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I took a free cold diagnostic in mid-June at Kaplan and got 164. I missed 1 RC, 4 LG, and around 17 LR.

Obviously, I realized that I needed to work on my LR. I ordered the LRB and LGB, plus the 10 Actual Official LSAT PrepTests. For about a month, I went through the two Bibles.

About a week ago, I began to do the PrepTests. My plan is to do one every other day for August, then maybe almost every day for September.

On the first practice test, I got 167. Then I got 170. Today, I regressed and got a 163, which disappointed me because I wanted to reliably get ~170.

However, it has shed light on some of my problems. My LG are pretty good, but I can get severely thrown off by unfamiliarity. For example, I might create a very inefficient diagram for a type of game I've never seen before and get really bogged down. I'm guessing that repetition and practice will take care of this problem.

My progress in LR is pretty incremental, which is understandable but also frustrating. I tend to make the most mistakes in the questions between 10-20, which indicates that perhaps, I'm rushing through too much. It's those upper-middle difficulty questions that are getting me, since I'm solid at the beginning and at the end. I think more careful reading is key.

Reading comprehension is pretty easy for me, though I still find it very difficult to make absolutely no mistakes. Most of my mistakes come from misreading the questions.

I'm a little bothered by the sudden drop from 170 to 163. I was making steady, almost mechanical, progress (164, 167, 170) until today. What happened? Is this normal? Will 2 months be enough for me to work out the kinks in my LSAT approach to get that 175?

Don't worry too much about it, progress is definitly possible. I was also doing horribly in LR at first but just after doing only a few prep-tests I've improved significantly. Do you have the LR Bible? that helped me very much, it tells you what to look for in every question type. I'm aiming for the same score in October and I think with enough practice its possible, don't get discouraged.

I had nearly the exact same experience this week. I started out in the mid 160s and my score has slowly but surely been inching up. During the past two weeks i scored a 170 on PT 28, 173 on PT 39, and 170 on PT40. But, Monday I took PT41 and scored a 162... So at the very least, you're in good company.

LR is my weakness at the moment too. I think one useful technique might be to take an entire "test" of LR sections - so 4-5 LR timed sections back to back. I tried this for games and now I almost never have trouble finishing the sections in time and getting -0/-2. I've also heard good things about doing the hardest LR problem packet from Cambridge LSAT.

But, ultimately I wouldn't stress out too much about the drop. I think most people on here would agree that outliers are unlikely to be representative of how you'll do on game day. Just go over your wrong answers, make sure you understand why they're wrong, and move on.

Agree with above posters. Outliers happen. I personally scored what I was mode-ing at on test day, although I certainly would've liked the upwards outliers An average of your PTs is more indicative, as we all have bad/off days.

I've had a similar experience. These are my PT scores thus far, in order: 169, 163, 169, 163, 170. (I scored 161 on a Kaplan-proctored diagnostic.) All five were taken after I finished the LGB. I'm now working on the LRB and tonight will take my first practice test since starting the book.

For what it's worth, I think the two 163s are unrepresentative of my abilities and progress; different factors hindered my performance on each. Still, I think the experiences here show that interruptions in the climb of your scores aren't anything to worry about, unless they persist. I'm also aiming for a 175 in October. Though I was upset by my regressions, I'm not going to dwell on them. I have more than 25 practice tests to go and plenty of time to improve.