Retaking LSAT advice

[UWOSTUDENT1996123]

Hi powerscore!

As you may remember I made a post in the forum a couple of weeks ago after receiving my November LSAT score. I scored (159) considerably below my practice tests (165~) and have decided to commit to a rewrite in January. I am now finished my final exams and have a little bit more than a month to prepare for the January test.

In my previous post Dave linked me to many very helpful articles that I have had the time to go through and consider when formulating my plan of attack for the January test. I just had a couple of quick questions regarding re test taking strategy with only a little over a month to prepare.


1. With just a little bit over a month Im very unsure how to best allocate my time. Would it be of value to go through and review all the bibles, or would sticking to practice tests and blind reviews be a better method of attack ?

2. Leading up to the November test I had been studying almost 20-25 hours a week with 2/3 full PT's a week leading up to the test. I almost began to feel slight burned out leading up and had been dealing with my PT scores lowering leading up to test day. In order to avoid having this again I plan on having a more relaxed approach this time around. If I do 1 daily timed section with blind reviews the following day, combined with 1 full 6 section practice test per week would you consider this sufficient ? With a little bit over a month to prepare this will only be 4/5 full practice tests which seems considerably lower than the 20-25 I did first time around.

You have obviously seen it all and are much more knowledgable on this topic than I am so I greatly appreciate any advice that you can give. I am just looking to reach my potential on test day and any advice you can give on time allocation and re test taking strategy would be greatly appreciated.

Kindest regards.

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi UW,

I looked over what Dave said, and I agree wholeheartedly. I would like to stress his last point a bit. This is a marathon, not a sprint, particularly when taking the test for a second time. You already know the basics, and the risk of burnout is strong. I am a big believer in quality of study over quantity. I'd rather you spend fewer hours, but get more out of those hours. I know it's tempting to put in as much time as you possibly can. After all, it's break and you have the time NOW. But pushing too hard can cause a few issues.

1. You'll end up practicing bad habits.

You won't mean to of course. But as your attention and focus wains over a week/day/session, you'll find yourself making errors that you wouldn't usually make when you are at your best. You want to practice the best way every time and really internalize the strategies.

2. You'll have trouble figuring out WHY you are making the errors you make.

The "why" is the key to your best performance. You want to know where your mistakes are, sure, but why you make them is even more critical. Pushing yourself too hard can make it difficult to see where you went wrong. Questions blend together and your reasoning becomes harder to remember. That will make it more difficult to see the improvement you want to see.

3. You risk burn out on test day.

I am a huge fan of the marathon metaphor, and it's helpful here too. Runners taper at the end of their training because they don't want to go into the big race burnt out. Typically, runners don't even run a full marathon race as practice because the extra excitement of race day is enough to carry them across that finish line. Most importantly, they don't want to risk burning out before the race! And you shouldn't risk it either.

Ok, enough of that lecture. Let's turn to your questions.

For study, I'd recommend a combination of targeted work and review. You should know your overall strengths/weaknesses by now, and you should keep a fairly good tab on where you need to work based on your regular PTs. You want to both work on targeted areas for review as well as general review. For example, you might see that you are struggling with conditional reasoning. Reviewing that section of the Bible would be a great idea. At the same time, you want to make sure you are addressing each section, each week. Find a way to work in reading comp, logic games, and logic reasoning.

Your general PT plan sounds pretty strong. I'd say 6 section tests are more than you need though. Really 4-5 section tests are sufficient. Given the number of PTs you've already taken to this point, 1 test a week should be fine, so long as you are spending the time to really review it. Know why you are getting questions correct as well as incorrect. Spend the time to set up the games after the test with unlimited time and see how it differs. Were you making unsupported inferences? Did you miss a key inference? What strategies could you have used to move more efficiently through?

Best of luck to you in January!
Rachael

[UWOSTUDENT1996123]

@Rachael,

This helps me a ton. It really is a strange feeling that sometimes doing nothing besides a couple of hours per week can be the best course of action as counterintuitive as it seems. Your reply really cements this in for me that this is the right thing to do. I have already noticed significant improvement in my 1 section review scores just by doing significantly less with sufficient blind review time over the last week or so.

It was extremely frustrating first time around to be scoring 165+ regularly a few weeks prior to writing and to be working so hard everyday to see my practice scores- and eventually my ultimate score of 159 on actual test day. I really do think I was experiencing burnout.

I love your marathon metaphor, that a marathon runner would never run a full marathon in training due to the fact that the excitement of race day will carry them through the race when it comes--- In my mind this could not relate to the LSAT more perfectly.

Thanks to both you and Dave for the amazing advice ! I look forward to killing the test the 26th and sharing my results with you guys.

Thanks again.