Plateaued in the low 170s - advice appreciated!

is.saberis.saber Member
in General 51 karma

Hi all! I'm taking the August LSAT and likely registering for October too. I'm stuck in the low 170s and really want to get my PT score up into at least the mid 170s to give myself room for nerves on test day. I'd appreciate any advice you may have for study tips for these next few weeks.

Here's where I am/what I've been doing:
- my recent scores have ranged in the 168-174 range. My two most recent tests were 170 which was disappointing to see since that's a decline in score.
- the general break down for each section is as follows: -0 for LG, -1 or -2 for RC, and -2 or -3 per LR section
- I've gone through LSAT Trainer, most of powerscore and the first 8 chapters of loophole
- I've been doing drills for LR (my weaknesses are Strengthening, Weakening, SA, MBT, and MBF)
- I've been taking 1 practice test per week and doing written blind reviews for any LR questions I flag (typically 10 per LR section)

My question is, do I continue with just taking 1 test a week, blind reviewing, and doing one section per day at random or do I up the ante and start taking more than 1 test per week?

Also, do I continue with the written blind review and just do a regular review of ones I was unsure about? it's time consuming and I'm not sure how helpful it is at this stage but I also don't want to slack at this point.

Thank you all in advance!

Comments

  • martinxi679martinxi679 Member
    281 karma

    Sorry that this is not an advice, but similar situation here - consistenly scoring 169-173 on PTs (Flex scoring though), weaknesses in LR are strengthening & weakening, although my section break down is more like -0 for LG, -4 to -7 for RC, --0 to -2 on LR.
    I would also like to see if 7sagers can give us some advice to improve and close the gap between timed and BR scores. Sincerely appreciated.

  • MustangGT42MustangGT42 Member
    49 karma

    I think the answer to your question lies in your BR vs Timed score difference. I just recently broke through the 174 barrier on my last two PTs (177 and 180 timed and BR), and the difference that really helped me with that was using the Flex simulation because I'm taking the August writing. Three sections is alarmingly easier for me to maintain focus on than four for me.

    A few things that I've done over the past few weeks to help me:
    1) I've been averaging about 2 or 3 practice tests per week with Blind Review and final question review with no other study. I try to give myself about an hour after I finish the timed section to BR, and then I don't go over all the explanations of the questions I missed until immediately before I'm about to take my next PT, sort of as a warmup.
    2) I only BR the questions I've flagged - this really helps me tune my confidence gauge for the harder or trickier questions. Super Important:I've started flagging any questions that give me even the slightest pause to go back and review them under less pressure after I've at least looked at the whole section once through. This has really helped me identify questions and trap answers that I would otherwise be overconfident about. The key in doing all this testing is to hone in your intuition for what makes an AC right or wrong and to know when you should be confident or cautious about your AC.
    3) For LR: skipping questions that take forever to read (like parallel reasoning and some of the applied principle questions) or questions I have to draw out with formal lawgic (I need to take my time with those questions so I leave them until the end), and trying to give myself at least 10-15 minutes at the end to review them has helped me tremendously. If I see a question I just don't like/doesn't click immediately, I skip to the next to keep my momentum and confidence up. Then, once I know I don't have to worry about time as much, I'll read it slowly and usually I'll get it down to two answers.
    4) For RC, I found that I was in "LR Question Stem" reading mode in that I was acting as if I'd read something very similar to the passage before and was just skimming for key words. Follow JY's advice on this: take your time with the passage to understand it and then really be able to fly through the questions. Since I've started reading slower to comprehend more on the first pass through, I've really improved my RC accuracy and timing. Went from -3 or -4 to -0 to -2 regularly.

    Hope that helps! Good luck!

    tl;dr | ~2 PTs/week, review wrong answers directly before next PT, flag any question unsure about or that gave you trouble, only BR flagged questions, when in doubt skip to the next in LR, take it slow on RC passages

  • Chris NguyenChris Nguyen Alum Member Administrator Sage ⭐ 7Sage Tutor
    edited August 2020 4598 karma

    When you are already scoring so high, inherently, there is not much room left for improvement. So EVERYTHING starts to matter. Every detail. Every phrase. Everything.

    To break to such a high range means to adopt an almost perfectionist mindset when going through the answer choices. That doesn't mean spending a huge amount of time on each answer choice, but it does mean on some questions you need to be a little extra careful on.

    For 90% of the questions, I'm sure you're not missing questions because you don't know why the correct answer choice is true. You're scoring in the 170s so your principles of logic have to be sound. For most questions on BR you're probably just rereading the answer choice and then immediately you know the right answer choice. So WHY did you miss it on the timed?

    That's exactly what you need to figure out. There is inherently something you're doing wrong when timed pressure is applied. And it varies from person to person.

    For me, I used to jump the gun on questions I had an anticipation for. For example, for flaw questions, I would come up with the flaw in my head before reading the answer choices and be absolutely tunnel visioned on MY version of this flaw. If it wasn't correctly stated in my head, it wasn't the correct one.

    The thing is, the LSAT writers know that when you study for this test, you start anticipating answer choices. So they specifically write answers with enticing language that will bait you into thinking that answer choice is correct, but if you looked closely at it and didn't skim and tunnel vision yourself into your scenario being the only correct way, you'd realize that's not the correct answer choice.

    To fix this, I had to note to myself that when I anticipated an answer choice, I had to be 100% SURE that that's exactly what the answer choice says. If i'm not 100% sure, I need to look for contenders. 9/10 times when i'm not 100% sure, I find a contender which is actually the correct answer choice. And looking back at the enticing WRONG answer choice, it sounded so much like my anticipation but in reality was saying a totally different thing.

    So when you blind review, you need to blind review for different things now. Your goal in BR is no longer just looking for why the the answer choices are wrong or correct. It's also what can I do to get these types of questions correct during timed pressure.

  • is.saberis.saber Member
    51 karma

    @MustangGT42 thank you! I'm going to try doing more timed tests then and hopefully that'll get my stamina and focus up a bit. It felt like 1 test a week was too little but wanted to get a pulse check on what others have found helpful.

    @Christopherr thank you!! I think have two main issues - I either narrow down the ACs to two options and I choose the wrong one (happens regularly) or I just have no idea what the right answer could possibly be even with BR-ing and when I do see the correct AC, it still doesn't make sense that it could possibly be right. When BR-ing do you have tips on what to do when stuck between two very attractive answers? or will that just depend on question type? It happens too frequently for the score I'm aiming for.

  • VerdantZephyrVerdantZephyr Member ⭐
    2054 karma

    I'm definitely at this point but worried the LSAT Flex will be administered in October. That will hurt my score since I'm now doing best at LR. I need to find strategies to diagram for LG faster. I get nearly 100% right with time, but take way too long to diagram and I can't seem to finish on time.

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