How to Increase Your LSAT Score When You Are Stuck

I’ll begin this blog with a confession. The vast majority of the text below is not my own, but rather has been taken (with encouragement) from a post Dave Killoran wrote on our LSAT Forum. The advice is too good and too endlessly relevant not to share, so I’m reusing it here to ensure it reaches the widest audience possible. Specifically, Dave went to great lengths to explore and explain two of the most common concerns plaguing test takers. Namely, how to correct for wide-ranging performance variations and how to keep improving when it feels as though you’ve hit a permanent score plateau.

We frequently receive messages from students that ask about seemingly random score fluctuations or scores stagnating/not increasing quickly enough. Each person is different and the reasons for these difficulties vary somewhat from person to person. But, the proper way to study as you address these issues is often very much the same no matter who you are or what your specific causes may be. Here’s some of the general advice we pass along in the hope it might help anyone out there who is struggling.

I’m Sorry

First, if you are reading this, I’m terribly sorry to hear things aren’t going the way you want thus far. But, one comforting truth is that your journey’s end isn’t dictated by the struggles you face along the way. It’s normal to encounter some difficulties while studying! Many students that struggle tirelessly with serious issues ultimately go on to score extremely well. The key thing to focus on is not some problem that you have, but instead how you should react to it and the steps you must take to eliminate it!

With that in mind, let’s talk about how to identify and conquer the multifaceted issues that tend to accompany score fluctuations and performance plateaus. Just as a warning, this is somewhat lengthy. Although, if you’re familiar with either Dave’s or my blogs you’ll find that no surprise. It’s also upside down in a sense: I go from broad ideas to more narrow ones and even wrap up with a pointed recommendation for a specific next step. So, please bear with me until the end.

The LSAT is NOT Consistent

A fundamental LSAT truth is that it presents a wide variety of concepts and content with each administration, but the material also isn’t perfectly consistent in frequency from exam to exam.

I talk in-depth about that variability in the Welcome to the LSAT Casino blog post. For students who aren’t 100% grounded in the fundamentals or who aren’t machine-like consistent in their approach, these variations in exam content often manifest as mixed performances since some tests are better suited to you and your skillset than others. LR is great on Tuesday then brutal 24 hours later, LG changes you as a person with every attempt, etc. Simply put, when there are gaps in your understanding of the exam, you become a victim of the it’s inconstancy. If your scores are fluctuating wildly or rising on a trajectory just a hair steeper than horizontal, there are two broad but critical areas you should investigate:

LR/RC—Your Understanding of the Stimulus/Passage

Inconsistency often relates to your analysis of the stimulus. How confident do you feel coming out of each stimulus or passage? Do you feel like you understand what is being said? Is your clarity on the argument as good as you’d like, or do you find yourself uncertain of exactly what has been said in many cases? If it’s the latter, then that’s the first place to start. Try some sections of untimed questions where you stop after each stimulus and make an assessment of how confident you feel in your interpretation of it. Then, compare that to how you perform when proceeding to answer the question. Is there a connection between issues in your stimulus analysis and subsequently missing questions? If so, move the stimulus/passage deconstruction to the forefront of your prep.

So always, always consider: how clear are you on what you’ve read? Can you condense the stimulus into a sentence or two that captures the essence of what was said? Can you distill a whole passage into a few accurate sentences without changing the strength/nature of the language used and the ideas central to the author’s text? If not, start practicing doing so immediately. Another way to think of it is this. Everything you need to know to answer any question is in the stimulus/passage. If you fail to fully comprehend what’s presented there it’s always going to be difficult to choose the correct answer.

In Practice

Method of Reasoning questions can work miracles when it comes to the skill outlined above. Your ability to describe, in generalized terms, the nature and architecture of how a stimulus is put together is a perfect set up to honing your argument description abilities. If you’re looking for a place to start, then start there! Follow that with Method’s close kin: Main Point and Method-Argument Part. These will shore up your elemental deconstruction of prompts by forcing you to categorize and classify arguments’ component pieces. Flaw and Parallel Flaw require you to describe reasons for doubt that exist in a stimulus and duplicate the reasoning at work in an argument (often based on a recognizable flaw), respectively. Must Be True is the foundation of the LSAT. As you move from a limited set of data into a single answer choice that you can determine solely on the basis of it.

