Significant score increase on same day...161 to 169. Forum

[boomer07]

I apologize in advance for the length of this post...

I have been disappointed and frustration over the past few weeks as my PT's have been stuck at 162-164 (random PT's in the 50's and a few in the 40's). I was putting tons of pressure on myself and rather than reviewing my mistakes or going back through the LR bible like I needed to, I would finish a test and then sometimes take another one the same day to see if I could get a score closer to my goal of 170. Needless to say, it has been the worthless few weeks, extremely frustrating, and a huge waste of new PT's. Finally on Wednesday, with only 4 PT's left and no improvement, I forced myself to review all of my mistakes from my previous 5 PT's and went back through the LR bible. Today, I was excited to see how my thorough review would benefit me as I took a free practice test with Kaplan (It was PT 36 and the scoring scale was not altered). Well, a few months back I took PT 36 and this actually made the test extremely difficult as I wasn't able to focus or read critically since so much of it was familiar. Also contributing to this was the fact that I have bad test anxiety and felt so rushed that I skimmed through every LR without knowing what I was really reading. I ended up with a 161. The worst part wasn't my score, but rather that I was so pumped up to take a PT after spending a few days really analyzing what I was doing wrong, only to learn that it was an old test that I had already taken (I called Kaplan on Thursday and I was told that they would be proctoring PT 59). So, even though I had only four PT's to lead me up to June 7, I really wanted to take a PT to put my brain up against LR that I had never seen. So, I took PT 52 and got a 169. Not only was this my personal best, but I only missed 2 LR in total (personal best) and one of them was one that I didn't have time to answer (I don't randomly guess on PT's so as not to potentially inflate my score). Also, I got -4 on RC (which sadly is my best on recent tests). Unfortunately I got -5 on LG (have been around -3) which put me at -11. With the test just days away, I don't know what to think of this. Is PT 52 known to be an easy test? Is the 169 a fluke or is my altered approach and change in mindset responsible. Should I be excited or is it common for people to have a test where for some reason they just knock it out of the park but then go right back to where they were? Thanks for the input and sorry again about the length.

[halfwaygone]

I think you can be excited and happy. You can always be happy when you do something well, but...

I wouldn't consider it a real gain unless you KEPT holding closer to 169. There will always be ups and downs to the scores. That's why we study enough to reach a plateau (and even then the real test can surprise us).