Hi ccampise,
Sorry your having such trouble with your test prep, but rest assured you are not alone: many students experience PT score fluctuations of 10 points or more, especially during the first half of their studies. There are several possible reasons for this:
- 1. Test endurance. Without taking a ton of practice tests, you cannot build the endurance and stamina necessary to complete a five-section test without getting mentally exhausted. This is probably evident from your performance on the last section of your practice tests, or on questions that are toward the end of each section. Lack of endurance also cause problems with RC - the most "taxing" of all sections on the LSAT, and requiring the most amount of concentration. Don't worry about it: by this time next month, hopefully you'll be able to take a practice test and not even break a sweat.
2. Section strategy. Your current pacing may be off. It's probably way off. You might be able to finish some of your sections in time, but you probably rush through half the questions. Rushing is no good. Inversely, you may not be able to finish any of your sections, forcing you to guess on a good number of questions. Blind guessing is no good either. The appropriate strategy would be to approach each and every question correctly, setting aside only those you can reasonably expect to take an inordinately long time to solve. The goal is to finish your section without having to guess blindly, and then return to any outstanding questions, if time allows. This strategy takes practice, and it gets better with time.
3. Question accuracy. At the early stages of your test prep, your accuracy is likely to be higher on the question types you've already studied than on those you haven't. As you advance in your studies, you will achieve a more consistent accuracy level across question types. Ultimately, your accuracy should correlate most closely with the difficulty of the questions, and less so with their particular type.
4. Recognition. When you took your first diagnostic test, you probably didn't know much about conditional reasoning, causality, or grouping games. You were trying to "wing it," so to speak, using common sense alone. Your accuracy may have been abysmal, but at least you covered more questions. Today, your recognition levels are higher: you know a conditional statement when you see one. That does not mean, however, that you can use that recognition to arrive at the correct answer choice quickly and efficiently. In other words, you haven't turned recognition into automation. As a result, you are probably running out of time sooner than expected, further lowering your score.
Regarding your struggles with RC, again - you're not alone
While this isn't meant to make you feel better, realize that RC takes the longest to improve on. Unfortunately, it is also the section whose difficulty has increased the most in recent years. Check out the following blog posts on the topic:
http://blog.powerscore.com/lsat/bid/308 ... -by-Design
http://blog.powerscore.com/lsat/bid/308 ... he-problem
http://blog.powerscore.com/lsat/bid/303 ... n-the-lsat
To recap, if your scores fluctuate - don't panic! Your most recent practice test score is an extremely poor predictor of what your scores will look like next week, or next month. While getting an awesome score on your practice test can give you an important confidence boost, it has little pedagogical value (a 180 is all about bragging rights: it teaches you nothing). By contrast, a 147 says little about your potential, but it can teach you
a lot. Every fluctuation is a chance to reassess what you have done right, and what you haven't. Don't blow it!
