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So I've trawled the forums and gone through the Reddit and seem to be in somewhat of an unusual situation.

First diagnostic was a 163. I know how the test was laid out and had seen a handful of questions and not much else. Planning to sit the test in March, I put it away for a month and then started on a 6 mo practice schedule, beginning with another pre-study PT, since I did the first at work while trying to multitask a million things.

177.

Ego inflated to bursting, I immediately signed up for the January date instead, and started in on my Bibles. Next PT: 164. Then 163 again. Ego popped. In the two weeks since I started prep, I've studied 30+ hrs/wk and seen my last scores at 169, 167, and then 171. Making progress, feeling better.

So my two questions are as follows:

1.) What's with the 177? It feels like I'm trying to bottle lightning, chasing that score now. Any thoughts about what that means for me as I identify my strengths and weaknesses? I'm guessing it means I have good instincts, because when I do miss points it's always stupid shit - overthinking, misreading words, etc. That said, questions missed for "stupid" reasons or not all count for the same number of points, so maybe my time is best spent minimizing this type of error?

2.) At this rate, with ~4 pts increase/wk, I'll likely hit my 175-180 goal well before the exam. How can I best stay fresh without completely burning myself out (acknowledging that late-stage studying is subject to diminishing returns)? What habits and strategies can I employ now that will stick with me longer?

Thank you TLS!

1. You seemed to identify why you make stupid errors, so stop doing that. Slow down when you read. Don’t keep agonizing over answers once you think you found an answer. Get in the habit of good habits whe you practice so you do it during the test.

2. I kind of let myself autoregulate burnout. If I felt burnt out, or if I noticed that questions seemed harder than normal or I was having trouble focusing, then I’d take a day or two.

FWIW, I went from a 160 diagnostic to a 176 in about 7 weeks. I took a full practice test or two a week and drilled sections almost every day, unless I was burnt out.

Thank you, that's helpful! It's frustrating because I tend to read extremely quickly in any setting, but something about the LSAT causes me to read words as their opposites pretty frequently; I was just doing the "lighting control panel" game from PT 47 and got 0/6, after acing all the other games in the section. The reason? I misread the last rule to say "off" instead of "on" and then answered the opposite of the right answer for every question.

*facepalm*

Maybe it's time for an off day, I feel like I'm making mistakes like this more frequently as I go.

An underrated aspect of LSAT prep is reviewing what you get correct. When I review practice tests with students, I often feel like such an a*****hole, because 90% of that class reviews of talking about what someone got incorrectly, why they got it incorrectly and what they should change going forward.

Once you're hitting your target score, it's less about reviewing the 3-5 questions you could have gotten correct, and reviewing those 10 questions that could have went the other way. On future practice tests, when you're working on a question you don't fully connect with or that you have down to 2 choices, circle it before moving on. When you review your practice test (the most crucial part of LSAT prep), don't only review the questions you get wrong. You should also review those circled questions you get right, and pay attention to what you did and seek to replicate your thought process on questions of that type in the future.

For high scorers, the final test is more about repeating what you do right than about fixing what you do wrong. The reason for this is that it's rare people get their best score on the official LSAT, and your life won't be much different with a 175 vs. a 180 or even a 172 vs. a 180 but will be very different with a 172 vs. a 167. You want to have a solid enough grasp of the approaches you've been using that you will continue using them when the pressure is on, and the way to do that is to know how they worked for you at a macro level, which you'll do by reviewing your tests.

Source: 5-star yelp reviewed LSAT tutor with ~ decade of experience teaching the LSAT, and consistent track record of students with >170 LSAT's. As a tutor, I'd say tutoring is also fruitless once you have that score.