Overestimating My Own Performance

[averifoster1@gmail.com]

As I'm taking PTs, I find myself consistently overestimating how well I'm doing and find myself shocked at the score. I feel sure about almost every answer while testing and finish within the time constraints. However, when I view the results, I typically get around 5-7 wrong on each section (RC typically the worst). This overconfidence is making me question my own judgement, and I feel like I am at a plateau in my progress. How can I get a better gage of how I am actually doing while testing? Thanks!

[Luke Haqq]

Hi averifoster1!

I think the overestimating that you describe is something that a lot of people taking the LSAT, perhaps most of them, do. It's not clearly a problem, and to the contrary, it's important to tackle the sections with a confident attitude. So the main issue seems to be that you're missing 5-7 questions per section. You additionally mention potentially reaching a plateau and also want a better gauge of how you're doing.

For all of those issues, an overall recommendation I'd suggest is taking as many full, timed LSATs as possible, with each one followed by a review of the test to understand why you selected the wrong answers and why the correct answers are correct. On its own, taking several practice tests a week followed by reviewing each one would hopefully improve your score. Having those numerous tests would also give you the best measurement of how you're doing and how you're most likely to do on test day.

So taking as many practice tests as you can seems like it might be the most helpful. In addition, as you take practice tests and see which questions you're getting wrong, this will let you see if there are specific problem areas or question types that are especially difficult for you, in which case PowerScore's materials can be very helpful. They can be useful not just for reviewing concepts, strategies, and techniques (assuming that you have already read through one or more of PowerScore's books, or taken a course), but also because they have drills that let you do multiple questions of a particular type.

If you take as many full tests as you can, review them to really understand why the correct answers are right and why you selected incorrect choices, and then drill yourself on problem areas, you're very likely to see that you will miss fewer questions per section.

[averifoster1@gmail.com]

Thank you, Luke, that was very helpful!