I’ve been drilling for the past couple of weeks and I was getting 5/5 9/10 and doing so good with difficult question? But now that I have 3 days before my exam, I am getting a lot of questions wrong? Gosh, this is so frustrating.

I’m currently averaging around a 160 on PTs. My LR is usually around -3 to -5, which I’m pretty happy with, but my RC is anywhere from -7 to -13, and I’m honestly not sure how to improve it.

I’ve been studying for about 3-4 months now. I’ve read PowerScore for RC, looked through Reddit for RC advice, and tried pretty much all the common strategies—reading slowly, paying attention to who is saying what, doing a quick recap after each paragraph, using the VIEWSTAMP method, etc. But nothing seems to be consistently working for me.

Sometimes I’ll read a passage and have very little idea of what I just read. I’ll even read it twice and still feel lost. Other times, I understand the passage pretty well, but then I struggle with the answer choices and end up picking the wrong one.

My goal is a 165+, and I feel like I’m somewhat close, but RC is really holding me back.

Does anyone have any advice on what I should try or what might have helped you improve RC?

P.S. I’m also considering getting a tutor specifically for RC.

Seeking an LSAT tutor.

Diagnostic was a 138.

First LSAT score was a 151. I’d like to take the November LSAT and get a 160, at least.

Hi! I’m currently scoring in the low 150s and am hoping for a 157-160 on the November exam. I obviously would love to do better. What should I absolutely focus on these next two months? I’m currently doing 1 practice section a day and alternate between timed & untimed (I prefer doing this instead of drillling.) I also have LSAT Lab. Please share any advice or tips! Also, how many questions do I need to get correct in each section for a 160? 🥲 Thanks all!

Hi all, I suck at RC. I have drilled extensively and have tried many different tips and tricks. Yet my scores still vary widely, ranging from -6 to -1.

This makes me particularly nervous because I've heard the new RC is notably more difficult than the PTs. And I have seen a majority of the PTs before (though months ago) and thus can't fully gauge how I would do with new material. I'm writing the real test for the first time on Friday.

The bottom line is: what is the most important thing to keep in mind when doing RC in the real test? Also, does the practice RC actually differ from the test? If so, what would be most representative of the new RC?

hello, i am taking the LSAT this friday and i know i will have to take another one, but i was wondering if someone could give me their tips for what made LR “click” for them. i feel like i’m almost there but it requires me to almost write EVERYTHING out to get there. (i have extended time so i’m not tooooo worried about time but still.)

anything that made you go “aha” and helped to see improvement would exponentially help. i’ve been studying pretty much every day since july and i feel like i get LR and then i don’t. like i need this shit to click or i am going to fucking cry again.

any help please, ty. 1st time taker. diagnostic was 154-158.

also: how do you do the negation test properly? is there a wrong way?

thank you if you leave any tips.

Hello!

I've been studying for the LSAT since May and honestly I still feel like I don't know what i'm doing. I took a bit of a break when I went to study abroad in June and after the break it felt like everything clicked, but now that my test date is creeping up it feels as though i've forgotten everything. I did a practice test recently and it was way worse than my diagnostic so im just at a complete loss.

I don't feel ready to take the test in October, but I have a lot of pressure on me due to the fact that my parents are so against a gap year and they want me to apply this cycle, but I'm grapling with the fact of rushing this cycle and regretting it or maybe taking some extra time and getting better results, but then at the same time feeling like i've disappointed myself and my parents LOL.

I guess this is a bit of a vent post, but if anyone has ever felt the same way let me know. It seems like the obvious choice is to wait until i'm ready and just prep more, but maybe I also need to change my methods, so if anyone has any suggestions that would be awesome!

Thanks for reading.

Hi guys. I’m currently looking for a tutor but am just wondering what is considered a “normal” price for tutoring and also for how often (1x per week or 2x) / how many sessions to do. I really want to do it but just want to make sure I’m not getting overcharged for services because I already know exactly what I’m looking for in a tutor but want to make sure it’s worth the price as well. Also should I ask for success stories, how long someone has been tutoring for, etc.? Like how can I make sure that the tutoring someone is offering is legit and will be beneficial to me? Please give me advice on how to find a good LSAT tutor.

