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I’ve been studying the LSAT for over 8 months now and am taking an all or nothing approach to September. I had high hopes of getting a low 170 score so I could get into top law schools, but this score is looking more and more like a dream rather than a possibility. The highest score I’ve gotten is a 168, and I’m generally in the 165-167 range, sometimes a point or two lower. Here is my issue: I’ve drilled all the types of questions from 1-38 (LR, RC, LG), and have taken a majority of the prep tests. I have about 15 clean tests left leading up until test day. On the tests, I am almost always getting the same distribution of wrong answers. I review all my tests thoroughly through 7sage, Manhattan forums, and other ways, but I don’t know how the heck I’m supposed to improve here. My distribution is, generally, LR: 5-8 (total), LG (1-3), RC (4-6). For LR, there doesn’t seem to be any obvious disconnect; I’m not getting the same types consistently wrong. It always just seems like I miss a couple of the 5 star difficulty questions each round. There’s no doubt I’m learning some of the intricacies of wrong answers and some of the trap choices, and some of the trends with question types, but I always, when taking the test, get dumbfounded by a couple of questions. I have no idea what to do because it happens every time. LG, I have a good grasp, but for some reason I just screw a question or two up anyway. RC, I don’t even know, there’s just always a couple of questions that throw me off. I’ve tried like every method of RC, but some of those killer questions just throw me for a loop each time, or I’ll run out of time at the end and screw up. Anyone have advice moving forward? At this point with a 3.9+ gpa, I would probably be satisfied with a upper 160 score, but I’m a little nervous of even that so I have to do something here.

What's helped me a lot with LR is to write explanations out for all of the questions I get wrong. There's something different about writing an explanation and reading an explanation that I think helped me stop being tricked by harder questions. I am now averaging below -1 per section over my last five PTs in LR, and I think this is a primary reason.

Additionally, focusing on process has really helped me, and I have to give credit to the LSAT Trainer for that. If you haven't read the first few chapters that Mike has on his website, I'd highly recommend it at this point in your studies. Buying the book and working through it might be too much at this point. But basically, if you do not habitually figure out your task, figure out the argument, find the gap (for the majority of questions) prephrase an answer, eliminate the obviously wrong answers first, and confirm the correct answer by checking it against the stimulus, then you are gonna miss questions.

Think about the questions you get wrong in terms of whether you misread/didn't notice something (a reading error), if you didn't get the reasoning (an understanding or logic error), or if you just didn't even read the correct answer choice, mis-bubbled, eliminated the correct answer before really trying to comprehend it, etc (all of which I think of as execution or errors that happen as a result of not sticking to the correct process).