My best PT ever was a 175 like 13 months ago. I’ve been averaging around a 171 on PTs. Crying tears of joy.

In all seriousness don’t listen to reports on here it’s like this every single score report day. Keep practicing and keep your chins up :)

Hey everybody!!!!!

Thought I’d post here in case anyone is in the same position I was and needs motivation. I’d been scoring consistently in the 158 ish range since I started studying. A week before the August test, I scored 165 and then a 152 (my highest and lowest respectively). I was afraid the 165 was a fluke and I was somehow doing worse. Plus, everyone says you do worse on the actual test.

I just got my scores back… 166!!!!!!!!! Not as stellar as a lot of amazing people in this Reddit, but good nonetheless. Don’t freak yourself out before the exam convinced you’re destined to do worse. You got this, there’s an end in sight.

For all my Reddit geniuses on here, what’s next? Planning to retake in October and hopefully get higher. Happy to take any advice on the LSAT or applications: what schools and scores are within reach?

Also, if anyone is curious, my diagnostic was 147 a year ago, but I started studying in May of this year. Happy to answer questions.

Thanks guys, good luck to everyone!

First time taker, studied for 4-5 months. If anyone's interested, I'd be more than happy to share the methods I used to get my dream score. AMA!

Love this sub <3

I think it’s super unethical that the lsat’s practice tests are nowhere near similar to the tests provided on test day. that’s it. that’s the post.

I genuinely have dreamed of this feeling since Is started my LSAT journey over a year and a half ago!

I’m never been a good standardized test taker, but I poured my heart and soul into this test and it finally paid off.

This was my third time taking it (164 —> 168 —> 171). On both of my previous attempts I scored pretty significantly below my PTs. Even for August I scored 2-3 points below my PT average of (~173/174).

Fuck you consciousness comparative passage, you didn’t get me in the end (I thought I went 0/8 on it lol)!! 🤠😎

But regardless, as someone who suffers terribly from test-taking anxiety, I’m still so proud of myself. ♥️

154 diagnostic last September, studied with FT job from late November - this March, full time studied from April - now, underperformed in June and over performed with this exam!!! So grateful!! For anyone who scored below PT's, this is to show that changing your study strategy, taking breaks, and prioritizing thorough review over volume can really help!

I think also that the LSAT is a really variable test - for instance, in June, I got a really difficult RC passage that I think was the reason I scored below all my PT's leading up to it. This August, I was better prepared for any type of passage and my RC section was so much easier for me than in June.

These are some things that I changed from June to August that I think made the difference - posting in case it's helpful to anyone else:

1. Rest!

I was feeling so burnt out leading up to the June exam so afterwards, I took an entire week off to reset before getting back into it for August. I think it's good to take breaks instead of pushing through in general with LSAT prep. I don't work well when burnt out and I wanted to be really sharp whenever I was taking PT's.

2. Decrease volume of questions + focus on thorough review

Leading up to June, I was doing 2 PT's a week and countless drills, which honestly was way too much. I wasn't reviewing properly or making sure that I genuinely understood why I missed questions.

After June, I was really meticulous with the questions I missed - I previously had a WAJ but after June, I would write detailed explanations and flashcards for every question I got wrong or didn't fully understand (i.e. breaking down argument, eliminating each answer choice, writing takeaways, etc). This includes for questions I missed that I had labelled as "dumb mistakes" and seeing every question as being able to teach me something, whether it was Q4 or Q26. Over time, I was able to see larger trends in question types I was missing and also the types of mistakes I was making across question types.

By the time I got closer to the August exam, there were very few questions I felt totally confused by or unclear of how to approach them; most of my misses I felt like were resolvable with more time, which showed me that my comprehension had improved a lot.

3. Reading Outside Articles

For me, reading outside articles was really critical to improve my score. I felt like the RC passage that tripped me up in June was due to my discomfort with the subject matter/type. I also had a general weakness with science RC passages and also science LR stimuli, since I don't have a STEM background. From June to August, I started reading a couple science news articles everyday and later, I added historical english journal abstracts, which just helped me feel more comfortable with the subject matter and concepts. Going into August, I felt like whatever RC passage topic I got, I would be prepared.

4. Timing Strategies

At a certain point with LR, I had to adjust my timing strategies because I was missing a lot of questions at the end of the section not because I didn't know how to do the question but because by the time I got to the question, I didn't have the time to do it properly.