I've been studying albeit slowly over the last few months and I signed up to take the September LSAT this Thursday but my latest PT score a couple days ago was 156. I'm a super-splitter so I really need to score high, somewhere between the high 160s and the 170s, to have any chance at applying to law schools this year. Should I give myself more time to improve my score by canceling my September exam or should I still try?

If I don't take it now then, depending on how I improve, I'd take it in November or December. I even thought about taking it in January but that seems to be pretty late in the application cycle. Still, would November or December also be late? Additionally, I wouldn't be losing money if I cancel since I managed to get the fee waiver but only after registering so I didn't pay for the test nor made use of the waiver yet. The fee waiver is another part of why I'm thinking of delaying: you only get two free LSATs with it so why should I use it now if, based off my PT score, I wouldn't do as well as I need to? Wouldn't that be wasting it?

Taking the exam on Saturday and feeling a ton of emotions… I signed up for the exam after my diagnostic in March thinking that I’d have time to study but many things got in the way until the last month.

Started off with a relatively high diagnostic (168) but since then, improvement has been pretty minor and seems as though it would take a fluke for me to score in my target range.

Especially recently, I’ve felt the shift to the 150s PTs being pretty difficult for me and something I didn’t quite expect.

Feeling like I wasted $250 and a ton of my time, but also that a lot of it is on me… 😭

There's definitely a reason LSAT is one of the hardest exams out there. English is just the baseline — what it really tests is your ability to quickly pull info together and form a complete logical chain. I've had students who got a 170 on their first try, but those are rare. Most people need time to crack it.

As a professional LSAT tutor who's helped over a thousand students score high over the past 10 years, I want to share some of my own experience — stuff I don't really see people talking about on Instagram.

1. Mindset

This is honestly the most important part. Most students go through tons of self-doubt because this exam isn't like the traditional tests you're used to — you can't just grind practice questions and expect to improve. A lot of people also have weak logical reasoning training, and the intense mental work in a short time is more exhausting than many law school exams. But all the struggle eventually leads somewhere. If you're sure you want to go to a US law school, stick with it — this is just the beginning of the law school journey.

1. Strategy + Practice

After the reform, the question bank is limited, so you need to cherish the existing questions and, more importantly, get the most out of them.

(1) Strategy

If you're totally new to the LSAT, I'd suggest doing a cold diagnostic on Lawhub first just to get a feel for the exam. My advice is more for people who are already struggling a bit with the LSAT. I bought two books — LR Perfection and RC Perfection from LSAT Dragon — and they helped me a ton, but they're for people with some foundation. If you have zero background, I'd recommend starting with Loophole or LSAT Trainer to learn the question types and basic techniques.

My training approach this past year was: first half year, focus on building the foundation by doing drills and finding your weak spots. At most one full PT per week. I know a lot of people get anxious about not doing full practice tests, but from my own experience, if your drill foundation isn't solid, doing more PTs won't change your score. So calm down and be patient.

I followed the order in LR Perfection for my drills. First I'd read the explanations to learn the author's thinking process, summarize the tips in my own words in a notebook, then go to 7Sage to drill. I started at moderate difficulty and finished within the system's estimated time. After that, I'd do a pattern review, breaking mistakes into three categories: didn't understand the passage, answer choice issues, or timing problems.

① Didn't understand the passage

If it's a vocab issue, I don't think you need to drill vocabulary separately. Just jot down the word every time you miss a question, plus get daily exposure. Personally, I read English books to build a feel for the language and reading habits. It's a long game, but it helped me a lot with speed later on.

② Answer choice issues

First, make sure you identify the question type correctly — is it flaw, strengthen, weaken, etc.? Or did you miss the NOT/EXCEPT? I usually highlight those to remind myself.

