Breaking into the 170s

lukaofficialahlukaofficialah Core Member
in General 6 karma

I'm taking the August LSAT. I am consistently PTing in the high 160s. I have made substantial improvements over my journey even though I have only been studying for around four months. This whole law school thing has been a new goal for me, I didn't consider it until last winter and I'm graduating in May. However, I want to succeed - like really succeed. I want to get into a law school, I want to prove that I can do well on this test, I want to prove to myself that I'm capable of putting my mind to something, but I can't seem to get higher than a 169. I know I'm not totally prepared for this test. I know not all the concepts are totally solid for me. But I've been successfully intuiting a lot of the harder questions. I feel like I'm fast enough at the other questions that I can give myself enough time to really handle the others. I'm a good test taker. Still, I feel like all this effort is pointless. I'm disappointed. I worry that if I retake the test later on, I'll be even less focused on studying because of college and that'll hurt my score even more. Most of the mistakes I'm making are on a select few hard questions, but it's still so demoralizing not being perfect. I don't know at this point. Any advice?

Comments

  • finnlyn26finnlyn26 Core Member
    32 karma

    I totally get feeling frustrated. For about two months I was stuck in the 164-166 range and now I have consistently scored in the mid 170s. It is rare for someone to get their goal score on actual test day when they have not gotten it in practice. So, my advice would be to push back your test date. This might help with you feeling discouraged if you give yourself some more time. Also if you feel like you are giving up I would give yourself a break. Even if it is only a weekend off that can be a good refresh for your brain and you might look at the test more positively after that.

    For me, what helped me get into the 170s was focusing on RC. That was where my main problems were as I had always scored better on LR. A few tips for RC that helped me was slowing down on the passage, and before I went into any questions was saying out loud my low res summary and the authors attitude towards the main concepts or any other views presented in the passage.

    For the actual RC questions I noticed I was always down between two, usually the right one and then a trick AC and I kept falling for the trick AC. To help me in this area I would out loud say to myself did the passage say this, and if it did where is it in the passage, can I point to a sentence and say this is the support? Again this is time consuming but you get faster and faster at this over time.

  • lukaofficialahlukaofficialah Core Member
    6 karma

    @finnlyn26

    I just worry that if I push my test date to October I'll be so busy with school I won't have time to study and my score won't improve or will get worse. I think more often that not I know an AC I select is in some way incorrect but it's close enough to what I think it should be or want it to be that I don't consider all the options. I'm still scoring like 168-169 with regular frequency it just feels bad not to break into the 170s even though I feel like I could.

  • finnlyn26finnlyn26 Core Member
    32 karma

    Studying with school on top of it is really hard. But truly if you make it a priority you can do it. You can improve your score as long as you consistently study for about two hours a day. I studied during this past school year and I would always study for the LSAT before I started my schoolwork. I found that this helped because although being tired and doing homework is never fun it is a lot better than being tired and working on the LSAT.

    Also the high 160s is in itself a good score so if you are comfortable with that then maybe just take this August test and start to focus on your applications instead.

  • rnpierce1rnpierce1 Core Member
    9 karma

    Everything that finnlyn said is true, but also, the high 160s are really really great. Sometimes LSAT culture online can make you feel like any score less than a 170 means you're stupider than everyone else, but that's not true. After four months of studying you've already hit what a lot of people work for in a year and can't get to. Breaking into the 170s is hard because it's a one or two question difference, and often it comes down to the luck of the draw. Just remember that you've already worked so so so hard and there's no reason to beat yourself up over a score that is super impressive. You have so much to be proud of!

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