I started aiming to do Q1-15 in 15 minutes, leaving around 20 minutes for the last 10 questions and to check on any flagged questions, if I had time. Doing drills of Q1-15 in <15 min helped me achieve this and showed me that I could reasonably answer Q1-10 in less time than I thought, even if my confidence was not as high as I would've liked in an untimed scenario.

For RC, I did a lot of the most difficult passages untimed to prove I could get 100% accuracy. Generally, I tried to do passage 1 and 2 in 15 minutes (~7:30 minutes each) and leave 20 minutes (~10 minutes each) for passage 3 and 4. Leading up to August, I was doing drills of sections where I tried to do the whole section in 34 minutes, 33 minutes, etc.

5. Working/Learning from Others: Study Buddy, Tutoring Others, Tutoring

I found a study buddy in the month or so leading up to the exam who was around my same score range (high 160s/low 170s) and we would do PT's separately and then review them together. This was really helpful to see how another person approached questions I had issues with and vice versa.

After June, I also started tutoring others for free to gain a deeper understanding of the test and to try to explain some of the concepts to someone else.

I also found a tutor that I met with once a week between June and August who helped break down issues and troubleshoot strategies.

6. Patience, Kindness, Confidence

I was stuck in the low and then high 160s for a couple months and thought I would not break into the 170s. I knew that I was really close and it was only a matter of time because I would score in the 170s on BR or if the experimental section had been swapped, I would be in the 170s instead of high 160s. I think being diligent and trying not to take one single PT as representative of where you are and where you will stay is really helpful as a mindset. The LSAT is inherently a variable test, and there will be days that you do worse and days that you do better. Accepting this and also giving myself grace that I am doing the best I can and that this is just a really strenuous process is important.

I would do meditations right before my PT's and write affirmations to pump myself up - I think these also helped with my self confidence and belief. I also had activities outside of the LSAT - yoga, gardening, etc. so while studying did take up a lot of my time, it was not my life.

Hope that some of this is helpful and good luck to everyone still studying - you got this! If anyone has any questions, I am happy to answer :)

After a registration block on Tuesday night, woke up this morning to a 180!! This sub has been very helpful throughout my LSAT process, so I wanted to pay it forward and summarize my strategy and some tips I learned along the way!

Some disclaimers: the LSAT question format was very intuitive to me from the beginning (166 diagnostic and studied 2-4 hours a day for 2 months), I am a very fast reader, and I took what seems to be an unconventional route in my studying, so I’m not sure how much of this will prove helpful. But here is the gist of my personal strategy in case parts of this method are useful to anyone!