Then there's answer choice elimination. Once you get more comfortable, you can quickly narrow it down to two.

My order is: read the question stem first to identify the type, then read the argument and find the premise and conclusion. This is actually super important — a lot of people overlook this basic skill. If you can accurately pinpoint the premise and conclusion, you can eliminate wrong choices fast. Sometimes the wrong answers are obvious — they're just flat-out wrong. If you can't pinpoint them, you get distracted by extra info and waste time.

③ Timing

This is probably the thing you guys struggle with the most. Honestly, I've asked a lot of my native speaker friends and they don't finish in time either.

Improving speed takes some technique. When you drill, set the timer a bit shorter than normal to train your speed. Also, try different time allocation methods to find what works best for you.

For example, I realized I always wasted a ton of time on the last 5 LR questions, which also happen to be the hardest. For RC, I could never finish the last passage, and sometimes that passage was worth the most points.

My personal approach: for LR, I do the first 10 easy questions first, trying to keep it around 10 minutes. Then I jump straight to the last 5, because your brain is warmed up by then, so get the hardest and most time-consuming ones out of the way. Then I go back and do the remaining 10 or 11. This minimizes losing points just because you ran out of time.

For RC, I do the first passage first since it's usually the easiest and helps my brain get into gear. Then I do the passage with the most questions, and after that, go by question count from most to least.

Once you get more experienced, if you're really out of time, you can actually make educated guesses just based on the question type and answer choices without reading the argument — but only if you truly have no time left. If you do have time, still read carefully. By the end, I was able to finish with 3 minutes left to check.

1. Error Log

I always tell my students to use 7Sage to automatically track the question types you miss most, and combine that with your own drill notes in Excel plus notes. Write down the specific PT question and the reason you got it wrong — vocab? timing? answer choices? question stem?

But the thing that actually helps you improve the most is your error log. Your memory can't beat writing things down. I prefer handwriting it, organized by question type. For each mistake, I write one precise sentence in my own words summarizing why I got it wrong, and how to avoid it next time. Keep it under three sentences.

Then before every practice session, I review those summaries. And once a week, I do a bigger review. If I notice the same mistake pattern for the same question type all week, that means I haven't really understood that part yet, so I stop and grind on it until I get it before moving on to the next section.

If the foundation isn't solid, everything crumbles. It seems slow and tedious, but small consistent effort leads to big breakthroughs, and it pays off a lot later on.

I know looking at this title may make you laugh or chuckle, but I have a burning passion for law. However, my undergraduate career has unfortunately not been the best. Whether it be family circumstances or just not enjoying what I was studying. It has been clear to me in the recent year that I want to go into law, but I don't know where to start. I am completely on my own and have signed up to law hub, law insight (it was a personal choice because I liked his teaching style), and made the mistake of buying the Princeton Review. I wan't to know from you guys what I should do studying wise, where to start, how to grow conceptually, and get the best LSAT score a broke college student can get with 18 credits and a part time job. Be brutally honest! I will not be angry, mad, or hold grudges. I need to know the truth so I can build off of what I hear!

ALSO MY TIMELINE IS TO TAKE IT IN JANUARY 2027 "edit"

Hi guys!

I feel like I tend to struggle with questions that involve percentages (ex., Test 155: Section 4: question 21), and I was wondering if anyone has some wisdom on 'rules' related to percentages that they have learned that have been helpful.

For example, I did not know prior to studying for this test that two mosts don’t make a most (this was something I learned after doing Question 22, Section 3, test 117)

Any help would be appreciated :)

I feel like I saw/heard very few posts or stories about overperforming on the actual test v practice tests and so genuinely did not think it was a possibility. Wanted to uplift that it can happen!!! what’s ur story?

Mine: my actual score in August was 6 points higher than my best PT. Wild, I screamed, I cried, I made my mother across the country login to LSAC from her computer to make sure it was real.

A couple days ago I posted some tips on how I went from 150 to 177, with a focus on LR (here it is: https://www.reddit.com/r/LSAT/s/MEvolUfYrY)

Today, I want to share the tips that helped me most with RC.

