Last Three Weeks Study Plan Ideas?/Worth Buying Latest LSAT? Forum

[chaitealatte]

Hi everyone,

I've basically saved 10 PTs to do between now and the Feb. test. (60-70) and I plan on interspersing these with drilling days of just re-doing the hardest questions I've found during my prep time. I've generally been scoring around 170-173 and would really like to see that score go up- does anyone have suggestions for ways to make my prep more effective? Is there anything else I should be doing? Also, is it really worth spending the extra $50 to get the last few LSAT tests? At this point I've spent so much that I'm thinking I should save those in case of a (gasp) re-test needed.

Thank you!

[nlee10]

What about PT 71-74?

[NonTradLawHopeful]

Personally I wouldn't have retake in my vocabulary right now. Just have the confidence to rock it in 3 weeks and be done! A positive attitude can go a long ways.

That being said, of course I would get the 4 most recent tests if I were you. They are only about $8 a piece on Amazon.

[Jeffort]

Given that the Feb test is now less than three weeks away, 10 full timed PTs is more than enough since to improve/get closer to perfecting your performance on test day you really need to deeply review your performance on each timed PT you take before taking another one.

Deep thorough review of each timed PT before taking another one is where the 'learning/skills boosting magic' happens by figuring out in excruciating detail exactly what went wrong that caused you to miss the few questions you're missing to hit low 170s scores. You should focus on figuring out in as much detail as possible why you missed the questions you did/what types of mistakes and/or weaknesses influenced/caused you to get them wrong so that you know what types of execution of your processes/strategies mistakes you made/issues you need to give more drilling and review of concepts and techniques time to.

Proper deep thorough review of PTs to pinpoint all your exact mistakes/issues/weakness/things you could have handled better/more efficiently/etc. takes a lot of time and there just isn't enough time left before now and test day to take more than 10 PTs and thoroughly review them to learn from your mistakes before taking another one. The main skills building/score boosting benefits you can get from taking timed PTs are gained from deep review to figure out all the mistakes you made/issues that caused you trouble/questions you struggled with and could have handled/approached a better way, etc. and then being proactive with some additional drilling and review to work on fixing those issues before taking another timed PT.

This includes reviewing not just the few questions you got wrong. You should deeply review your performance for each question and entire section (whether it went well or not) to evaluate and identify ways you could have been more efficient/handled questions different that you got correct but could have gotten correct faster and/or with more certainty. It's especially important to review questions you got correct but weren't 100% confident/certain about when you decided which answer to select. Only reviewing questions you got wrong is a big mistake many people make when dealing with timed PTs.

If you just take timed PTs, calculate your score, only do light superficial review of the questions you got wrong and then just do another PT a day or two later, you're not really learning anything beneficial from taking the PTs or doing anything to change/fine tune your approach/habits/methods/understanding of concepts and techniques/etc. to improve your performance.

In short, use those 10 PTs wisely by making sure to learn as much about your performance level, approaches, weaknesses, troublesome issues, things that give you difficulty, things you could be better at/could have done a better way, etc. from each one, then do things to learn from those mistakes and adjust your approaches/habits/etc. appropriately before taking the next PT so that you're actively fine tuning and adjusting your skill sets/approaches/habits/processes from PT to PT to shore up whatever your issues are that are costing you the few points per test you're currently missing.

Quality over quantity is always the right answer with LSAT prep when it comes to PTs, meaning that you use them in a quality way to learn from your performance in meaningful/actionable ways to help you further fine tune and improve your hands on timed test conditions application of your LSAT skills and knowledge for test day.

Make sense?

[chaitealatte]

Quality over quantity is always the right answer with LSAT prep when it comes to PTs, meaning that you use them in a quality way to learn from your performance in meaningful/actionable ways to help you further fine tune and improve your hands on timed test conditions application of your LSAT skills and knowledge for test day.

Make sense?

Thanks so much- this is exactly what I was looking for. I definitely haven't been paying really close attention to questions I got correct, so I'm definitely going to go back and start reviewing those really closely. I really appreciate the advice!

[BP Robert]

If you don't have other LSATs from very recent years on hand, ie from later than 2008, then I would recommend going ahead and purchasing some of those new ones.

Best of luck,

Blueprint LSAT Prep