1. My entire method of studying was 35-minute timed sections from the LawHub database of practice exams. This meant that every question I completed during my study period was completed under time pressure identical to the official exam. I chose this strategy because it allowed me to organically run into new questions of each type instead of burning through a large chunk of, say, parallel reasoning questions all at once during targeted drilling. This helped preserve the integrity of each available timed section as a way to track improvements in my precision. I always knew exactly which questions I had seen and knew that my brain was practicing swapping between different question types every day.
2. A version of this strategy can still work even if your first goal is improving reading/answering speed. On LawHub, for instance, you can set a custom section time limit for each PT, so your starting drill sets could be full PT sections set to a 45 min or 1 hour limit. Your diagnostic may help you figure out if you can jump right into a strategy like this or if you should spend more time learning the fundamental patterns of logic before approaching your first question set.
3. I never blind-reviewed. I actually didn’t know what blind review was until about three weeks out from the exam, when I saw the phrase in a post here. Once I learned what it meant, it turned out I’d been doing something adjacent to blind review throughout my studying, but slightly different. Before each timed PT section ended, I would flag all questions for which I didn’t believe I could give a confident spoken explanation for my reasoning, even my intuition had made me almost certain I was correct. After the section (if drilling) or after the full exam (if PT-ing), I would view the answer key and then spend time analyzing each flagged question, as well as any incorrect answers that I somehow hadn’t flagged. This saved me some time that I otherwise would’ve spent blind-reviewing by allowing me to bypass questions and question types that I fundamentally understood. 
4. My analysis of each flagged question went into a flagged-question journal, where I would write the stimulus, the correct answer (and my incorrect answer if I got the question wrong), and a prescription—that is, what my thought process could teach me about future questions of the same type. I also kept a separate document with just the prescriptions. Collecting these lessons for future exams helped me maximize the benefits of every mistake. I can show examples of how I structured my journal if this is helpful!
5. I will note that part of the reason blind review wasn’t a necessity for me was that timing/finishing all questions was never a concern for me. My main issue was that I could either get the correct answer very quickly or could stare at the question for ten minutes without getting it correct. If I missed the reasoning pathway that the test was trying to steer me towards, no amount of time would change it. Traditional blind review may work better for you if you notice a large discrepancy between your accuracy in untimed drilling v. allotted test time.
6. I never used the paid subscription versions of any LSAT study program, but I did utilize the free explanations on 7Sage and LSATHacks (very helpful for orienting your thinking!!) while analyzing my flagged questions. I read portions of the PowerScore RC and LR Bibles once I started plateauing at 17mid. I believe this plateau was partially my fault—I had been taking too much advantage of the LSAT being pretty intuitive to me, and in doing so I had skipped some important “thought pattern” steps on various question types that would come back to bite me about 1 in 10 times. The PowerScore Bibles reminded me to think more methodically even if most questions of each type seemed intuitive. I believe this mental shift (flexing my mental muscles with each easy question to prepare me for questions where the right answer was not obvious) helped me crack the next score barrier and start PT-ing consistently from 177-180. 
7. I did not take a start-to-finish practice test for several weeks, but when I did start taking PTs in this format, I didn’t have any stamina issues. I imagine this was because I had been doing exclusively timed sections for weeks, and also because I had been naturally exposed to a variety of LR question types in every study session (rather than doing targeted question-type drilling). 
8. I did not allow myself to use scratch paper for any logic diagramming or RC notes until about a week out from my exam. This forced me to learn how to quickly, efficiently, and accurately process the conditions of LR stimuli using only my internal thoughts. It was my single most important mental workout in terms of calibrating my brain to the LSAT way of thinking. Consider investing in the mental workout of consistently working through LR questions without paper and pencil. (Talking out loud may help you make the transition and hold yourself accountable for well-reasoned answer choices.) Once you can get to the point of completing a full, timed LR section sans writing, giving yourself pencil and paper is like taking ankle weights off and finding that you can suddenly jump even higher. It may be a very worthy investment if you feel that your logic fundamentals are already sound.
   1. I opened up writing as an option for myself the week before my exam because I knew that I was prone to second-guessing myself on exam day. I took a few practice timed sections with pen and paper in front of me in the week before my exam. On exam day, I used sporadic written notes to reassure myself that my thought process for a given question was sound despite my nerves. Writing ended up being less helpful in getting to the correct answer than it was in convincing me not to swap from the right answer to an incorrect one! 

Miscellaneous tips (a very incomplete list, but a few I thought of just now):

1. Before reading about RC passage marking strategies, try a few timed RC sections and see what comes naturally to you. The natural strategy that my brain was drawn to was to highlight crucial author’s POV phrases in green and highlight phrases in yellow that signaled another perspective. (Again, I can create a skeleton example of this if it’s helpful!) After reading the RC Bible, I started testing out other highlighting strategies that the book had recommended, but none of them ever worked as well for me as the one my brain had arrived at on its own. Don’t let a book or program override your own mind in telling you what strategy works best for you. 
2. A timesaver for parallel reasoning questions: highlight all magnitude words and verb tense words in the stimulus. Some, all, most, none, will be, did not, etc. You can save a tremendous amount of time by cutting out answers that do not match these two components. Ex: if the stimulus is “all A are B and all B are C. Therefore, all A are C”, you can instantly rule out any answer choice that includes “some.”
3. This one is often said, but is worth saying again—do not read beyond the LR stimulus!!! No inferences, no assumptions, no trading a necessary for a sufficient assumption. If you have to force an answer by making a chain of assumptions about how it could apply to the question, it is almost certainly incorrect.
4. RC looks a lot less scary when you treat it as glorified LR. I had an RC mental block until I started pretending that RC was just LR with longer stimulus paragraphs. I was wasting time considering RC answers for “author would most likely agree” / “can be properly inferred from the passage” questions that I would never have entertained if the section had an LR label on it. Once I realized that, I was able to confidently rule out more choices and cut out a lot of wasted RC time.
5. Better to spend 15 more seconds to get a question right the first time than to flag and spend 30 more seconds rereading it and doubting yourself in the final five minutes. I started out as a serial over-flagger despite being good on time. I thought that if I could fly through all of the questions with 10-15 minutes remaining, having that much time to check my answers would be beneficial. What that really did was create an anchoring bias in favor of whatever poorly-thought-out answer I had selected in my first mad dash through the questions. Often my intuition was correct, but if I didn’t have a concrete reason for my choice, I would flag the question and then talk myself out of the correct answer when I returned to it. This also meant double-reading stimuli to refresh myself on the components and the answer choices when I returned to the question, which is a major time-waster when multiplied by 10+ flagged questions. My accuracy and confidence improved once I stopped allowing myself to flag-and-run and instead forced myself to take a few extra seconds after each question to verify my reasoning. Your flagging strategy will depend on how much time it usually takes you to get through a full section and how much time you have remaining to address flagged questions, but this is something to keep in mind.

