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I occasionally hear about people who have a 3-5 point jump in their score on test day, and I was wondering what could explain that (besides sheer dumb luck), if anyone here has personal experience or theories.

I'm not counting on having a score jump (actually, I'm desperately trying to keep my score from falling this weekend), but I was just thinking about it and I was like "yeah...that'd be sweet"

Some people focus better or work faster on adrenaline.

Yeah, just as rinkrat19 said
I scored below my PT range the first time I took the real one (because I was nervous), but scored above my PT range the second time.
I think I focus better and read faster in the real test, and that gives me extra time to review my answers & correct mistakes.
Normally I don't have any time left for LR or RC but for the real one I had 1~2 minutes left for each section.

...

rinkrat19 wrote:Some people focus better or work faster on adrenaline.

cr

Yes!! I was just about to ask this question! are there any threads on this with more answers?

Hoping4Happiness wrote:Yes!! I was just about to ask this question! are there any threads on this with more answers?

No. There is no magic pill that makes you outscore your PTs. A small number of people react to adrenaline in a positive way, but it's not something that can be forced or even really learned. The best and only way to get a good score is to prep until you are confident in your PT scores.

I scored at the tippy top of my practice range, and I think it was mostly because toward the end I was so sick of PTing I would get sorta lazy about it but during the real thing I was highly focused.

People that haven't been doing a ton of timed practice for weeks before that are still getting into the groove of mastering doing everything better under timed conditions and are still seeing upward improvement frequently outperform their PT range or at least hit the top of their range.

It is not unusual for people that are still improving from the process of identifying and weeding out performance flaws that are costing points by doing thorough review of timed practice tests and making strategy/technique adjustments all the way up to test day to lock down more points. People that have been PTing for a while to really get used to it, are settled into a routine and also plateaued more than a week or two before typically don't exceed range or hit highest score since they are past their period of most significant improvement potential from improving with the fundamentals.

In other words, the unexpected test day gains are usually from people that hadn't been prepping as long and/or as hard as others and enough to have gotten fully into their timed test range a decent amount of time before test day, such as people that don't even start doing timed tests until two weeks before test day, which is actually most people.

If you haven't already gotten really comfortable with timing/pacing a while before test day, still have room for improvement and gains that could be made from knocking out careless errors, and haven't been stuck in the same place for many weeks, test day increase is not improbable.

I jumped up nine points on test day. PT average the last two weeks was ~168 with a PT high of 171 that was due to luck of blind guessing on the last game I ran out of time on. Got 177 on test day.

I only did timed practice tests over the last two weeks, so I was really just getting my timed conditions legs into good working shape the last week and trying to improve my stride. I just couldn't finish the LG sections in time and had to guess on some questions of the last game every time. Test day is when my LG timing came together and I finished it with more than 5 minutes to spare. That was due to finally being in full timed conditions shape that day from the previous two weeks of training for getting into shape and I was in peak shape right on test day, totally in the mode with everything clicking full speed.

Jeffort wrote:People that haven't been doing a ton of timed practice for weeks before that are still getting into the groove of mastering doing everything better under timed conditions and are still seeing upward improvement frequently outperform their PT range or at least hit the top of their range.

It is not unusual for people that are still improving from the process of identifying and weeding out performance flaws that are costing points by doing thorough review of timed practice tests and making strategy/technique adjustments all the way up to test day to lock down more points. People that have been PTing for a while to really get used to it, are settled into a routine and also plateaued more than a week or two before typically don't exceed range or hit highest score since they are past their period of most significant improvement potential from improving with the fundamentals.

In other words, the unexpected test day gains are usually from people that hadn't been prepping as long and/or as hard as others and enough to have gotten fully into their timed test range a decent amount of time before test day, such as people that don't even start doing timed tests until two weeks before test day, which is actually most people.

If you haven't already gotten really comfortable with timing/pacing a while before test day, still have room for improvement and gains that could be made from knocking out careless errors, and haven't been stuck in the same place for many weeks, test day increase is not improbable.

I jumped up nine points on test day. PT average the last two weeks was ~168 with a PT high of 171 that was due to luck of blind guessing on the last game I ran out of time on. Got 177 on test day.

