High Plateau -- what do I do now? Forum

[sndeloss]

Does anyone have any plateau-busting tips? Especially tips for busting a "higher" plateau?

I'm planning on taking the October LSAT and I've been taking a timed, full, no-breaks PT nearly every day for a while now. I'm still in the "earlier" PTs (starting at the oldest and working my way up to the more modern PTs) but I seem to have hit a frustrating plateau. For a while I was stuck at 171 - 174. I did some analysis, changed my techniques, and now I'm stuck in the 177-179 range.

I don't know how to improve from here besides just taking PT after PT, and I don't want to just be taking PTs without any refinement or "real" studying... The typical advice is "examine all the questions you got wrong, find out why, write it down, look it up in the LGB/LRB, shame yourself into doing better". But I'm at a point where the most I get wrong in a section is 2 (usually offset by -0 in a different section), and there's no pattern to the types of questions I get wrong. It's all just "well, you read too fast and skipped a key word/forgot to doublecheck/etc". How can I "study" my way out of those errors? I guess I could practice at a slower, more careful pace but after spending so long working on speeding up slowing down is counterintuitive. Are there any slowing-down techniques?

Any help much appreciated, and best wishes to everyone else in this last month!

[stig2014]

First off, congrats on your progress thus far. One thing that has helped me in becoming more consistent is to actively work on eliminating 4 wrong answers, rather than searching for the one "right answer". This is what is advised in the LSAT Trainer and there's a great thread in this forum by Mike Kim that goes more in depth on this strategy.

In my experience this technique forces you to stay focused on each answer choice and can help to eliminate the selection of wrong answers through a misread and the other anomalies that high scorers like your self face. Best of luck and congrats.

[MrBalloons]

What does a "177-179 plateau" even mean? That you're consistently scoring in that range? If so, forget about it. That's gonna be functionally identical to a 180. Enjoy your score.

Or does it mean "I'm scoring 170, 174, 177, and 179, but I just can't get 180?" That's still mostly a non-problem, I think, but something worth addressing anyway.

[PoopNpants]

Is this thread a joke?

[sndeloss]

Thanks so much stig2014 for the "eliminate four" idea! I took another look and you're right, when I get questions wrong it's always because I see an answer I like and fail to consider why it could be incorrect. Definitely finding that thread.

"177-179 plateau" for me means that the same way all my scores used to be clustered at 171-174, now they're all clustered in that range. If I dropped back down to getting low-170s I would be so demoralized... hence the obsessive hunt for consistent 179-180s.

Finally, no, not a joke. I'm terrified of the legendary test-day drop.

[PoopNpants]

Thanks so much stig2014 for the "eliminate four" idea! I took another look and you're right, when I get questions wrong it's always because I see an answer I like and fail to consider why it could be incorrect. Definitely finding that thread.

"177-179 plateau" for me means that the same way all my scores used to be clustered at 171-174, now they're all clustered in that range. If I dropped back down to getting low-170s I would be so demoralized... hence the obsessive hunt for consistent 179-180s.

Finally, no, not a joke. I'm terrified of the legendary test-day drop.

The test-day drop is REAL, i was skeptical before but on testday for me last feb I underperformed from my Pts a solid 4 points, from around 171-2 to 167. I was saying "is this a joke" because the difference between a 177/9 and a 180 is like 4 questions. Have you sat for the real thing yet? If your consistently PTing at 177-9 (significantly higher than me) and doing so in real situations no breaks or anything then you shouldn't have much concerns. Test-day nerves are real too

[rnoodles]

Is this thread a joke?

[seashell.economy]

Is this thread a joke?

+2

[Mack.Hambleton]

I'm stuck in the 177-179 range.

[sndeloss]

I'm terrified of the legendary test-day drop.

The test-day drop is REAL, i was skeptical before but on testday for me last feb I underperformed from my Pts a solid 4 points, from around 171-2 to 167. I was saying "is this a joke" because the difference between a 177/9 and a 180 is like 4 questions. Have you sat for the real thing yet? If your consistently PTing at 177-9 (significantly higher than me) and doing so in real situations no breaks or anything then you shouldn't have much concerns. Test-day nerves are real too

That's what I'm scared of... I experienced a significant (60pts) test day drop when I took the SAT so I know it's definitely a thing. I haven't sat for the real thing before but I'm keeping my PTs stringent, either four or five sections in a row with no breaks, analog watch + out-of-sight digital timer, bubble sheet, etc. I know it's pretty much a four question range but let's say I drop 4 from 177 vs from 180, that would be 173 vs 176 which is straddling that mythical 175 line... Thanks for the input and best of luck on your retake!

[RZ5646]

Obvious troll is obvious. Ya'll should be ashamed for taking the bait.

[ChinaCat]

One thing I did that seemed to help was to write down a list of tips to myself and read it before every test. For example, I noticed that in the RC section I would sometimes struggle hard on a question and eventually mark a wrong answer. It turned out I was occasionally misreading part of the question (ex: "what would the author say about x" vs. "what would critic y say about x"). I wrote a note to myself to carefully reread RC questions when none of the answers made sense, and pretty soon I stopped having this problem. My list eventually included maybe 200 tips that I read before every test, including the real thing. I think it helped a lot.

[bnssweeney]

Is this thread a joke?

[sndeloss]

One thing I did that seemed to help was to write down a list of tips to myself and read it before every test.

Great idea -- I'm not happy with the score I got during today's PT, and the one thing that changed was me not reading my lists of notes beforehand. I like your idea of keeping them all in one list instead of having to read through the notes for each PT I take. Thanks for the tip!