Prep Strategy Forum

[lsatquestion]

.

[Nova]

Manhattan has some legit fake games on their site.

You would probably get some use out of this http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-LSAT-Pra ... d_sim_b_21

The best way to not run out of prep material is to spend more time reviewing.

[bp shinners]

P.S. I know I sound like an asshole by saying I'm scoring high 170s and looking to improve my score, but this is obviously a hugely important test, and I don't want to walk away from it feeling as though I could have done more.

Thanks in advance!

Stop going crazy. You're going to prep yourself out of a high-170s score.

You're already solid on the material. The difference between a 177 and a 180 is mostly luck, and schools view anything at 176+ as essentially the same score.

Calm down, stop doing so much, pace yourself, spread the material out over the next several months, and relax. You're doing more harm than good at this point by worrying so much, especially since you're at where you want to be. If you burn yourself out and hype the test up as much as you are, you're going to have a freakout/breakdown, and you're not going to see your PT scores on the real thing.

Unless you're trolling

[cc.celina]

Unless you're trolling

Lol I'm going to answer as if this is the case. If it's not sorry for feeding

Don't do 1-2 PTs a day till Oct. Jeez. That is more of a desperation cramming tactic than a solid study tactic, and you have enough time and are scoring high enough to have a solid study plan. Shinners is right - 177-180 is mostly luck. You should of course aim for 180, but don't freak out if your average is more like a 175 - 178. That would be counterproductive.

Now that you're already obviously a top scorer, you can stop worrying so much about taking full PTs. Instead, focus on your weaknesses. You mentioned that there wasn't a discernible pattern - you might need to look a little harder. As always I recommend LSAT QA (LinkRemoved) as a solid PT tracker if you don't have one already. Take a little time and retroactively enter your answers for PTs youve already taken. This was a great tool for me - for example, it told me I missed Strengthen questions at a slightly higher rate than I missed anything else. I was scoring around the same as you, so the average number of points I missed on each PT from strengthen questions was something like .3, but at this point those little things are going to accumulate to form the difference between a 177 and a 180. (I got the Cambridge LSAT packet for Strengthen questions, and I think it paid off on the test.)

Other than that, take the occasional PT, but please don't risk your great score on burnout. I had the self-imposed misfortune of having only 3.5 weeks to take the LSAT, so I DID take a PT almost every day, and after a lot of days without a break my score would noticeably drop. For the sake of your score and your mental health, focus on targeted drills instead of long endurance-building PTs, because drills are going to have a lot more benefit.

tl;dr: Don't burn yourself out on PTs; do targeted drills with Cambridge packets if necessary; use LSAT QA. That's my advice, take it or leave it

You've got this in the bag. Good luck!

[JohnV]

You're saying your diagnostic was 177+ and you're here to ask us for advice? Troll or asshole, for sure.

[lsatquestion]

Thanks Nova, BP, and Celina!

I guess I am stressing a little more than I should be...I'm a bit of a perfectionist, lol.
Celina--that site is AWESOME; thanks for posting it. And thanks for the gl wish, haha.

JohnV--definitely not trolling. Just because I scored highly on a few diagnostics doesn't mean I think there's nothing for me to learn; a lot of the people here have studied the LSAT way more than I have and know much more about the study process and available resources, as evidenced by the earlier posters. The fact that I'm scoring well doesn't change the fact that they have more knowledge about the test than I do, and can (and did) offer very useful advice.
Asshole? Maybe I'd like to think I'm just neurotic/perfectionist though.

[NoodleyOne]

You're saying your diagnostic was 177+ and you're here to ask us for advice? Troll or asshole, for sure.

You're going to hate this place around September if you think that way. People nitpick about 178s and try to find their mistakes. Being thorough in your review is a good attitude to have, honestly, even with really high scores.

[sama]

If you can get 180 all power to you, I really hope you get it