- Mon Aug 21, 2017 5:03 pm
#38609
Hi futurelawyer22!
Happy to offer some thoughts.
To speak to your first question, yes it's certainly possible. For it to be feasible given where you're currently scoring on timed tests, though, it will take a lot of time and hard, concerted work from now until test day.
That's great to hear that the bibles are helping out! The way PowerScore categorizes logical reasoning question types, game types, and the overall strategies it offers in those books are great for providing the overall superstructure to do well on the exam. If you do feel like you have a good overall understanding, then the most important thing you can do at this point is to take as many full, timed practice LSATs as possible. If you have enough practice tests available, it's worthwhile to consider chopping up a couple tests and adding a section to each of your practice tests--since practice tests have 4 sections but test day has 5 (1 experimental section). To make that big of an increase in score, you might think in the rang of taking a practice test most days of the week. So, you could get potentially ~15 practice tests in before test day.
Taking as many tests as you can from now until the day of the test serves several functions. First, it gives you a diagnostic of how you're doing--i.e., if you're taking tests most days of the week, you'll be able to track whether you're improving, and if so, by how much. Thus, you'll ultimately have a good idea beforehand of how you're going to score on test day. Second, taking the LSAT over and over in itself helps you improve. For example, the repetition helps make PowerScore's strategies more reflexive, quick and intuitive. The repetition also helps you detect frequently used wording on the LSAT, frequent logical errors, etc., which helps in speeding up the process of winnowing down the answers to contenders and ultimately going for the right choice. To get into the 160 to 164 range, it's necessary for the test taker to be answering nearly every question--and getting most of those right. So, for instance, if a test taker could consistently get to only 20 questions each section (say a section is 25 questions), that person would need to get every question, or nearly every question correct to score a 164 (since a 164 roughly corresponds to a raw score of 80). And getting every single question answered correct is quite a hard thing to do. Taking as many practice tests as possible (again, they should all be timed) can help bump the number of questions a test taker is able to answer in the given 35 minutes per section. If/once you're regularly able get to every question, that's when it seems to me a 160-164 range would start to be more achievable.
Finally, it's essential to remember that taking the practice test is only 50-75% of the studying in what I suggest. The other study time should be spent on the initial task, after taking a practice LSAT, of going through the test and seeing what you got wrong, figuring out why you chose it, why it was wrong, and why the right answer was the best one. After you've done that initial task of reviewing your practice tests a few times, hopefully you'll see patterns--for instance, of struggling with a certain question type or game more than others. Figuring out your weaknesses is critical to increasing your score--and the PowerScore books can be great tools to use, as many of them include long drills/marathons on particular question/game types. The next task after reviewing is to drill yourself on specific areas you're less comfortable with; by focusing your study in that way, you're making the most use of the limited time before the test to be as effective and efficient as possible in raising your score.
Hope those thoughts help and good luck on the studying and test!