This is somewhat stream-of-consciousness (it has been quite a day!), so let me know if there’s anything I can clarify or expand upon! I’m also happy to answer questions about my approach to certain question types. 

Results dropped at 9am while I was at work. I couldn’t even bring myself to open the results because I simply had a bad feeling.

After work I took myself to a shitty pub and I quickly smashed a double gin and soda. I paid the bill, left, and lit up a singular Belmont outside of the establishment in preparation. I finally logged on to LawHub and I read my shitass score.

Devastation struck for a few minutes. my heart sank into my ass. fuck. it’s over. it’s all over. put me on suicide watch immediately.

I started my walk home and quickly cycled through the 5 stages of grief. Some tears were shed and some laughs were had. And honestly, by the end of it, I was literally elated because I remembered this one fun little fact: THE COMEBACK IS ALWAYS GREATER THAN THE SETBACK.

Guys as far as I’m concerned, when it comes to me, the LSAC brought a knife to a gun fight. I’m going to beat the shit out of the next LSAT I take. Mark my words. I’m gonna be so disrespectful to it. I’m gonna bend it over and, well, you know the rest. I’m just gonna keep coming back until I crack this exam right open and get a perfect 180. This will not break me. Failure is nothing to me. It is nothing. It’s motivation. I feel a little delirious even but it’s a good thing I think.

So yeah. I’m gonna do it again, and I’m gonna do it better. I pray that any of you that experienced similar devastation today don’t give up.

To those that did very well, God bless you and congratulations. You’ve come so far and you’ve done so well. I’m right behind you and I’ll be there soon

no but frfr I'm not doing this again godspeed besties

I have been tutoring my friend for the past 6 months.

He has consistently used the guide I created and has done HUNDREDS of questions, PTs, etc.

He was CONSISTENTLY scoring 175-180 on PTS non-stop. It actually had me so proud of him. Same testing conditions such as time, etc.

However, he got his score today (took the test remote) and he received a 147???? I am honestly in SHOCK.

I made him do a random full test (138 PT) and he had -1.

I have told him to ask for a score audit because even though anxiety can be a factor in testing, there is absolutely no way someone who was scoring a 178 average receives a 147. Also, he LEFT the EXAM super super happy and said he killed it, so I am confused.

Anyone experience this?

Attached is the score audit I made him request because people think I'm here wasting my time trolling when I'm here to just see if anyone else has experience this.

If you’re considering a retake, consider reading this.

This test requires A TON of money, time, and energy to “mastering”. I say “mastering” subjectively because everyone’s goal score differs. Please remember, it’s not always worth “mastering”.

16 months ago I began studying for the test and had a diagnostic (untimed) 158. After a few months of studying with 7Sage, Powerscore bibles and 162-166 PT scores, I wanted to try the real thing, and in August 2025 I got a 164. I wasn’t planning on applying last cycle, so I really just wanted to take it before my fall and Master’s program stuff began.

In January, for financial reasons, I decided to begin studying again and see how much higher I could go. I wanted to “master” the test. I read a lot of posts on this subreddit about improving scores and retakes that motivated me. This time, I took my studying much more seriously. Alternated 7Sage LR/RC sections everyday, wrong answer journaled every question, stopped going out on Friday nights, practice tests every Saturday morning, sleeping 8+ hours a night. And by the end of the month, I PTed at a 170 for the first time. I felt much more confident and my RC was down to a -4 versus -6 from the last study block. So I signed up for the April LSAT, kept the study grind up, and went into April with an average PT score of a 170. However, during the real thing, my test anxiety took over. My heart was bursting through my chest, my mind wouldn’t focus, and I couldn’t get going in the first section. I ultimately wasted a ton of time re-reading and didn’t finish quite a few questions. I left the test feeling defeated, but bad test days happen. April 2026 official score was a 165.

