Score trending down

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• 1 Like

  nicsydney0210 Member

  December 2022 52 karma

  I have the same issue right now, id love to know if anyone has advice on this as well! One advice i can give you is make sure your not burning yourself out!
• 4 Likes

  Matt Sorr Alum Member ⭐

  December 2022 2245 karma

  I'll say a couple of things.

  First, and most importantly, if you've only studied LR and haven't yet reached LG or RC, the odds of your score improving much is unlikely. Honestly, your score will probably be pretty random, just like your diagnostic score. To explain why, I'll give an example:

  Say you take a PT and it has a relatively difficult LR section, a relatively easy LG section, and a relatively average RC section. Because you have studied LR, maybe you only miss 5 questions in the section even though it's relatively difficult. Then, you're able to go -5 in LG because it's relatively easy and -9 in RC because it's of average difficulty. Having missed 19 questions in total, you score a 159. Then, you take another test without any more studying. It has a relatively easy LR section, an average LG section, and an extremely hard RC section. You go -4 in LR, which is good, but you probably could've scored pretty close to that without studying because it was an easy section. You go -11 in LG because it's an average section, but even average LG sections can be pretty hard without LG training, and you go -15 in RC because it's a particularly difficult section. So on this PT you missed 30 questions and score 10 (or more) points lower than your previous PT. Was it because of you were dumber when taking the second PT? No, your training just hadn't prepared you for the difficulties of the second PT. It's not that the second PT was harder or easier, it just ramped up the difficulty in areas you haven't practiced. So while you may have scored a 159 on the first PT and, say, a 148 on the second PT, it wasn't because you studied incorrectly. The second PT just hit your weaknesses harder.

  All of this is to say that you're not doing anything "wrong," as you asked. You just haven't practiced the other sections and, as a result, your scores are going to vary greatly. To address this, perhaps stop PTing as much until you finish the core curriculum. Or, as I did, you could stop PTing altogether until you finish the curriculum. Currently, your scores just won't tell you too much (except for maybe your LR scores). Keep moving through the curriculum and once you're studied each area, worry more about your scores.

  Second, just know that score fluctuation is totally normal. I once hit my personal highest score then scored the second lowest I've ever scored in the next test. While swings of that kind aren't really normal once you've been studying for a while. Swings happen to everyone. Even the people I know who scored in the mid 170s saw large swings in their PT scores leading up to their test. Particularly when you're as early in your studies as you are, don't let your score fluctuations discourage you. They don't mean much and learning the fundamentals is far more important for you right now. I hope this helps!
• 1 Like

  Reneseph Member

  December 2022 15 karma

  Thank you a ton, I really needed to hear this. I'll probably be able to sleep tonight now!
• sh.francis Core Member

  December 2022 246 karma

  are you guys taking PTs from drastically different years? in addition to the great explanations suggested above that could be another source of variance.
• TwentyStarGeneral Core Member

  December 2022 118 karma

  I will add these points to the valid points others have made. For reference, my current PT range over the last 12 tests taken is 169-178 and I scored a 168 on my last official take in October. I was an idiot and didn't do my diagnostic the right way with the timing, so it was 161, but had I done it honestly, I think it would have been more like a 150 or high 140s. I have been studying for a year and a half in the aggregate (6 months in 2018, 1 year since December 2021). I am retaking in January. (I include this information for the sake of credibility not boasting.)

  First, the arch of improvement is not necessarily linear in the short run. There will be peaks, plateaus, and regressions. You also could be suffering from burnout, depending on how long and how intensely you've been studying (though if you've only taken 6 pts, I doubt this is the case). All of these things have affected me at different times and even lowered my official LSAT scores compared to my PT scores.

  Second, don't worry about ploughing through PTs until you've mastered the concepts and skills for each section -- if you do this now, you are wasting PTs. Use older tests (1-35) to drill by type on individual games and LR questions, then timed sections, then full tests.

  Third, brace yourself mentally for the very likely possibility that your goal score will take a lot longer to attain than you had initially planned.

  Fourth, even when you get into your "goal range" so to speak, brace yourself for the likelihood that you may have to retake once or multiple times to actually hit that goal score/range, given the variability and luck that is built into the test based upon your own strengths and weaknesses compare to the tests selection of types and concepts.

  Fifth, regarding LG and LR, expect your process of studying with whatever you're using, whether exclusively the 7Sage stuff or the PowerScore Bibles or whatever else, to be recursive. I have gone through the LR Bible twice and the LG Bible three times and each time I gleaned something new or relearned something I had forgotten. I have also worked through the Loophole. It's better to learn them deeply by going a bit more slowly and sufficiently practicing the techniques than to rush through them and not really learn or master the techniques and concepts. Another final point on LR (which applies to RC as well) is that a lot of getting better at LR is gaining the experience of having been sucker punched, tripped, and trapped by the test makers several times in your drilling and practice tests. They have an arsenal of tricks and repeating patterns that can only be learned well through a large amount of repetition.

  Sixth, regarding RC, learn the types and subtypes of the passages (I personally used Reading Comp Hero for this part after reading the PowerScore RC Bible, the Manhattan RC book, and doing the 7Sage RC course, but then ended up (1) simplifying the RCHero method of classification and then (2) not using his notation method and just doing it mentally). Learn the handful of things that they test on (Viewpoints, Author opinion, Author tone, Structure) and watch for the indicators. Also, you can use the same methods to eliminate RC wrong answers as you can for the corresponding LR types. Lastly, with RC, do the work of going back through a large set of past completed passages and analyzing one question type at a time, noticing recurring patterns (e.g., in the passage the author says mostly good things about a viewpoint/author, but then he criticizes one point. Then, the question asks about the author's attitude toward that viewpoint/author. The answer is often something like "qualified approval." (qualified showing the slight negative aspect, and approval the mostly positive)). Then, expect to have to drill the heck out of RC like you do LR and LG. My scores in RC didn't get to a consistent -0/2 until I had done almost every RC passage 1-70.

  Stay strong and keep studying and practicing. Take breaks when you need them, which you will. Learn each section the right way, practice the right way, taking the necessary time, then trust the process that you will improve if you keep doing it the right way. Don't worry about speed until much later. In all three sections, you will naturally get faster as you perfect your understanding and technique and, often, paradoxically, trying to go faster will end up wasting time and making things take longer. I hope all this helps.