LR/LG—Your Recognition of the Things Test Makers Do Over and Over

Good test takers save time by becoming familiar with the things that the test makers present most often. This allows you to immediately recognize and react to those things during the exam. This could be something as simple as recognizing a question stem wording or knowing how to properly diagram a rule and understanding its implications. Or, perhaps recalling a specific numerical distribution pattern in LG from a game done previously or a tricky flaw in an LR stimulus. Familiarity is, in a word, empowering.

I’ll talk more precisely about how to improve that recognition in the discussion below, but the key here is to never forfeit time on the things you can (and should) know beforehand!

How to Improve

With the two broad areas described above in mind, let’s consider in more detail how to get better at each:

1. Track everything that gives you trouble. Miss a question? Mark it down and, more importantly, note why you missed it. Not just why the right answer is right, but also why the wrong answers are wrong. Recognize what about your wrong choice was attractive when it shouldn’t have been. Don’t feel 100% comfortable? Same thing. Mark it down. Then, every so often, go through those lists and look for patterns in what you are missing. There will likely be identifiable causes leading to your mistakes! Once you know the cause you’re well on your way to a cure!

2. Make sure you really know the concepts that appear most frequently on the test. But also know the various techniques and methods for attacking them. For example, can you identify premises and conclusions without thinking? Do you know the common categorical argument flaws? Do you know all the ways to break down causality in LR in order to both weaken and strengthen it? Can you immediately identify and properly diagram conditional reasoning constructions while also avoiding the two most oft-presented traps? And so on. Instant execution without delay or second-guessing is your goal. A good self-test of how well you know these ideas is to review them in your PowerScore Bible or course book and ask yourself if you could effectively teach them to someone else. If the answer is no, then review them again!

3. Look at questions repeatedly until they are second nature. Review, review, review. Stumble on a question? Make a note and then look at it again a few days later. Get to know questions so well you could teach them to your friends without missing a beat, and without stumbling over any of the ideas. One of our students talks about how he does it in a multi-series blog beginning here. His pattern of mastering the questions has taken him from the 140s into the 170s. As you’ll see, it’s hard work and involves a LOT of review, but it can be done!

As a related aside, to prove whether you really understand a question consider this: if I asked you to bring me whatever LG/LR/RC content that troubled you the most, could you explain it to me perfectly right now? If not, that means you still haven’t studied it enough. You have to master that which is most difficult, as doing so provides the key that unlocks the rooms where your continued problems reside.

Try, Try, Try Again

Finally, if after working to implement all of the above you still find that your scores are perversely volatile, or that you aren’t improving at a reasonably satisfactory pace, try this basic assessment. Sit down and take a totally new practice test, one you haven’t seen before. Time it, and then follow the rules for blind review outlined in the first method listed here. Use those results to make an appraisal of how well your LSAT radar is working in terms of when you feel confident versus when you know something is wrong.

If your self-analysis radar is poorly calibrated (in effect that your confidence is misplaced, where even untimed your answers are incorrect far more often than expected) go through the above steps to break down each part of your process to better diagnose where the failures are occurring. For example, first go back and study your identification of stimulus ideas. Are you understanding what was said? If not, practice with analyzing and summarizing stimuli, etc. Next, how well are you seeing arguments, fact sets, flaws, and the like?

Don’t get frustrated if you miss questions the first time. Each miss is an opportunity to learn more about how the test is made, what problem areas you have, and above all where the greatest opportunities exist to improve as those problem areas are resolved. Don’t let missed questions get you down or sap your enthusiasm. Instead, use them for what they are: perfect devices to learn from and improve! Need additional help? Try private tutoring!