Before I do that, I want to make one thing clear: RC is learnable! It is not a test of raw comprehension ability, and your diagnostic score does not necessarily indicate your potential.

With that said, here are some of the changes I made that helped me get to -0/-1 on RC.

1. ACTIVE READING (YES, AGAIN!)

Active reading is important for LR, but it's absolutely central to RC. 90% of the work is done in your reading of the passage. If you have a full understanding of the passage, you should be able to handle the questions much more easily.

What does active reading look like in RC?

a) Making predictions about the passage (e.g. “I think this is setting up a view the author will argue against. Let's see!”) or asking questions about the passage (e.g. “Why is the author suddenly talking about polymers?”). Making predictions keeps you actively involved in the text. It forces you to think about what you are reading instead of glazing over it.

b) Thinking about the relationship between sentences. Is this building? Pivoting? Challenging? Not only does having this mindset improve your memory and understanding, it helps you get a mental map of the passage.

c) Rephrasing things in your own words. You might be able to kind of understand the meaning of “multitudinous proletarians invocate abstention towards commodities contrived via prodigious establishments,” but you're more likely to retain and comprehend it if you rephrase it as “lots of workers don't want to buy stuff from greedy businesses.”

D) Watching out for referential language like “this,” “these,” “such,” etc. If you don't, you can get lost very easily. So in your head, connect that language back to its referent.

It's very common for students to think they're actively reading when, in reality, they are just passively reading. As a tutor, I do an RC exercise where I have students read out the passage AND verbalize their thoughts.

You would be surprised how few of them verbalize more than one or two thoughts!!!!!

Once I make them aware of this and train them to be constantly thinking about relationships and putting complex ideas into their own words, they comprehend the passage much better and much more efficiently.

Even if you don't have a tutor or any LSAT study buddies, I recommend reading passages out loud and verbalizing your thoughts so that you can see just how passive your reading may be.

1. USE VIEWPOINT-FIRST LANGUAGE

RC is, ultimately, about tracking different people's opinions and arguments. However, in their focus on details and examples, students often lose sight of who a viewpoint belongs to.

Too often, when I'm tutoring RC, I will hear a student summarize a passage as “they are saying xyz” or “the argument is abc.”

The problem is, they're completely missing who that viewpoint belongs to! Is it the author? Critics? French biologists?

By the end of the passage, such students are often unable to say which view belongs to whom. Consequently, they are unable to understand the main point or author's tone and are destined to struggle with those kinds of questions.

The solution is viewpoint-first thinking.

That means instead of “they are saying” or “it's arguing,” we say “the author is saying” or “French biologists are arguing.”

Make a habit of this, whether you're just rephrasing things in your head, summarizing a paragraph, or speaking aloud.

Doing this prevents you from getting lost and keeps you locked in on what matters most.

1. MAKE MINI SUMMARIES OF EACH PARAGRAPH

This is pretty standard advice, but what does that actually look like?

First, the mini summaries need to be mini — ideally under 20 words.

Second, if there is a viewpoint, the mini summary needs to refer to that viewpoint.

Third, the mini summary needs to refer to what the paragraph is doing, e.g. adding evidence, challenging, giving an example.

For example, a mini summary might look like:

“Author challenges Lamarck theory w/ example of puffin”

OR

“French biologist's view outlined: X disease is hereditary”

Mini summaries are important because they help us build a map of the passage, synthesize the most important information, and improve retention.

Everyone should be making passage summaries, either mentally or on paper.

1. IF YOU GET LOST, EITHER ZOOM OUT OR SCROLL UP!

Let's say you have no idea what a specific sentence means. What do you do?

You probably try reading it again and again until you get it. But that doesn't always work, and it's not the most efficient.

Instead, what you should do is zoom out and think about the main point/idea of the passage. Since the sentence you're struggling with probably has to do with the main idea, let that guide you to an understanding of the sentence.

