Please HELP! 150s to 160 Forum

[Contrhoversial]

Hello everyone!
So, I have been doing about 14 hours of prep and have done around 20 practice tests since October and my scores fluctuate between 151 and 153 regularly with one jump to 156 and one fall to 149. When I improve a RC, AR scores fall and vice versa. I’m extremely frustrated about struggling with RC; AR is a bit more understandable. I have managed to maintain between 17 and 19 correct on LR sections pretty consistently. I am stuck in this score range and don’t know what else to do. I did private tutoring and paid thousands of dollars with no improvement. I use Khan Academy, have flash cards and have been taking a combination of Khan tests, Kaplan practice tests, and Official LSAT Superprep Tests and review the wrong answers thereafter. I also bought the “Pass Key” book by Baron’s. I just don’t know what to do. Can anyone make any suggestions? My test is in one week so I know I’m going to have to retake it but how can I, in the next two months, increase my score to a 160 or better? Or is this just my best?

Thank you all in advance for your advice!

[Blueprint LSAT]

It would be hard to say without having a longer conversation. If you have spent time with a private tutor presumably you have already had that sort of conversation with someone, but that doesn't mean it is hopeless. Sometimes it just takes the right explanation or tweak to how you are doing things. I would slow back down a bit and see if there are some basic fundamentals that you are missing. Look at a bunch of different explanations. They will all be similar but hopefully one will "click" for you. Also, start trying to explain the questions to others.

Try spending more time with each practice question you do for a while. You are trying to make a breakthrough so don't worry about timing for now. Once you have that "ah ha" moment you can go back to drilling for speed. Think of it like a martial art, you need to learn the form properly, then do that so much it becomes muscle memory. If you don't have the form right you aren't going to improve with repetition.

With LR and RC, focus heavily on argument structure. The most important thing is always spotting the conclusion and the evidence being offered in support of that conclusion then analyzing how they interact.

Beyond that I can't really offer much without sitting down with you, but I hope it helps.

[firstmatepokey]

I'm going to bombard you with questions ok, so im giving you a warning now and i hope that we all get a reply with your update. so here we go

When you say 14 hours of prep does that mean 14 hours a day every day? If so then my first response is that is WAY too much. not only do you hit a point of diminishing returns but at a point its going to be detrimental. Quality over quantity should always be the goal in my opinion, grinding through material has its place and is a great skill to have but not great for learning an absorbing information.

What do you do with the rest of your time in the day? I am of the opinion that effective recovery is just as important as the work (same principle as with physical exercise)

What was your first Practice test score for determining your baseline and how much have you already progressed?

Have you noticed a specific type of question in LR that gives you the most trouble? With trying to bring up a score in a short amount of time you want to pick the low hanging fruit, and improve the weakest links. For me Method of reasoning questions are/were my worst and am currently bringing them up. I keep an excel spreadsheet of incorrect question types and things like that so that i can find patterns, it might be a little too intensive for some but the idea i believe is good and others on this forum have used similar techniques.

Is there a specific reason that you only have Two months to get this score bump? If it is important enough for you to spend that much money on tutors and books then it should be important enough for you to delay the test enough for you to see the improvement you want. (im also expecting most people on this forum would say take more time)

[LSATWiz.com]

1.) You should never be completely ignoring the question and section types you've made progress on. A good rule of thumb is to spend 50-60% of time on your weakest section and the rest of the time dispersed between the two other section types. If you're struggling with games, a good rule of thumb would be to spend that week 50% on games, and 25% on each of the other two section types.

2.) Within a section, it is best to drill it in a way that enables you to practice in a way that applies what you've learned drilling one question type to another. Let me explain. A necessary step on any assumption, strengthen, weaken or flaw question will be to recognize the conclusion. So if you're struggling there on these question types, I would actually advise first becoming really proficient and time efficient on conclusion and role of statement questions. In addition, while LSAC utilizes many different question types, most test the same skills so getting stronger at one question type will generally make you stronger at other question types even if you don't see the progress right away.

In addition, the step by step approach on assumption, strengthen/weaken and flaw questions will be very similar to each other with only slight changes to your thinking so even if you're disproportionately struggling with flaw questions, getting better at assumption questions will also make you better at flaw questions so there's no reason to only practice flaw questions. You can stagger your studying to say do 20 flaw questions and 10 necessary assumption questions, but there's no reason to ignore them entirely.