142 to 170

[blue134]

I just wanted to offer up some words of encouragement to everyone on the LSAT thread of the law forum.

My diagnostic score was a 142 and in about 8 months I was able to get that in the 170s. The highest I've scored on a practice test was a 176 and when I officially took the test in November I scored a 170. Studying for the LSAT is hard, and I am sure you are so tired of hearing it, but this test truly is completely learnable. 

To get to the point, I used to scour every resource for any and all advice when I was studying so if anyone would like to know how I studied or some of the resources I'd skip if I could go back, or even which I feel are the most important if you're on a tighter timeline please let me know and I'd be happy to help. 

Best of luck to everyone studying!

[KD22]

On 1/9/2024 at 10:15 AM, blue134 said:

I just wanted to offer up some words of encouragement to everyone on the LSAT thread of the law forum.

My diagnostic score was a 142 and in about 8 months I was able to get that in the 170s. The highest I've scored on a practice test was a 176 and when I officially took the test in November I scored a 170. Studying for the LSAT is hard, and I am sure you are so tired of hearing it, but this test truly is completely learnable. 

To get to the point, I used to scour every resource for any and all advice when I was studying so if anyone would like to know how I studied or some of the resources I'd skip if I could go back, or even which I feel are the most important if you're on a tighter timeline please let me know and I'd be happy to help. 

Best of luck to everyone studying!

Hey! Thanks so much for this encouraging message! Are you able to please share the kinds of resources you used to achieve this score? Also, what kind of timeline/study schedule did you have? 

[blue134]

3 hours ago, KD22 said:

Hey! Thanks so much for this encouraging message! Are you able to please share the kinds of resources you used to achieve this score? Also, what kind of timeline/study schedule did you have? 

Hi! I can copy and paste a response I sent to one of the people that private messaged me below:

 

"Thank you, and of course I'd love to share that. 

For logic reasoning I studied with the Mike Kim LSAT trainer. The book has all three sections but I primarily used it for logic reasoning. I also worked with the loophole but personally found the Mike Kim trainer to yield better results.  

For logic games I studied with only one book- the logic games power score bible- honestly for me at least this was the only book I needed, it was very comprehensive and if you stick with it I think anyone can bring their score up nearly perfect on the logic games section. If I have to highlight one material I worked with it would be this book. 

Reading comp was the trickiest section for me. I read the chapters pertaining to this section in the Mike Kim trainer but I'm not sure if that was what helped me improve or whether it was simply reading previous reading comp passages from past tests and really really really making myself way more comfortable reading these types of confusing passages. This was the section however where I got the most wrong answers typically, getting -0 in games, up to -5 in reasoning, so with that in mind, my approach to this section could probably be fine-tuned for better results. 

Aside from these resources I used LSAT Demon, as the main platform I used for access to past tests and questions. Of course, they have their own study methods/videos/tutorials if you pay for that level of membership, but I used the techniques I was picking up in the aforementioned study materials and applied them to the drill and practice parts of LSAT demon's platform. 

For a study schedule, I worked my way through the study materials above, and then I stuck mainly to the following (which is created by LSAT demon) https://lsatdemon.com/resources/lsat-tips-and-strategies/one-hour-lsat I didn't really subscribe to the one-hour a day part of it^^ but I did follow the general plan of what it was suggesting I cover each day of the week. I typically followed two study sessions a day one in the morning and one in the evening. The best piece of advice I can give it is- to get better you need to REALLY understand why you are getting an answer wrong. I structured my studying this way, don't leave something alone until you figure out why you didn't get it right, why the answer you chose is not the right one, and why every other answer choice is wrong. This test repeats itself through question types and answer types so once you really understand something you won't make that is how I think I broke the 170s. 

I hope some of that was helpful, and best of luck on the test!!!"

 

 

Also- to answer your question about timeline- I studied for about 8 months, but I know people who have studied for like 2-3 and others who have studied for upwards of a year- it's probably not what you want to hear but you have to give yourself time, it's going to take however long it's going to take- you've just got to focus on small improvements in each individual question and it'll turn into big progress in your score- don't let the idea of needing to drastically change your score psych you out.