Withdraw, Take, or Cancel? Forum

[edith1921]

Hi all,

I told myself going into the LSAT that I would retake anything less than a 173. I've been studying since summer. It's less than a week until the December test, and I'm not where I want to be. Should I withdraw registration, take the test and cancel, or take the test outright?

My last five tests have been 171, 175, 170, 169, 169. The 175 was a freak accident in which I went -0 on LG. This never happens. That's my main problem: I'm consistently -2 on RC and -3 on LR combined, but I bomb the games. Can I make strides on this in a week of intense LG focus?

I'm not applying this cycle, but I want to have scores before I graduate so that I can put apps together while still in school. I do not want to take the undisclosed test in Feb, and I worry that another six months studying till June will burn me out. My parents are urging me to take the test Saturday anyway and cancel if I really think it's a disaster. Would that be a mistake?

[Nova]

IMO, If youre not consistently scoring above your target and youre not applying this cycle, you should withdraw. Then take June & maybe Oct if necessary.

It would be possible to master games in a week since its the easiest section to ace. You could def ace it by June tho.

[Clearly]

Call me crazy, but I really like Feb for your needs. Feb is shunned for being super late in the cycle, but its really the best option for the following cycle in my opinion, because it allows June as a backup, and you can still have your apps in day one if it comes to that. If you aren't where you need to be, that's just the way it goes. The problem with postponing till June is you with either study straight through and run out of material, or take a break and possibly get rusty/forget what you are already doing awesome at.

[Christine (MLSAT)]

There is some wisdom to the idea that nothing truly prepares you for the LSAT other than actually sitting for the LSAT. From that perspective, you may gain valuable insight about your own test-taking performance, anxiety, etc by taking the December.

However, it's extremely unlikely you'll score above a 173. So if you're going to take it, take it with that knowledge. You could treat is as a mere interesting experiment, or view it as nothing more than a particularly intense form of training.

As for attempting to get your LG on lock in a week - it's possible, but unlikely, and there's no way to guarantee that kind of performance shift. Initial improvements in games tend to come from epiphanies about how to think about games as a general matter, or how to think about specific types. That can lead to small score jumps that appear practically overnight. The final push on games though, which is probably where you are, comes from familiarity, an ease of pattern recognition, and a flawless automatic process. Those improvements tend not to be quite as sudden.

Can you normally tell when you've bombed or aced a LG section? Will you know on test day approximately how you've done?

Also, do you want to avoid the February just because of the timing factor, or is it the fact that it is undisclosed that bothers you?

Clearly has a point about putting it off til June increasing your risk of either burning out, blowing through all the material, or getting rusty by taking a long break. However, sometimes a month break can do wonders in terms of letting certain concepts gel. A longer break than that is inadvisable.

And if you work with an extremely high level of diligent review, the existing material should be more than enough to keep you moving. People are most likely to eat through every test when they are just PTing themselves to death without remotely adequate review. The pressure will be on you to create a rational and effective study plan though. If you put off til June, you should sit down *right now* and chart out the next 6 months and exactly how you will use them. And then stick to that plan religiously.

[edith1921]

Thank you everyone for your advice so far.

I can definitely tell when I've bombed an LG section, because when I lose points, it's almost always from (a) wasting time correcting a mistake from a rushed diagram and/or (b) guessing when I run out of time. The rare times I made 3 or fewer mistakes on LG, I knew immediately. What I realized yesterday was that my strategy for diagramming grouping games... is not a strategy, to say the least. This probably doesn't count as an epiphany, but I've realized that my grouping set-ups are barely diagrams, and I've identified the right kind of diagram to use. I'm going to practice that non-stop now.

The main reason I want to avoid February is because it's nondisclosed, and if I have to retake it, I want to know concretely what areas to focus on.