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My goal for the January LSAT is a 177 (if you care why, reasons are at the end of this post) and my current score from October is a 173. My last 8 PTs before the 173 were 175, 175, 180, 173, 173, 179, 177, 167 (occasionally, I take way too long on 1 RC passage and bomb the section as a consequence).

As it stands, a typical LSAT goes like this:

-0 LG (except on the October LSAT, where I'm almost positive I missed 2... tragic).

-0 to -2 LR (-0 or -1 are much more common than -2).

-0 to -4 RC (-2 and -3 are more common than -1 and -0, respectively).

Essentially, my problem is that every LR and RC section (except for the rare ones with a passage that takes me forever) feels the same.

Every LR has 20-24 very easy questions, a few that are tricky, and occasionally 1 that is a coin flip. Every RC has 18-23 very easy questions, several tricky ones, and 1 or 2 that feel like a toss up.

That is, whether I scored 175 or 180, I feel no different at the end of an LSAT. My assumption is that, in order to get better, I need to either 1) break through my current level of understanding and be better able to decipher, in real time, which questions are giving me serious problems and which ones merely feel harder than the rest, and/or 2) improve at RC, for which studying feels arbitrary and practically fruitless.

Does anyone have tips for how to do either, or have any other insight about how to move from my current range (173-180) to a narrower one (176-180)?

As it stands, I feel like I'm rolling dice every time I test.

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My target for January is a 177 because my goal is to get a 6-figure scholarship from a T13 and my GPA is only 3.64. I probably only need a 175/176 to achieve that, but a few confounding factors make me think I'm only safe with a 177, namely that I've submitted applications with my 173 and won't get the new score until February 1, at which point a sizeable amount of money will have already been given out.

I know that I could just wait another cycle but I'm 27, I'm not sure how much longer my management consulting job will be in demand in this economy, and I have a good fallback (full ride, or near full ride, from CU Boulder or Denver Law, which are great options because I want to practice in Denver).

Just keep taking practice tests and spend significant time trying to understand what happened on the few questions you got wrong.

Trying to improve from 173 to 177 is not really something that you can strategize toward. At that point in the curve, you have already mastered the test. The few test takers who manage perfect or near perfect scores have some bizarre, pre-ordained quasi-genetic ability to logically and analytically reason at an extremely sophisticated level that eludes 99.95% of humans regardless of how much time they spend on test prep. Every iteration of the LSAT has a handful of strange, unprecedented questions that assess skills from an unpredictable angle. These questions separate the 173s from the 177s. Trying to anticipate and prepare for those questions is not really a productive use of your time, in my opinion.

so you're trying to answer one more question correctly so you can get a perfect score and you'd like us to weigh in?

talons2250 wrote: ↑

Sat Nov 05, 2022 2:58 pm

Trying to improve from 173 to 177 is not really something that you can strategize toward. At that point in the curve, you have already mastered the test. The few test takers who manage perfect or near perfect scores have some bizarre, pre-ordained quasi-genetic ability to logically and analytically reason at an extremely sophisticated level that eludes 99.95% of humans regardless of how much time they spend on test prep.

some of it is also just..randomness

Have you read the official lsat super prep RC section? After reading that, and the reading the answer explanations thoroughly, RC no longer felt arbitrary to me. There's a lot of concepts and little nuggets in that book that aren't covered by the test prep companies. You have to read every explanation for every answer choice for every question to get max value.

frank343 wrote: ↑

Fri Dec 02, 2022 12:04 pm

Have you read the official lsat super prep RC section? After reading that, and the reading the answer explanations thoroughly, RC no longer felt arbitrary to me. There's a lot of concepts and little nuggets in that book that aren't covered by the test prep companies. You have to read every explanation for every answer choice for every question to get max value.

Are you referring to the power score forum?

No, the reference is to LSAC’s official test prep publication.