Need advice

[AylixW]

Hi,

So I started school again last week and ever since then I have become extremely anxious and stressed which has caused me to completely lose all of my confidence. I have taken two practice tests since school has started and both my scores dropped about ten points from what I was getting before. I am psyching myself out and it is destroying my ability to perform well on the practice tests. I am in week ten of the online powerscore course and I am getting extremely nervous as the test date is approaching (October 6th). I am freaking myself out so much during the tests that I am getting questions wrong that I would typically get right, such as weaken and strengthen questions. I feel completely lost and don't know how to get back to the score that I was originally at. I am wondering if you have any advice at all with how I could deal with this and maybe approach the test differently? I feel that at this far into the course, I should be getting a lot higher accuracy with the techniques that I have been applying...please help!!

Thank you so much!
Aylix

[Steve Stein]

Hi Aylix,

First, it's great that you have already developed a strong foundation in the course, and you don't just lose LSAT ability. This means that your drop in score, as you have already alluded to, is not about conceptual understanding; it is much more likely a mindset issue, and possibly a physical endurance issue as well--you are back in school, with your thoughts in many different directions, and possibly not as well-rested as you were during the summer? A lot of people see the conceptual difficulty in this test, but fail to recognize that it is also a grueling test of endurance (notice more thoughtless mistakes in the later sections, by any chance?)

The endurance factor is a large part of the basis of my first piece of advice: take more practice tests and more practice sections. You've got weeks. Some people taking the October test have not yet begun their preparations.

You have plenty of time to refine your approach and build upon the conceptual foundation that you have already developed. Are you doing the basics? Isolating conclusions, prephrasing answers, diagramming conditionals, etc? If you're not applying these approaches every time, you probably already know what I would advise.

Second, I would recommend looking for trends in the types of questions that give you the most trouble, and also in the types of questions that have become increasingly troublesome. Are you becoming over-confident or are you not applying strategies that were effective in the past?

Third, I would recommend that you take full advantage of the fact that this is a paper based test--you have the liberty to skip any question. I'm not talking about skipping the very hardest two or three in a section. I'm talking about skipping right over any question that annoys you. The moment you start to "freak out," move right on to the next question. You might as well attack the easiest questions first, build your confidence within the section, and save the challenging ones for last.


I hope this is helpful--let me know if this all makes sense--thanks!

~Steve

[AylixW]

Thank you so much!! That was so helpful and I will try to take all of your advice and see how it goes! I think most importantly I just need to calm down and clear my head.