I seem to have plateaued and I’m scared :(

[karabear]

Hi guys,

I seem to have plateaued with my scores and I’ve only gotten a 155 once. Lately I’ve been scoring 154. I was hoping to get a 160 at the lowest, and I’m nervous that is now out of reach. I’m talking the LSAT Flex on May 18, and I don’t know how to miraculously gain 6 points in a week. I work a full-time job and I have other things I have to do each night, which leaves me starting my “training” around 7.

I struggle the most with LR, but have now shifted most of my focus to RC since the LR section won’t be double counted on the LSAT Flex and RC has the most questions. I’ve been drilling RC and LR but I still don’t seem to understand how to get some of the questions right.

Is there any hope I can get a 160 in the next week?

Any tips or advice to help me get there would be great!

Thanks so much!!

[Jeremy Press]

Hi Kara,

I totally understand the frustration and nerves that can come with a plateau, especially if it's in the week before your test day. There is hope, though! First, while I can't say it's something that always happens to all students, I (and other instructors of ours) have had students at various points in their prep process see a 6-point (sustained) increase in their score happen within a week's time. It's not impossible! Second, when that's been the case, it's tended to happen for a predictable reason: those students have reviewed prior work extensively, identified a few problematic issues in their approach (issues that impact more than just one question), and fixed those issues.

I hope you see the key there in that prior sentence: you have to review your recent work, with an eye toward spotting common problems (issues that are affecting multiple questions in multiple sections). A good way to do this is to take a few recent sections (two to three sections of LR and RC, in your case) and make a question log. For each question you miss (or were significantly uncertain about), write down what specifically caused you to miss the problem, and what you would've needed to change about your thought process to avoid the wrong answer and confidently select the right answer. After you make this log, you need to go back through it and find common mistakes you're making. Did you confuse a Justify question for an Assumption question? Did you forget to use the Assumption Negation Technique on an Assumption answer choice? Did you fall into the trap of picking an answer that was too exaggerated (stated in terms that were too strong or too certain) on a Must Be True question? Did you look at the wrong part of the passage to support your answer on an RC question?

If you can find a few common mistakes, you can remind yourself that you need to watch for those things before each new timed section you do. By doing that, you'll put yourself in the best position to fix problematic aspects of your thought process in advance. And if you've been making those mistakes regularly on prior sections, then you'll be ideally positioned to fix multiple questions and see a significant score increase. Remember that ultimately this process is what leads to sustained improvement over the long term. So if you don't see an impact by next week, be encouraged by knowing that if you keep doing this, you'll be able to see a significant score increase on a future test (even if that's not in your plans right now)!

A couple resources for you to help with seeing common mistakes and practicing for the Flex exam:

Log your section results (and get complete test analysis) here: https://studentcenter.powerscore.com/se ... ts-section.

Find extra Flex tests here: https://www.powerscore.com/lsat/publica ... -tests.cfm.

Please let us know if this raises further questions for you, and best of luck as you continue to prepare for next week! Keep up the hard work!

Jeremy