Help me believe this doesn't matter

Universalitea_-1

For context I have taken the LSAT before and got a 160. For the last little while (~2 mos.) I have been consistently PTing between 165-168 and am taking the test in a couple of days. I took my last PT (PT 89) before Friday thinking it would help me keep my skills sharp for the next few days (with plans to review and drill leading up to Thursday), but I've suddenly dropped down to a 161. Needless to say I just went from confident to extremely nervous and upset.

Cant Get Right

This happens all the time on students' final PT before the real thing. Typically, we put a lot more weight on this penultimate test than we do on any other PT, and that introduces a lot of pressure and anxiety we aren't used to. Far from not mattering though, this is actually a really important thing to experience. If you felt the pressure and anxiety to perform well on a PT, it's only going to be more extreme on test day. So you need to reflect on how any pressure to perform well affected your execution. Many of us tend to respond to the pressure by abandoning all our best practices and just kind of winging it. Not the ideal response, but for some reason it seems to be a very natural one. So think about what you can do to stay on track when those instincts kick. It definitely doesn't feel good, but it is far better to experience this now while you can still craft a solution than on test day where you're going to be much less flexible in your ability to adapt.

ClaudioD21

Funny enough I also took PT89 as my last PT before the real exam yesterday and dropped by around 6 points from where I had been scoring. At this point, it feels like a mix of burnout plus the stress of knowing the real exam is right there. I went over what I got wrong and did my best to understand why I got it wrong and I’m just gonna try to not worry too much and prepare for the real one.