Tips for improving from low 170s to high 170s Forum

[nax425]

If you have taken the LSAT only once & scored in the low 170s, why risk getting a lower score on the retake when you have already scored in the top one percent?

I haven't taken the LSAT yet, those are just the scores i'm getting on prep tests.

I'm hoping to study hard and just take the LSAT once. We'll see how that goes.

Edit: Low 170's isn't top 1%, it's anywhere from like ~96/97% I believe? I think 173 is where it becomes 99%

When I took the LSAT a 170 was 98%. It varies.

[honestabe84]

The conditional/formal logic chapters in the bible shaved at least 2 points off on average from each LR section for me. I averaged about 4 mistakes per each LR section before I read the Bible, and 1.4 mistakes per section over the last 10 LR sections. I found the rest of the LRB somewhat useless.

Apart from that, I don't really know. Obviously reviewing each mistake with an eye not for the correct answer (who cares about it?), but for your own thinking process - WHY did you make the mistake? WHY did you pick the wrong answer? What was going on in your head at that moment? Hopefully, you'll notice a pattern (mine are still with me - dismissing correct answers that I didn't immediately understand being the worst offender for me).

Sadly, there are also the parallel reasoning/principle mistakes. These are by far the hardest questions and quickly "abstractizing" the stimulus is a matter of practice, I suppose. I am slowly getting better at those.

I actually don't have a problem with these. For some reason I have trouble with "assumption" and "weaken" questions. Unfortunately, these are much more common than "parallel" questions.

[Shrimps]

What are your practice test scores looking like, and whats your goal score?

Can't honestly say as I take the LR, LR, RC sections together and do the games separately. The games are my weakest section, first and foremost time-wise.

My range is around 170-177 at the moment, depending for the most part on the difficulty of the games section.

My goal score is obviously 180. Heh.

When I took the LSAT a 170 was 98%. It varies.

It still is 98% (97.5% as far as I know). It shouldn't vary as the LSAT score is just a stand-in for the cold percentile rank, hammered into a bell curve (median 151, sd 10).

I actually don't have a problem with these. For some reason I have trouble with "assumption" and "weaken" questions. Unfortunately, these are much more common than "parallel" questions.

Curious. Have you found the LRB useful? For "weaken" questions, just going through the choices one by one asking myself "how would this weaken the conclusion?" is usually a pretty quick and straightforward way to answer them.

Assumption questions can be pretty tricky. Do you have a sense of when an argument "jumps" to a conclusion? I am a very contrarian person by nature, to the point that it feels like some sort of a psychological disorder - I have that urge to argue against views I normally agree with simply if I dislike the manner or the way in which they're delivered. This, in fact, is one of my big problems. If I read a stimulus and disagree with something in it, I will try looking for what's bugging me in the answer choices and if I don't find it I can become irritated and pick some random (almost invariably wrong) answer and then curse at the 'LSAC wankers'. Anyway, if you can get yourself in that contrarian mood you may find that weaken and assumption questions get a lot easier.

That's the way I do LR. I read the stimulus first, eager to find some fault with it, and if I do, I move onto the stem and the answer choices (and almost invariably they're assumption/weaken type questions). If the argument seems reasonable, the question is almost invariably a main point/strengthen type question.

Some people are very uncomfortable with the idea of reading the stimulus first, though.

[jpSartre]

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