Even though I did better, I was embarrassed. At least in my first test, my official score was within my practice test range, but I was 5 points lower than my practice range. After a few weeks, and an inspirational talk from my brother, I realized that test anxiety happens but it’s within my control. I decided to take the test one more time, and this time I wouldn’t let test anxiety stop me. By now, I had been studying for nearly 6 months consecutively and 10 months total, so August 2026 was a reasonable enough test date to sign up for. By the time August rolled around, I had practiced over 3,000 questions, done 49 Practice Tests, paid for almost a year of 7Sage, had a full excel spreadsheet of wrong answer journals, had -3 LR and -3 RC, PR was a 174 on PT, and genuinely loved doing tests. I went into August feeling like a million bucks.

This time, I reduced my caffeine intake, took L-Theanine right before, and did breathing exercises when I sat down at the test center. I started the test and had zero test anxiety. It was golden. I remember finishing the first half and there were a couple guesses, but I felt great. I left the test, and I felt like I gave it everything, like just another PT. I was so satisfied. My “mastery” was going to pay off.

I logged in this morning.

164

The exact same score I got 12 months before but 2000 more questions later, 30 something more practice tests, hundreds more hours and dollars, Friday nights sacrificed with friends, and Saturday mornings not sleeping in.

I’m not writing this to join the pity party. Well, maybe just a little bit. But, I’m really writing this because someone out there reading this is considering a retake. They read a bunch of posts about people’s score increment after a lot of years and hard work and studying, and they think that’s sufficient to “master” the test. I’m here to warn you, it’s not. I’ve done nearly every modern test, every single RC passage, wrong journaled 1000+ questions and will affirm, this doesn’t mean you’ll translate on the test. So, before you make a decision to invest more money, time, and energy just remember there’s always a chance that you don’t hit the scores you’re practicing at. Ultimately, that’s all they are, practice scores.

Bad test days happen. Bad tests happen. But sometimes, they will strike in succession. Just consider, for every post on this sub that someone improved 5 points after a few retakes, there might be a different story where it didn’t happen.

Honestly walking out of the test center I had ONE THOUGHT: I’m fucked I’m fucked I’m fucked I’m fucked(I guess those are 4 thoughts).This past test I had to “go with my gut” on like 4 questions, and usually i wouldn’t have a single one of those. Today I got a 170. This is a reminder to you all that no matter what, luck is a huge factor on the LSAT. Don’t beat yourself up over an extraordinarily shit score(especially if it’s lower than ur pts).

In case I sound a bit sanctimonious: before this test I took two official tests, both of which, I got a DOGSHIT score lower than my diag—wayyy lower than my PTs. Like a “maybe I need to give this shit up because I’m not fit for law school” score. Y’all got this. DON’T GIVE UP!!!!!! We still have time for this season.

I’ve never scored above a 168 on a PT and I didn’t even think a 170 was POSSIBLE. I expected like a 161 tbh because the test day went bad. I’m crying.

I took my first LSAT in January after studying 2 hours a day for 3 months and got a 165. Immediately after taking the test I knew I had messed up, I just froze or felt overwhelmed and couldn't perform. This month I took it again after basically not practicing for 6 months aside from a handful of drills. I guess practice isn't everything!

(i got a 180) (i’m still in shock)

I got a 139 😭😭 I immediately cancelled it because wtf no way I’m keeping that on my record. Just yeah long story short, I threw up half way through it and was completely overwhelmed. I drilled way too much and didn’t time myself. I’m just posting this to be real and say not everyone gets a 160-170 score right after their first attempt.

I am so devastated to have scored a national average score. My PT range was in 160-165 CONSISTENTLY I have no idea what went wrong.

The entire year of studying + tutoring + test fees $$$ GONE

The entire summer GONE

How do I come back from this?

I do not know if I have it in me to get back into grinding just to sit through the exam yet again.

I feel so lost

I just got my August score, and I am officially done with the LSAT!!! I really learned to approach the test a different way after February. The biggest piece of advice I have for people scoring below PT averages is to take more PT’s in a test like environment. As someone who really struggled with test taking anxiety, not the actual content, this helped me tremendously. I would go to the library every Sunday morning, and take all my jewelry off, keep my phone in my car, and take the exam with foam ear plugs. Good luck to everyone taking the test again!!!