who're sitting there and creating problems with predictable patterns. It is a standardized test whose complexity is limited by the ability of those nerds (sorry LSAT-makers) to create convoluted problems. They're trying to confuse you and scare you, but they're just applying simple psychological tricks -- you're better than that, you can recognize these tricks, understand how to solve these problems, and be smarter than them.

If anyone has any questions, feel free to post them here or DM!
All the best to you my friends

Hannah Park

Congratulations for receiving this wonderful score! And thank you very much for sharing, it's amazing what you achieved! Wish you all the best of luck in application,bro!

Cheers
Madison

If Glory then Guts

Awesome job, really agree with your tips. Congrats on a great score!

Matt Sorr

Thanks so much for these awesome tips and congrats on the score!

keylimequeen88-1

wow congrats!!! LG is my worst section--I can only handle mastering 1 to 2 games a day before my head hurts. How did you finally crack games? did you fool proof all the ones in the CC? Great job! Inspiring!

snowcap007

Really great advice — thank you for this! And congratulations on your amazing score :-)

jasonusf

Wow, that's awesome

Destinee Noel

Congrats, I really appreciated these tips! I'm about to take it in September and I definitely don't want to stress myself this next week and half. I'm going to take one final PT this upcoming Saturday then lightly drill and do a couple sections next week, but wont look at anything else after Wednesday night then Saturday morning workout, eat, and do one LG game I like, and 5 easy LR questions just to wake up my brain.

Plsnologic

@"Destinee Noel" said:
Congrats, I really appreciated these tips! I'm about to take it in September and I definitely don't want to stress myself this next week and half. I'm going to take one final PT this upcoming Saturday then lightly drill and do a couple sections next week, but wont look at anything else after Wednesday night then Saturday morning workout, eat, and do one LG game I like, and 5 easy LR questions just to wake up my brain.

Excellent strategy imo. At this point, motivation and a fresh mind will give you more point increase than intense prep.

Plsnologic

@"keylimequeen88-1" said:
wow congrats!!! LG is my worst section--I can only handle mastering 1 to 2 games a day before my head hurts. How did you finally crack games? did you fool proof all the ones in the CC? Great job! Inspiring!

LGs were the bane of my existence, I found it really hard to do them accurately and on time for the first two-ish months of prep. It wasn't really until about a month before the actual test that I started consistently getting -1 to -2 on LGs. For my strategy, I didn't fool proof all the LGs in the CC, but I did try fool proofing all LGs from the first 10 PTs. This helped.

The biggest thing though was to learn to do as many inferences as possible before getting into the questions. I would write down the rules and then try to split the board if the game rules allow for it and then do as many inferences as I could. So for most games, I'd spend 3-5 minutes just doing the inferences, and 1-3 minutes doing the questions. Generally, these inferences gave me answers to almost every question in the game, except for rule substitution questions and some other tricky ones. When I got these more difficult questions, I checked the inferences, and unless the answer popped out at me right aways, I'd skip the question and move on to the next one. By the end of the fourth game I'd have about 2 or 3 flagged questions and about 2-3 minutes to go back to them.