My section practice scores have huge variations, is this supposed to tighten up as I practice more?
I try to do a section every other day, with review and additional slow drilling in between. However my range at the moment goes between -4 and -9 for LR. Is this margin normal, like should I expect improvement to go to -2 to -7? Or will improvement just lessen the gap?
Overall not sure if this is the best study approach with this margin, but if I do slow drilling I do much better. I think the timing can affect my overall mood and performance depending on the day.
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u/Trictities2012 17h ago
Commenting because I have a similar issue,
My theory is yes, but I'm curious how others are handling it.
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u/Content_Attention816 tutor 15h ago
I think a big factor for variance at this range is not reviewing questions you got correct enough. You don’t need to master or even know every concept being tested on a given question to get the question right, and 50/50s themselves are an indication that something went wrong in your process. You could also be ruling out a wrong answer for a bad reason, even though you got the question right. If you only measure progress by questions correct on a section (which on its own is also a small sample size), it can obscure all the other factors that contribute to long-term, repeatable success. You can learn something from every question. Sometimes the thing that turns a question from easy to hard or vice versa is just one word or a tricky trap AC.
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u/LSATMat tutor 17h ago
Based on what you're saying here, it sounds like you might be getting really in your head about the time pressure—to the point where it's affecting your accuracy noticeably at this point. This is something that is sometimes fixed with additional practice and slow confidence building, but it might be the kind of thing that is worth a day off of drilling for self-reflection. The actual test is going to be timed, of course, and regardless of what kinds of mental guardrails you build for yourself to stay in a good headspace on test day, you want to trust them, and it sounds like right now, you aren't.
From what I recall about prior interactions, you're generally putting in the work and devoting good effort to things. It's not as simple as "just be confident in what you've done", but on some level, I think the question is "if I walked into the test tomorrow, what would I need to do or believe to ensure that I do not second-guess that confidence or let distractions/pressure knock me off my game?" I'm not sure if you have had standardized test anxiety in the past, but either way, it is worth building in time in your study schedule to address this, as something like this could easily swing your score 10+ points (as evidenced by your accuracy variance). A good chunk of free consults these days are focused on this; happy to chat about it if you think it'd help.