Hard Stuck at 160... How do I get better?

gooilers97

Ive been studying for the LSAT for a while now, I've done the core curriculum and all that. I write my LSAT in January to apply for fall admission. For months now I'm scoring 158-163 spamming PT's everyday, and I just seem to have hit my peak.

I only need to improve a couple points so I score in the 160-165 range consistently, as that will get me in the school I want. I'm just not sure how to improve anymore. It feels like I'm not getting better, I'm just doing PT's and getting the same score. Typically -5 on LR, -3 or 4 on LG, and -8 to -10 on RC.

Any tips? I wanted to do a tutoring session, but its too expensive for me.

WinningHere

You can do it! Are you drilling your weaknesses?

LarryLobsta

You are definitely not at your peak yet! For LG, you honestly have to re-do games and try to complete them with extra time to spare. You can also try to simulate testing conditions/stress by trying to complete a section by brute force only. It's not fun but you could miss an important deduction on test day and having this experience would help. For LR, I would also recommend taking drilling any weaknesses and spend more time review these question. Finally, for RC, you are leaving a lot of points on the table. I know you probably have your strategy for attacking an RC passage but it is not working that well right now. I would recommend testing different strategies out again to see if another way of reading helps you engage with and retain the material in the passage. These were some of the things I did when I was stuck in a plateau and hopefully you some of this advice will wind up being helpful to you.

Mike_Ross

Probably want to stop PTing for now and focus on timed section drills instead!

I always think of PTs as game day. Think about it: do swimmers get better by swimming races everyday? No, they work on specific parts of the race like diving, strokes, the turn at each end of the leg.

In the same way, go question type by question type and ask whether you’re implementing standardized steps. Consider trying a skipping strategy; review scenarios that seem to always be getting you and create steps you’ll execute next time you encounter. Only go back to PTing when you’ve reliably found things that work in both untimed and timed drills. PTs are precious!

valentina.soares-1

Hey @gooilers97 !

First thing I’ll say is that you should definitely take a step back on the PTs. PTs are a tool to see which areas you still need to work on and how you would perform if you were to take a real LSAT that day, not a way to improve. That goal is better accomplished, as others have mentioned, by drilling and timed sections.

I would recommend limiting yourself to 1 PT a week and really making sure that you spend quality time in blind review, watch all of the explanation videos for the questions you missed, and articulate the reasons you missed those questions and what you learned in a wrong answer journal.

With LR, focusing on question types, especially if you have a few that clearly need work, should make a difference. Take advantage of 7Sage's Analytics to identify these! Otherwise, working on challenging curve breaker questions can be your final focus. To do this I’d recommend doing a drill of 5 star questions untimed and writing down your reasons for eliminating and choosing answers. That way when you watch the videos for missed questions, you can see where your reasoning is faulty or differs from JY's explanation.

The LG recommendation is always foolproof foolproof foolproof, but see if you can get specific with which game types you focus on based on your analytics.

For RC, make sure you are focusing on the structure of the passage so that when you come back to it during the questions, you don’t waste time re-reading and know where you need to look to find your answer. I recommend watching the explanation videos of the actual reading of the passage as well as the questions. This was what made the difference for me when I hit a plateau in RC! JY drops so many gems in his explanations of the passage like what you should be paying attention to, how you should be reading, and even things like what your mentality should be like reading hard passages, etc. You should also pay attention to how he approaches different question types in RC and how that affects his criteria for eliminating answer choices.

The big takeaway here is that you need to shift your focus from how you’re scoring on PTs to working on specific concepts/question types and taking the time really review them in detail. Breaking through a plateau requires changing your perspective and that starts with identifying where you’re going wrong, taking the time to figure out why, and then practicing until you can fix it. You got this!!

If you end up deciding that you would like to do some tutoring, we can get really specific in diagnosing your problem areas/where you are missing out on points and giving you the tools you need to make those improvements before test day. If you're interested in learning more about how we do that exactly, you can schedule a free 30-minute consult with one of our tutors here: https://calendly.com/7sage-tutoring/7sage-tutoring-free-consultation?utm_source=FCA_A

Best of luck with your studying!

kaymay18-2

The section that you can get the fastest results in is LG. LG should feel like muscle memory, so do the fool proof method that JY suggests. Start at easier games and don't move on from a game until you've been able to fool proof it consistently several times. If you can get LG down to -0/-1 consistently, that will help. For RC, I'd recommend going back to the basics: for each passage, make sure you have nailed down the main point of the passage and author tone. Last, and most helpful for all sections, keep an error journal. I recommend a simple excel spreadsheet where you keep track of what type of question you missed (LR, ~MBT for example), what error you made, and what you need to do differently for those types of questions in the future. It should be really specific. For example, my error might say "did not read the answer choices closely enough" or "did not draw out the stimulus into a visual." You'll start to notice which types of questions you make errors on and the kind of error you're committing. Then, you'll be able to target those kinds of questions with untimed practice sets, then timed practice sets, then PTs. I believe in you! You got this!