Going along with the plethora of June related posts, just looking for a place to vent.
Last September I took it before I was ready and got a 161. To be fair, I knew I wasn’t ready and shouldn’t have taken it, but I still was beneath what I had been averaging (~165ish). I took the semester off from studying and picked it back up again in January. I had a pretty steady incline in performance, to the point where my last 6 PTs were something like 169-170-173-174-170-168
Come test day? 166. Devastated. Had my absolute worst single section LR performance pretty much ever (-8), with a bad curve to boot. I would’ve been fine with a 168-169ish. With my GPA (3.75), I still would’ve retaken for 170+ but the pressure would’ve been off because I could’ve gone places that I wanted (MVPD range). Now I feel like I’m in do-or-die mode. Who knows, maybe I get unlucky again on test day?
I was gunna submit my apps on day 1 and then just sit around and wait. I thought the hard part was over, now I feel like it’s just beginning. I’m going to have to put my life on hold for the next few months. Not that that’s the worst thing in the world, it’s just not what I was planning for. This sucks.
I’m 100% in the same boat as you, dude. I ended up with a 163 and thought it was a joke. It’s only 1 point higher than my diagnostic and 4 points lower than the lowest of my last 5+ PTs. I’m currently in the licking my wounds/regrouping phase but will be studying in earnest again soon (once I narrow in on a strategy) and would love to collaborate on a retake study plan.
I feel your pain. On test day I was well-rested, in a comfortable room, no distractions, confident, and I felt good walking out of there honestly thinking I hit 174. Seeing 168 on the email yesterday was a punch to the gut. I made 3 super dumb mistakes with an unforgiving curve. It’s a big if, but if i got those 3 back and we had a -11, I’d be at a 173 and totally satisfied. I have a terrible gpa so i really need to score at the top of my range, and scoring at the very bottom of it makes me feel even worse for being a piece of garbage in UG. Pressure is on for September now.
Just dropping in to say don’t give up! The LSAT is rough, and it’s annoying, and it’s hard, but we all have a love/hate relationship with it.
Take a couple of days off, and then figure out what went wrong. Fix that and crush the next take. We’ve all been there, it just is a bummer to have a hiccup happen on the real test, so you have my condolences.
For me it was one stretch of 5 questions in a row that I got wrong. Without that I’d have a -10 which would be a 170/171 on most tests. Feel you there.
My issue is that I legitimately do not find the LSAT hard. I never get a question wrong that I don’t understand why it’s wrong. I just can’t stop making stupid mistakes, which is why I think if I put 100% of myself into it for a month or two I can get my consistency up and get like a 175 or something.
Wanted to chime in that I am in the exact same place you are. It’s a little bit comforting knowing there are a number of us out there who this happened to. I’d love to put together some kind of study group for us June retakers, we should be able to put our heads together and come up with a good 8-week study plan.
Wanted to stop by as well. I also scored way below my average and would love to work with you guys to come up with an effective strategy for the next two months! I know we can do this
My rough plan as I’ve imagined it in my head is 2 PTs a week, heavy review, and going over material I haven’t used (Trainer for me). I said before the June test that I would’ve like an extra month of prep time, and now I get two, so I think it’ll work out.
Thoughts on Manhattan vs Trainer vs 7Sage for LR? I haven’t used any before and I’m wondering which is better for nailing down those curve breaker questions.
Worked all the way through the Trainer, focusing less on the specifics of how to tackle each question type, and more on what is the question asking. Seems like a subtle difference, but made a huge impact for me. I went from stimulus first to stem first (that was huge) and that change singlehandedly saved me multiple seconds on every single question. I used to read the stim, then read stem, then have to go back and figure out what part of the stim mattered. With stem first, I drilled a TON and got to where I had a bit of LSAT-intuition and ‘feel’ for what mattered.
On review I often knew which ones I had missed (and even knew I had missed them during the test), but during the test I originally couldn’t parse out why I was missing them. After reviewing, I found that my biggest problems came from mis-reading, or just mentally skipping over words. For example, I’d read ‘many’ as ‘most’ or miss ‘not’ in a stim.
Once I figured out that was causing me misses on ‘tough’ questions, I used that knowledge on questions where I knew I had the wrong answer, but couldn’t figure out what was wrong and most of the time a careful re-read revealed I had missed a word that made the correct AC super obvious.
Finally, all of my studying/PTs (except for like 1 or 2) were taken after mentally taxing full work days, and were taken in a crowded/noisy coffee shop environment. The super distraction-rich environment and mental fatigue forced me to focus extra hard on the questions, or I wouldn’t even finish the sections. Knowing that I had to be laser-precise in my focus in that environment really helped my speed.
I also got into a routine with food/drink (aka no caffeine before the test and usually a little pseudophedrine). I believe both of those things helped my mental clarity and allowed for faster processing.
EDIT: OH EM GEEEE I also forgot - Get a 180 watch or a Mastermind (that’s what I used). Seriously, not having to fuss with timing eliminated another possible distraction and made it so my brain had one less thing to be worrying about. It was also super helpful for pacing. I got to where I was hitting the first five questions in 2:30, question 10 done by minute 8, question 20 done by minute 20 and then 7 minutes for the last 5. This allowed plenty of time for review. I also found that using this pacing, I didn’t waste time - if a question was taking 1 minute or more, I was probably missing something, and had better chances of getting it right coming back at the end for a fresh read.
In the same boat as many of you.
My biggest problem was being slow on rc, I had to bullshit thr last passage in 5 min and ended up with -6 on the section and a 168
This was huge for me as well. (I went -1/-1 LR on June’s test, which was in line with my PT average.) Once I was regularly -4 or better on each section, I put all my PTs into the 7sage analytics tracker, but there was no clear pattern to which questions I was missing beyond that they were among the hardest in each section, so drilling particular question types wasn’t going to be particularly helpful. Instead, I forced myself to be brutally honest in reviewing the 3-5 toughest questions in each section, going over the Powerscore/Manhattan explanations for as long as necessary to internalize the logic behind the correct answer (and understand the mistakes behind the tempting wrong ones). If I still had an argument to make for why a different answer was correct, I would start to type out a forum post with my reasoning; usually, in the process of doing so I’d figure out why my answer was wrong.
RC was the one area I didn’t mess up (-1). For me, it was all about doing enough prep to find the system that worked for me. I make no notations on the passage but do spend a good bit of time with it up front, really reading for structure and tone. That time invested allows me to breeze through the questions because I understand the passage and know exactly where to look for references. I would take a few RC sections and try a mix of strategies, seeing what allows you to get the best time and accuracy. I think RC is heavily dependent on personal strategy so you just need to develop a solid one and do enough practice sections that you get a sense for what works.
Yeah bro, you got this. Most high scorers take multiple times (took me three to break 170). You were crushing PTs, so it’s not a knowledge/preparedness issue. shit happens
