NorCalBaby wrote:I’m scoring between 162-164 on my practice tests. I’ve taken a Kaplan class and about 10 practice tests. This is what I’ve done so far. Where should I go from here. I’ve got a 3.5 GPA so I’m banking on the LSAT to get me T14 or T30 with money. Are the Bibles or Testmasters my best bet now? Any and all advice is much appreciated.
NorCalBaby,
If you're scoring in the 160's after 10 practice tests, you're likely already familiar with the concepts that PowerScore or Kaplan would indoctrinate in you.
The only surefire way to raise your score is to take more RECENT practice tests, and ensure that you are going over them in a very tedious way. When you review missed questions, make sure understand why you missed them.
Also, without knowing your breakdown it is difficult to give you advice on how to improve, but here are a few bits:
If Reading Comprehension is your troubled area, there are a number of strategies you can employ, and I recommend doing a search for Voyager's RC method. He taught for Kaplan and I believe is currently in his 2/3L at HLS. You also might try NOT MARKING ANYTHING, and simply reading slowly and reading for comprehension. This is completely counter to the former advice, but for some people this is the preferred method. I personally have done both, and found I scored a bit higher by doing the latter. If you don't read much and your brain is in TV Mode, you need to acclimate yourself to text-only mode, and force yourself to do lots of non-compulsory reading. While reading CS Lewis isn't going to raise your LSAT score, reading at all is going to be better than watching TV in your off-time. Once your brain makes that switch, you will take notice, and understand what I mean.
If Logical Reasoning is your troubled area, I would start to categorize the problems you miss. I kept a spreadsheet log of my performance on LSATs as broken down by question types and my own perceived question difficulty. This helped me tremendously in identifying problem areas that I didn't notice were problem areas, and quickly address them by spending more time practicing those problem types.
If Logic Games is your troubled area, then you simply need to do more games, and repeat games you have missed. Online you can find pdf versions of older LSATs, and for the ones you have purchased, you can legally download and print out copies of LSAT games sections. Some games I did two or three times. Do them without time limits, and then once you can solve it at all, then focus on speeding up. Once you crack the Games, it is only a matter of repetition to speed up your deductive skills and start mowing them down.
Best of luck to you on your test day, and if you don't feel prepared for June, don't take it in June. If a top law school is something you truly aspire to attend, then don't ever let up in your preparation until you walk out of the test room.
(Also, as an aside, why are there so many asshats on this forum now? This used to be a forum overflowing with knowledgeable law school graduates and hopefuls. Now it seems like a competition for fastest quip.)