Best Use of PT82 (September 2017)

[andrewgong01]

I took the actual September Exam (PT82 now) and I plan on retaking in December but I really only have November to study for and I want to increase my score by a few points into the high 160s/low 170s. I underperformed on the actual LSAT mainly because of LR (at my upper bound for errors) and misread a rule in LG, which costed 3 questions, but did well on RC (-4). I was wondering what the best use of PT82 is now because I could review it "now" for mistakes or I can also save it as an actual PT to take in late November; however there wouldn't be much time to really analyse my mistakes then. My main issue is that I have used all the PrepTests already from PT61-82 for various purposes and also probably seen almost all the problems from PT51-60 from the LSAT course and various questions here and there from PrepTests before PT51. In short, PT82 is probably the freshest actual LSAT exam I have that is both new and I don't know the answers to (for the most part). Do you think I should save PT82 for timed practice or should I start reviewing the exam "now"? How important is it for me to still be taking full PrepTests at this stage if I want to just improve by a few points? I feel that had I not misread a rule on LG I would not be retaking it but at the same time I think a month off from the LSAT has also decreased my LSAT skills overall

[ohthatpatrick]

You would want to review the test deeply if you were looking for a diagnosis about what went wrong / what you need to work on to be at your best come Dec.

It sounds like you already know what went wrong in one of the Games. I would mainly look at WHERE your wrong answers in LR came from.
- lots of early ones, suggesting you were rushing out of the gate?
- lots of late ones, suggesting you were fatigued?
- or just sporadic misses, more than you'd like, that suggest you simply had compromised performance because of gameday pressure

You could also just peek at the ones you got wrong and write down the question type of each, without giving yourself the option of reading the paragraph. If it's possible to see whether the paragraph is short/long ... conditional / real world .... science / abstract ... etc., you could also maybe derive some benefit from that.

But basically I would say try to understand the nature of your misses without specifically reviewing those problems you got wrong in their entirety, and then save it as a decent practice test for late November.

In the meantime, do older tests or redo recent tests. In both cases, the score may be inflated because it's older or a redo, but the point of practicing isn't to see what fake score you're getting, it's just to have as good an understanding of the problems they're throwing at you as you can.

[kenyamlee]

Curious where you found a copy of the exam to be able to assess.

[ohthatpatrick]

I'm pretty sure he took the September test. People who took the test receive a pdf copy of the test when they get their score emailed to them.