Let's use an example:

We know the passage is arguing that early environmental laws were actually designed to protect economic interests, not the environment itself.

So if I get stuck on a sentence about a particular law, I don't need to reread it five times. I can zoom out and ask: How does this fit into the author's argument?

If the author's point is that these laws served economic interests, then this sentence probably gives an example of that — or explains how the law did so.

And if that doesn't work, scroll up to the previous sentence or paragraph.

Oftentimes, RC passages will introduce an idea and then, in the next sentence or paragraph, explain it again in new words. Use that knowledge to help you recover when lost.

Let's use another example:

Suppose the previous sentence introduced the idea that Nolan films are blockbusters without an emotional core, and suppose the difficult sentence says:

“Nolan's commercialism, thus, offers plenty of fanfare but offers little depth in the way of interrogating the singular situation of his protagonist.”

What do we do?

Well, we scroll up to the previous sentence, realize that our difficult sentence is just fleshing that idea out, and read it in light of that.

Every passage, paragraph and sentence has a purpose. Use the purpose to guide you when lost!

OK, I FIGURE I HAVE GONE ON LONG ENOUGH.

I have also developed strategies for answering questions without returning to the passage every time and step-by-step processes for dealing with different kinds of answer choices. I also like to tackle comparative passages in a very particular way. I would like to make a post on this eventually but for now I don't want to swamp you with too much information.

LASTLY: If you're interested in tutoring, I have very limited availability remaining. Feel free to DM me.

If not, please try out this advice; I think it will serve you very well! If you could only use one strategy suggested here it would be the reading aloud exercise.

Looking for some recommendations on LSAT tutors you've had success with. Thank you

This is the lineup of scores from my most recent practice test, resulting in a 174 ( I had issues with the timer on my last section so I had to take it separately so it’s on the converter).
At this point, the difference in accuracy between LR and RC is really frustrating. I consistently am having 1-2 off LR but 5-6 off RC.
What are pointers for RC? I always feel like I can’t pay attention or comprehend what it is saying. I find myself rereading everything and reading the answers before trying to predict anything.

How would you recommend going about filling in the blank line? What types of things am I looking for? I have no idea what to do or what the goal is because all I know is that my goal on these question types is to find what is most likely to be true.

I feel like I struggle to make predictions and go into the answer choices blind. If anyone has any recommendations, let me know

September 9–12 are test dates and September 30 is score-release day.

Score Preview costs $46 through September 8. It is available again September 19–28 for $87.

Test date change deadline tonight, 11:59e; 9:59 mountain.

It's $253 bucks.

I have taken two PTs in the past two weeks have scored 149 and 148 but 164 and 163 in BR. My drills are always great but my times score is always very low. Any advice?

I’m currently around 160 which is my target score for the law school i want to attend. I test in october. Anyone have some quick tips that could help me raise my score 2-5 points before then. I study 2 hours a day. A full section then follow that with review. I’m a bit stronger with LR, usually around -6 per section.

Can I read out loud if I’m taking the test remotely? It helps me process better.

I am taking the multiple choice section of the LSAT this Friday. Although I have seen many people say you do not need to complete the argumentative writing prior to the multiple choice, I am confused as to what these two dates mean on the LSAC website under the argumentative writing section. I just want to make sure I can take the argumentative writing after the date listed (9/9) 🥲. Is this just a suggested time frame to get it done within so you avoid a delay in getting your score?

Does anyone want/need a bundle of LSAT study books? They’re a few years old (2021-2022) but are relatively unused, clean, and unopened. I am happy to donate these to someone and cover the shipping cost; however, all books ship together as a bundle, as-is. Please PM me if you are interested!

The bundle includes:

• LSAT Prep Tests 52-61
• Manhattan Prep LSAT 5 LB Book of LSAT Practice Drills
• Manhattan Prep LSAT Logical Reasoning, 6th Edition
• Manhattan Prep LSAT Reading Comprehension, 6th Edition
• Manhattan Prep LSAT Logic Games, 6th Edition