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I took a cold diagnostic and scored a 144. I was very disappointed as I was expecting somewhere around 160 because I go to a top private uni, have a 3.8+, good all around softs and have done well on the ACT in HS. Now, I realized the LSAT would be much tougher than I thought. I initially thought I could ease into the 170 range with some practice. Oh boy....

My goal is to score at least 170. I will retake until I achieve this. 172 is the score I have set where I will not retake anymore, unless I was scoring a lot higher consistently in my PT's.

After my cold diagnostic, I went through the Powerscore LG, LR, and RC Bibles (one time thru each one so far, took about a month). I took notes as I went on and felt I've learned a lot about the test. I took a second PT (#19) and scored a 157 (expected 160), but I ran out of time and had to blindly guess on 1 whole game and one whole RC passage, combining up to 14 questions (got 4 right from guessing). Later, I solved them and got 12/14 of these right, so timing was the issue here and held me back. I feel pretty even about each section. Not one feels more comfortable or harder.

From here, where do I go? Do I do more PTs, buy the cambridge drills, go through the Powerscore again, or should I go through the Manhattan bundle? I was planning on taking the test in October (have not signed up yet), but I'm willing to push it back to December or even February if necessary.

I went into prepping with really high confidence because everything else was going great (school, internship, extracurriculars, etc). I don't want the LSAT to be the thing holding me back from HYS or CNN. My confidence has been thrown off right now from these two PT scores and I am uncertain if everything will turn out okay. Any advice will be much appreciated. Thank you!

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I like to do a 3 or 4 day cycle:
1. Bookwork (I think you went through those books REALLY fast if you did all three in a month. Did you note if you were getting 100% in the LR sections for instance? If not, reread, redo sections).
2. Content focus - something like 45 minutes of just Simple in/out games, 45 minutes of "Most strongly supported" LR questions. I have pdfs of ~55 tests and use ten to pull questions. Then I add questions I missed from LR, all RC passages that gave me issues, and every LG regardless.
3. PT. Type answers into lsatqa.
4. Review test. Retake all LG's. If not perfect and done in 30 minutes, retake again. Look at my original diagrams, write down important inferences I missed. I'll probably watch one 7sage video if I felt there was a game or question I just couldn't get.
Go over RC misses with my study partner. She's pretty automatic. I would strongly suggest getting an LSAT study better at LSAT than you are.
Enter missed LR's into LR Flashcard document from Pithypike's guide (http://top-law-schools.com/forums/viewt ... =6&t=41657). Every ~5 tests, print out, cut out, sort.

Repeat.

I take 1 day off a week.

lalalany wrote:

Do I do more PTs

Yes. Two is nothing. Practice makes perfect, especially when timing is your issue.

Does CNN require a good LSAT score? I thought that's more of an MSNBC thing.

Lol I meant CCN. You knew what I meant.

nothingtosee wrote:I like to do a 3 or 4 day cycle:
1. Bookwork (I think you went through those books REALLY fast if you did all three in a month. Did you note if you were getting 100% in the LR sections for instance? If not, reread, redo sections).
2. Content focus - something like 45 minutes of just Simple in/out games, 45 minutes of "Most strongly supported" LR questions. I have pdfs of ~55 tests and use ten to pull questions. Then I add questions I missed from LR, all RC passages that gave me issues, and every LG regardless.
3. PT. Type answers into lsatqa.
4. Review test. Retake all LG's. If not perfect and done in 30 minutes, retake again. Look at my original diagrams, write down important inferences I missed. I'll probably watch one 7sage video if I felt there was a game or question I just couldn't get.
Go over RC misses with my study partner. She's pretty automatic. I would strongly suggest getting an LSAT study better at LSAT than you are.
Enter missed LR's into LR Flashcard document from Pithypike's guide (http://top-law-schools.com/forums/viewt ... =6&t=41657). Every ~5 tests, print out, cut out, sort.

Repeat.

I take 1 day off a week.

Thanks for the advice! I will try to incorporate a method like this too and see how it works out.