I only did timed practice tests over the last two weeks, so I was really just getting my timed conditions legs into good working shape the last week and trying to improve my stride. I just couldn't finish the LG sections in time and had to guess on some questions of the last game every time. Test day is when my LG timing came together and I finished it with more than 5 minutes to spare. That was due to finally being in full timed conditions shape that day from the previous two weeks of training for getting into shape and I was in peak shape right on test day, totally in the mode with everything clicking full speed.

I am really curious how you can extrapolate when big gains "usually" happen or "typically don't" happen. Where's your information on this past your own experience?

Jeffort wrote:People that haven't been doing a ton of timed practice for weeks before that are still getting into the groove of mastering doing everything better under timed conditions and are still seeing upward improvement frequently outperform their PT range or at least hit the top of their range.

It is not unusual for people that are still improving from the process of identifying and weeding out performance flaws that are costing points by doing thorough review of timed practice tests and making strategy/technique adjustments all the way up to test day to lock down more points. People that have been PTing for a while to really get used to it, are settled into a routine and also plateaued more than a week or two before typically don't exceed range or hit highest score since they are past their period of most significant improvement potential from improving with the fundamentals.

In other words, the unexpected test day gains are usually from people that hadn't been prepping as long and/or as hard as others and enough to have gotten fully into their timed test range a decent amount of time before test day, such as people that don't even start doing timed tests until two weeks before test day, which is actually most people.

If you haven't already gotten really comfortable with timing/pacing a while before test day, still have room for improvement and gains that could be made from knocking out careless errors, and haven't been stuck in the same place for many weeks, test day increase is not improbable.

I jumped up nine points on test day. PT average the last two weeks was ~168 with a PT high of 171 that was due to luck of blind guessing on the last game I ran out of time on. Got 177 on test day.

I only did timed practice tests over the last two weeks, so I was really just getting my timed conditions legs into good working shape the last week and trying to improve my stride. I just couldn't finish the LG sections in time and had to guess on some questions of the last game every time. Test day is when my LG timing came together and I finished it with more than 5 minutes to spare. That was due to finally being in full timed conditions shape that day from the previous two weeks of training for getting into shape and I was in peak shape right on test day, totally in the mode with everything clicking full speed.

TITCR

I don't know if you play sports, but I would generally play better during an actual game than during practice because I was giving 100%. It was the same for me during the LSAT I think (plus some good luck).

IAFG wrote:

Jeffort wrote:People that haven't been doing a ton of timed practice for weeks before that are still getting into the groove of mastering doing everything better under timed conditions and are still seeing upward improvement frequently outperform their PT range or at least hit the top of their range.

It is not unusual for people that are still improving from the process of identifying and weeding out performance flaws that are costing points by doing thorough review of timed practice tests and making strategy/technique adjustments all the way up to test day to lock down more points. People that have been PTing for a while to really get used to it, are settled into a routine and also plateaued more than a week or two before typically don't exceed range or hit highest score since they are past their period of most significant improvement potential from improving with the fundamentals.

In other words, the unexpected test day gains are usually from people that hadn't been prepping as long and/or as hard as others and enough to have gotten fully into their timed test range a decent amount of time before test day, such as people that don't even start doing timed tests until two weeks before test day, which is actually most people.

If you haven't already gotten really comfortable with timing/pacing a while before test day, still have room for improvement and gains that could be made from knocking out careless errors, and haven't been stuck in the same place for many weeks, test day increase is not improbable.

I jumped up nine points on test day. PT average the last two weeks was ~168 with a PT high of 171 that was due to luck of blind guessing on the last game I ran out of time on. Got 177 on test day.

I only did timed practice tests over the last two weeks, so I was really just getting my timed conditions legs into good working shape the last week and trying to improve my stride. I just couldn't finish the LG sections in time and had to guess on some questions of the last game every time. Test day is when my LG timing came together and I finished it with more than 5 minutes to spare. That was due to finally being in full timed conditions shape that day from the previous two weeks of training for getting into shape and I was in peak shape right on test day, totally in the mode with everything clicking full speed.

I am really curious how you can extrapolate when big gains "usually" happen or "typically don't" happen.

Where's your information on this past your own experience?

It's from from my many years experience being an LSAT teacher and tutor. It's not a perfect sample of course, but I've worked with and am aware of the performance outcomes of thousands of students over more than 10 years.