Low LSAT Diagnostic/practice....Advice on moving forward.. Forum

[Endowing]

Hello all,

I would greatly appreciate any words of advice/wisdom.

I took my diagnostic test back in the early part of February when I started the Kaplan course I am currently enrolled in. As the course has progressed, I have increased my studying time to pretty much any free time I now have. (on top of a full time job + 2hrs total commute). I plan on taking the test in June.

My initial Diagnostic for the course was a 144. We just took another practice test in the course, and I have only improved by 3 points to a 147.

From the breakdown:

In LR I significantly improved with Assumption type questions, and I seem to be "flawless" with the flaw questions, however MP, Method of Arg, Paradox, and Inference are my largest weak points. I was able to answer and complete roughly 17-18 of the 25 total LR questions per section, and seem to range about 3-5 wrong out of the 17-18 I tackle. (In practice on timed LR sections I am scoring with the same range of 17-18, and 3-5 wrong answers, occasionally only 1-2 wrong)

For LG I tripped myself up with the setup on one game, for all the questions I did tackle I got correct, but I missed an entire game due to time. I feel with a repeated run through of games I will not have too much of an issue in this section, I am finding in practice I do not have too much issue with the Logic Games.

As for RC I appear to be an incredibly slow reader, or I spend too much time second guessing/ensuring that I have the information correct, and then only end up with enough time to tackle 2 passages. I seem to not do that poorly on the questions, (answering incorrectly on only 1, or 2) however I miss a great deal of questions due to not even tackling the 2 other passages.

In all honestly I feel I have only really begun a dedicated and disciplined study plan about 3 weeks ago, initially I was failing to dedicate enough time after a full day of work, now I go directly to the library after work until it closes. I now average about 20 hours of study time per week.

I welcome any and all advice on what to do to improve my score. Also, with the June test roughly 2 months away, do I have enough time to improve adequately enough on the test to score above even a 160?

Thank you!

[scuzle]

Id say it depends on your next diag. You look solid on the LR. If you can keep in that range and keep your fundamentals square you can speed yourself up and be in the 19 right range which is not bad. The good news there is that the questions that are having trouble with are generally the easy ones, EXCEPT FOR THE INFERENCE ones. Inference, strengtheners and assumptions are the most common question type, so really check your formal logic and refine your skills there. You might be in a good place with games. That is the one section which is functionally the most teachable and generally the area where the most improvement is realized. When I did I started out in the diag with 12 wrong. (IM RETAKING FOR THE 2nd TIME NOW) However, I saw little improvement but one day broke through a wall! Generally Ill get between 18 and all of them now. As for reading comp just practice skimming. Honestly for every paragraph there are generally only 2-3 real bits of information that are generally pertinent, so just functionally try and figure out to yourself how you discern that and you might able to speed that up. I dont see any reason that with hard work you got move your 143 to the mid to high 150's. Figure this, you get 7 wrong in every section (That means LR: 37/50-52, LG: 16/23-24, RC: 20/26-27) You will have a raw score of 72 which is good for a 156-158 depending on the curve of the test, which is between the 68 and 72 percentiles. I do not know your gpa, but that is not a bad score. If you have around a 3.5 solid resume, great ps and good recs youll have a competitive application outside of the top 50 (to give you perspective I was 153 with a 3.62 and I am waitlisted at usf, scu, american, gonzaga and st louis, but applied reaaaaaallllllllllllly late.) Just really apply yourself to knit picking through that LR and speeding your RC and I think youll be fine. My friend never scored higher then 155 on his diags and got a 165 come test day! Good Luck!

[melinda.corbin]

I don't understand why your bottom is itchy? Mostly people get lower score in Diagnostic and they improve by practice and preparation. If people would get high score in diagnostic then why one will prepare? 3:400 Mathew