Can't score higher than 15 in every LR practice

[rmk2123]

Hi everyone,

I decided to take the feb LSAT after canceling my dec score. I was not feeling confident after the exam and thought I would give it another chance. I am applying to some of prestigious schools that are accepting the feb LSAT score. The LSAT is the only missing element of my application and I am starting to get frustrated by my inability to score higher than 15 in all of my LR practices.

I tend to get 10 out of the 12 first questions of any section right, however things always turned bad in the second half. I am usually always torn between two answer choices and for some reasons always fall for the wrong one. My timing is okay as I usually answer 20 questions and skip 3 or 4. However I always get the high difficulty MBT and flaw questions wrong even when I'm pretty confident of my choice. And although I have spent the past few weeks on these weaknesses, I am still getting the same score.

Does anyone have any tip? I am currently reviewing the necessary chapters in my LR bible, and will follow the one month study plan for the feb LSAT. I need to break out of this routine soon.

[Adam Tyson]

Hey MK, hang on, help is on the way. First, it would probably help us if you told us about your study methods - other than practice tests or LR sections, what are you doing to improve your understanding of the concepts and strategies? Are you prephrasing your answers to every LR question, every time? Are you taking the time to make sure that you understand the argument as a whole, especially the conclusion?

When students get stuck between two answers and end up picking the wrong one, it's usually because the one they pick is an intentionally attractive wrong answer. Spend time studying those to find out what it was about them that drew you in. Often it will hinge on a single word or phrase that's not supported by the stimulus, but sounds good, maybe because it matches some of your preconceptions. Understanding the wrong answers, and why you liked them, is at least as important as understanding the right answers. Often the key to getting the right answer is more about eliminating the losers than it is about picking the winner. That's why the instructions tell you to pick the "best" answer rather than the "right" answer - sometimes the best answer isn't very good, but it's still better than all the others.

One piece of counter-intuitive advice I would give you is to slow down. Imagine this - you answer 10 out of the first 12 right, as you have been, and then you take your time to slowly and carefully answer the next 8 questions, leaving 5 or so that you just fill in a random guess. If you got those 8 all right, that's 18 instead of your usual 15! If just one of your random guesses is right now you're up to 19! Multiply that by two sections of LR and you have a huge improvement. Speed isn't important on this test - accuracy is. As you get better, you will get faster, but getting better must come first.

Tell us more about what you've been doing and some of my highly qualified colleagues will chime in with their own excellent advice, I'm sure. Good luck!