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I recently took several (never seen before) LSAT Preptests under timed conditions. Scores are as follows
July 26 173
July 29 172
July 30 173
August 1 167
August 2 174
August 5 172

I know that I can consistently score in the low 170's but have yet to score in the high 170's. Any advice for increasing my LSAT potential will be greatly appreciated.

Is a particular section weighing you down? And if so, are there any question/game (if applicable) types that give you recurring troubles?

I haven't been able to discover any patterns, my mistakes are generally evenly distributed across all four sections.

keener123 wrote:I recently took several (never seen before) LSAT Preptests under timed conditions. Scores are as follows
July 26 173
July 29 172
July 30 173
August 1 167
August 2 174
August 5 172

I know that I can consistently score in the low 170's but have yet to score in the high 170's. Any advice for increasing my LSAT potential will be greatly appreciated.

Without knowing more about what you're missing between these tests, it's hard to say what the issue is or how to fix it. Like did the 167 occur after a logic game killed you? An RC passage? Were you tired? Forget to eat breakfast?

Each PT should be a way of diagnosing your weaknesses so the days in between you can fill with drilling of whatever that question type is. So if the 167 was a bad grouping game, you need to spend hours if not 2-3 days drilling those things specifically.

The scaled score in and of itself isn't going to be the best indicator of what needs to be done. The specific questions you missed will tell you what to do.

That's some great work and maybe all you need is a bit more experience to climb even higher --

But one tip I have is to really work on getting faster -- in particular on the easier questions --

To go higher than where you are already means being almost perfect -- it's very tough to be almost perfect if you are rushed on the toughest q's --

Most people I know who are capable of consistent high 170's are able to get through the easier q's very quickly, so that they can devote enough time to ensure accuracy on the toughest ones --

In terms of getting faster at questions you find easier -- I think it's mostly about process, familiarity and pattern recognition -- if you aren't doing this already, I recommend that you put some time into drilling sets of individual q types/game types --

One additional tip I have -- as you are doing your practice tests, make sure to circle the questions for which you are uncertain of your answers -- pay extra careful attention to questions you didn't circle (that is, questions you felt certain you got right) but then ended up missing -- these are obviously very useful for you to review -- as you get deeper into your studies, you should hopefully find that you don't ever miss a question that you don't circle (that's a pretty good sign that you are gaining a deep understanding of the test).

HTH -- Mike.

The LSAT Trainer wrote:That's some great work and maybe all you need is a bit more experience to climb even higher --

But one tip I have is to really work on getting faster -- in particular on the easier questions --

To go higher than where you are already means being almost perfect -- it's very tough to be almost perfect if you are rushed on the toughest q's --

Most people I know who are capable of consistent high 170's are able to get through the easier q's very quickly, so that they can devote enough time to ensure accuracy on the toughest ones --

In terms of getting faster at questions you find easier -- I think it's mostly about process, familiarity and pattern recognition -- if you aren't doing this already, I recommend that you put some time into drilling sets of individual q types/game types --

One additional tip I have -- as you are doing your practice tests, make sure to circle the questions for which you are uncertain of your answers -- pay extra careful attention to questions you didn't circle (that is, questions you felt certain you got right) but then ended up missing -- these are obviously very useful for you to review -- as you get deeper into your studies, you should hopefully find that you don't ever miss a question that you don't circle (that's a pretty good sign that you are gaining a deep understanding of the test).

HTH -- Mike.

This is all accurate and true, time isn't an issue at the 175+ level, when something is confusing and you need 5 minutes to redo it, you have that time if you cruise through the first 15 questions. Sometimes you need to do that if you're gunning for near perfect score.

what point in your prep are you?

the answer will be different depending on whether or not you've been studying a few weeks or several months.

Pneumonia wrote:what point in your prep are you?

the answer will be different depending on whether or not you've been studying a few weeks or several months.

I started in June, so it has been around two months.

The LSAT Trainer wrote:That's some great work and maybe all you need is a bit more experience to climb even higher --

But one tip I have is to really work on getting faster -- in particular on the easier questions --

To go higher than where you are already means being almost perfect -- it's very tough to be almost perfect if you are rushed on the toughest q's --

Most people I know who are capable of consistent high 170's are able to get through the easier q's very quickly, so that they can devote enough time to ensure accuracy on the toughest ones --

In terms of getting faster at questions you find easier -- I think it's mostly about process, familiarity and pattern recognition -- if you aren't doing this already, I recommend that you put some time into drilling sets of individual q types/game types --

One additional tip I have -- as you are doing your practice tests, make sure to circle the questions for which you are uncertain of your answers -- pay extra careful attention to questions you didn't circle (that is, questions you felt certain you got right) but then ended up missing -- these are obviously very useful for you to review -- as you get deeper into your studies, you should hopefully find that you don't ever miss a question that you don't circle (that's a pretty good sign that you are gaining a deep understanding of the test).

HTH -- Mike.

That's great advice, I don't always have enough time to double check the difficult questions, I probably spend too much time on the easy ones.

keener123 wrote:

Pneumonia wrote:what point in your prep are you?

the answer will be different depending on whether or not you've been studying a few weeks or several months.

I started in June, so it has been around two months.

Without knowing more about your specific situation, and taking into account that you haven't self identified any specific weaknesses, my advice would be something along the lines of the following:

Keep taking PT's. There are two sets of skills for the actual test: "Question-Answering" skills and "Test Taking" skills. The former are what most people (rightly) focus on the most, and I'd say that they are 90% of what is required for a good score. The last 10% are things like endurance, knowing when to skip a question, knowing how to efficiently choose between two seemingly correct AC's, avoiding dumb mistakes (bubbling/circling errors, missing negations, failing to read all AC's), timing within sections, etc.

For the me the first set came pretty naturally; I hit 99.9th percentile before my 10th PT, but ended up taking 30 PT's total because I was experiencing variation in my PT scores similar to what you describe above. After reviewing my PT's I realized that I was just lacking "Test-Taking" skills. Specifically, I was missing negations a lot because I was reading to fast, and I was taking too much time on the easier questions in each section. Hope this helps.

During review, answer the following 4 questions for all LR and RC questions:
1) Why is the right answer right? - You're probably already doing this
2) Why is my selected answer wrong? - Ditto
3) What about the right answer made me cross it out? - This will show you which tricks you're falling for. They throw the same ones at you time and time again (logical force, equivocation, etc...). If you can figure out which tricks you're falling for, it's a lot easier to stop falling for them.
4) What about the wrong answer made me think it was right? - Same reason here as for the last one.

If there's not a pattern to the question type/section you're getting wrong, there's probably a pattern to the tricks used by the LSAT to get you (the royal you - all high scorers) to pick the wrong answers. Finding these flaws in your reasoning/approach is the way to get from the 170s to the mid- to high-170s.