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Hey y'all.

I'm taking the LSAT next week for the third time and I'm finding myself considerably more anxious than I was either of the two previous times. Maybe because I know it's my last chance or maybe because I'm worried about my score going down, I don't really know.

My chief problem with the LSAT has been nerves, especially in the LG section (which is odd, since it was always my best in PTs), and I'm not totally sure how to deal with it. My scores have been 163 and 165 and I'm really worried that I'll score below the 165 next week because I'm freaking out about it.

How much would a 164 or a 163 or lower kill my application profile? I'm really hoping for 170+ (and all of my PTs have been in that general area, but they were all in that general area before the February and the June LSAT too and that didn't exactly go as planned) but I'm terrified that taking it and bombing will mean bad things for the applications I've already submitted and the schools that I could get into now with my current score.

Do schools really look at the highest, even if it's not the most recent score? I think if I had some reassurance there that a lower score wouldn't totally fuck me over, I might not be as nervous and I'd be less likely to freeze up next week.

Does anyone have any experience with this?

The vast majority of schools look only at the highest. Where are you scoring on timed PTs?

I took it 3 times too, and I had the opposite problem the third time. I felt most prepared and focused for my middle score, and had a meltdown on the last 6 questions. On my highest and most recent score, halfway through the test, I just completely lost interest. I'll never know my breakdown since it was a Feb test, but I think every question I missed was on the RC, which was the first section and made me just stop caring. My feeling was that it turned out ok because I'd practiced so much. It's just auto-pilot unless you let yourself distract yourself. I would take the week off almost. Just do a quick warmup on Thursday maybe, and then a page of LR, a RC passage, and one LG about an hour before the test to get your brain working. That's what I did, and I finally hit my PT average exactly.

EarlCat wrote:The vast majority of schools look only at the highest. Where are you scoring on timed PTs?

172-ish. I've hit 176 a couple of times, 169 a couple of times. But most of my scores have been low 170s. Such was the case before the last two real tests, too, though, and I bombed them. But then I go back to look at material and to try to study again (which, at this point, is getting difficult because I don't have any new tests to work with) and I do fine. I know what I'm doing, I just freeze up when it comes down to the real thing.