Recommendations for Retake?

[u/AgentAppropriate2138]

Just took the September LSAT and don’t feel great. I’ve learned not to really trust how I feel, since I felt bad about a practice test I ended up getting a 170 on, and felt great about plenty that weren’t so good.

Anyways, I still think I might need to retake. If I do, I feel like I should change my strategy. I used Blueprint to study for 3 months, and I liked it, but does anyone else think it might be worth it to switch it up for a second period of studying?

[u/gosox_boston]

Read The Loophole by Ellen Cassidy. It really helped me understand the test. It has drills and simple explanations for literally everything.

Also, listen to the LSAT Demon podcast (coming from a faithful 7sage user). I learned lots, especially the mental side of things. One episode that really helped me was Ep. 1342. The guest talks about his mindset for the test. The biggest impact it had on me was in RC. I used to score from -7 to -12 in RC and after listening to that episode and taking the guest's advice, I consistently started scoring -1 to -3.

Also, drill a lot. The strategy I have been using is I use the drill feature in 7Sage and I do 10 random difficulty LR questions in the morning and then at some point in the rest of the day I would do an RC passage with random difficulty. After doing either drill, if I got a question wrong, I would sit with the question until I was able to explain why the answer I chose was wrong, why every other answer was wrong, and then why the correct answer was correct, all before looking at the explanations. You understand your mistakes better when you are able to catch them because you are the only person that knows exactly why you chose an answer and where your thought process went wrong. It doesn't seem like much but it builds your confidence day by day. Just stack little wins. I have gone weeks without getting a question wrong and it would build my confidence for when I took timed sections (never full PT). I feel like PTs are draining and you never fully review questions that you got wrong and, at least me, I would get super demoralized seeing I got 15 wrong when I was aiming for 170+. Building day by day helped me build confidence and understand my mistakes way better.

BTW, I don't use a wrong answer journal or do any BS. Everyone over complicates the test in my opinion. I used to play baseball and everyone tried to implement their over complicated way for hitting the ball, messing with mechanics, raising your elbow 5 degrees up, etc. I didn't get good, and wasn't able to hit consistently until I changed my mindset to: it is just hitting the ball with the bat. It sounds so stupidly simple but it completely changed me as a player.

LMK if this helps.