Awful October Score after Course

[Parya]

Hi,

I've been preparing for the LSAT rigourously since June through a Powerscore course that ended the first week of September. I prepped myself from September to October and saw about a 22 point increase. My practice tests were consistent in score range (160-164) and I felt like I could tackle the concepts and questions.

My real score? 149. It was devastating and came as a shock. After I left the test room I didn't feel like I did well, but certainly not this poorly. How can I study for the December LSAT? It's concerning because I feel like I understand the concepts, and the Practice Tests definitely reflect that. I don't tend to have test anxiety so I'm not sure that much can be deferred to that.

One thing I will say is this. I felt like I rocked the expiremental RC and didn't do well on the real RC--and that definitely reflected in my score. But LR should not have been as low as it was--and generally the strategy that works on LG for me, failed me on the test--and I knew it right after the section.

At this point, I don't know how to move forward. I could be scoring in the 80th-90th percentile again up until test day, only to find a terrible score. Definitely stumped and shocked after diligent prep for so long. Any advice?

Thanks

[Dave Killoran]

Hi Parya,

I'm terribly sorry to hear about your score result It's distressing that that you were showing a 20+ point score increase and then suffered a reversal of fortune where you lost a lot of that increase. Let's talk about it for a bit here and see if we can figure out what happened, and then come up with a plan for you. I realize it is scant comfort for what happened, but I'll do my best to help you out with this.

Ok, let's start by talking about your practice test scores. The only question I have is, were they done under timed conditions? I'm assuming they were, but I just want to make sure. the reason I ask is that if you were scoring there under timed conditions, then it's a simple fact that you have that level of ability. Scores don't happen by accident, and if you can score a 164 on any LSAT, then you have what it takes to do it again. For the moment, I'm going to assume that it was timed, and move on.

Let's go over to the actual score result. There are some signs in what you said that there were some problems on test day, but of course that's you sitting here now and looking back, trying to figure out what occurred. It's almost like a perfect storm happened: regular RC wasn't great, your usual LG strategy had troubles, etc. That's actually somewhat heartening, because a second test isn't likely to suffer all the same issues. You may simply have had a really bad setup within this exam, and then it snowballed.

The alternate explanation is a test anxiety issues of some sort. Usually when I see significant score drops from practice tests, it's either that the test had some unique negative feature (like a really brutal LG section) or that anxiety played a role. I would have explored the anxiety angle, but I like your comment that you don't tend to have anxiety and don't feel like it's a strong explanation. That shows good confidence!

From where you are right now, I'd take a few more days off just to recover from the impact of the score. Then, assuming that we feel comfortable with what happened via the discussion above, I'd start looking at questions again and easing yourself into your study routine. As I said above, if you can score at that 160+ level in practice, you can do it on the real thing. But, you need to be confident that what happened in October was an anomaly and isn't going to happen again. That's what we need to figure out.

Please let me know what you think. Thanks!