Top Law Schools

I've taken around 12 PT's and gone up from diagnostic at 148 to around low 160s average. I'm hoping to reach high 160s by march 30th test date, but the last three days I seem to be moving backwards. I was drilling games on Saturday and completing games to find I had made some sort of error that would have cost me nearly the whole game. Reading a rule wrong, simply diagramming the reverse of the rule, failing to eliminate an answer choice based off a rule elimination. I also noticed my confidence for LR seemed to go down. I was spending way more time than I normally would on first 15 questions.Then on Sunday I took a PT and scored 156. I'm reviewing my RC section right now and missed a number of easy questions simply because I read the passage and missed an answer choice because the point it was referring to I had completely overlooked or forgot I had seen. I may be overthinking things, but I feel as if my confidence is shaking for some reason. I'm still motivated to do my work though which is the odd thing. Is this burn out? would taking a day or two off benefit me? I can't help but worry that taking time off would not be good as I am scheduling one PT a week until my test day which only gives me 7 more tests. I still review and drill during the week, but what would you guys recommend I do from here?

If you need specifics I can provide, I don't have all my materials with me at the moment.

Side note, I also don't feel like I am overworking enough to feel burn out. When I read about it people are typically going crazy taking 2 to 3 pts a week. I know everyone is different, but is my endurance that low?

In my experience there are different types of burnout. When you are very motivated and very stressed you can keep doing something, and it even seems like it is going okay, but you can be losing focus and attention.

It sounds like you are already doing a thoughtful analysis of how each section went. If the answer to "what were the problems?" keeps being "I missed simple things" then maybe that break might not be such a bad idea.

Alternatively, there are a few things you can try in order to switch up how you are studying and try to get more out of it.

Try to remember that you are taking practice tests with the goal of improving your performance, not tracking your progress. It is okay to experiment.

Given your post, the biggest thing I would suggest is switching to individual sections rather than full practice exams for some of your studying.The LSAT is a long test and you have proven you have the endurance to take it in the past, you don't have to kill yourself by taking a million full exams. The best way to train for a marathon isn't running full marathons. You will probably get more out of the individual sections as well, because things will be fresher in your mind when you review them and you can do a few of them in a row rather than switching around. Getting an instinctive feel for the timing of each section and how to execute your strategy is easier if you are focused on one type of section.

Also, you can play around with where you spend your time and how much attention you spend on what aspects of the section and see how it affects your score. It is much easier to experiment if you don't have to take a complete test every time. You can pick up points by changing one thing about your approach to a section, seeing how it works a few times and deciding what to do from there.

You can/should still take full exams every so often just to put it all together and stay in practice, but I think you will find it less stressful and more productive to break the rest of them up.

Andrew McDonald, Blueprint LSAT Instructor.