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Former Head of Pre-Law Office, Northeastern University, & Admissions Officer, Brown University
Reviewed: 04/02/23
If you’re preparing to write the LSAT and aren’t sure how to get to your target score, or if you wrote the LSAT and received an unsatisfactory score, you may be wondering how to improve your score. Read on to find your answers!
While the difference between 157 and 160 may seem insignificant, these few points can influence the entire trajectory of your career—your LSAT score is that important!
This three-point increase can take you from the 70th percentile to the 80th, which can get you into higher-ranking schools that offer more resources and employment prospects.
Considering the importance of just a few points, it’s essential you know how to improve your LSAT score to maximize your chances of getting into your dream law school and having multiple options to choose from. This guide will cover our most effective tips to boost your score.
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Here are 10 tips to help you increase your LSAT score:
Before you begin your LSAT prep, it’s essential you spend time researching the best resources to use. Do not only rely on the internet! You will be bombarded with numerous courses, prep books, and videos all claiming to have the perfect strategies to ace the LSAT.
While this will be a good place to start, you should also reach out to previous test-takers or law students, your pre-law advisors, or other students planning to take the LSAT. Focus on the quality of these resources rather than the quantity.
It might seem effective to go through several resources to learn multiple strategies in order to tackle the exam, but the majority of strategies in these books are very similar.
You should also choose resources that go beyond simply explaining how to answer common question types, and choose ones that provide you with actual hacks to cut on time or find your answer easier! Here are some fan favorite prep books:
Try to use a diverse range of resources to best suit your learning styles. For instance, while prep books can be helpful to learn popular question types, seeing how these questions are answered through video explanations can give you better insight on how to answer and diagram them most efficiently.
When trying to improve your LSAT score, it’s essential to have realistic expectations of how long it’ll take! The LSAT is unlike any other exam you’ve written, and will require adequate preparation to master.
As such, you should only embark on this journey if you’re serious about dedicating a significant amount of time and effort to studying. You should give yourself at least three months to study and extra time to retake the exam.
This also means eliminating distractions! Here are some tips on how to be an engaged studier:
Implementing these tips into your studies will ensure you make the most out of them!
You wouldn’t skip out on work without repercussions. Not only would you lose money, but you might also get a stern talking to by your boss. When preparing for the LSAT, you’ll be your own boss and have to ensure you follow the study schedule you set.
Treat your LSAT prep like a job. Take it seriously and dedicate a set amount of hours to your studies each week. Here’s a quick suggestion guide to follow when deciding how many hours to study a week:
Remember, if you skip your study shifts you’ll hinder your own progress. While you won’t lose money you can lose points! Consistently missing study sessions will make it harder for you to retain what you’re learning and you will see a decrease in your score instead of an increase.
As important as it is to use prep materials to learn strategy and understand each section of the LSAT, it’s equally as important to put this knowledge to use! Unless you dedicate a considerable amount of time to practicing real LSAT exams, you’re unlikely to see any improvement in your score.
You should take both timed and untimed practice exams. Begin with untimed exams to figure out which strategies work best for you and then complete timed exams to improve your speed.
To ensure your practice sessions are as effective as possible, you must review all of your answers after you’ve completed each practice exam, especially the ones you get wrong. Rather than simply looking for the right answer, you should try figuring out why you got the wrong answer.
Sometimes, this might mean redoing the entire question! Although this step will take a while, it’s important to review your wrong answers to avoid making the same mistakes again during your subsequent practice sessions and on test day!
You should also keep track of the questions you get incorrect and revisit them throughout your prep until you get them right. This tip is great if you’re wondering how to improve your test score by 10 points or more. When you implement this strategy into your test prep, you’ll see a drastic improvement in your LSAT score over time!
To piggyback off the previous tip, studying each section of the LSAT equally will result in less than optimal performance. You should definitely understand each section of the LSAT, but should dedicate more time to rectifying your weaknesses than polishing your strengths.
Perhaps you struggle with analysing and understanding lengthy reading passages, or you think logic games are puzzles that seemingly always have missing pieces. Regardless of what your weaknesses are, you’ll need to focus on fixing them to see the most improvement in your score.
We’ve emphasized the importance of rectifying your weaknesses, but we don’t want you to completely neglect your strengths when studying. Even if you answered the majority of RC questions right during your diagnostic test and consider yourself an expert reader, there is always room for improvement.
Regardless of how much you improve in your strong areas, it’s important to maintain your strengths through practice. Your strong areas should essentially be easy points for you to score.
If all else fails and you’ve implemented all of the tips in this guide, it might be time to seek external help. While most LSAT test-takers self-study and rely on self-paced courses or prep books, tutors can be the extra support you need to push past a certain score.
Juris’ 99th percentile tutors know the ins and outs of the LSAT and can share the very best tips to increase your score by 12 points! These experts will not only share their tried and true tips with you, but will ensure you know how to tackle the LSAT with as little hassle as possible.
As we mentioned previously, you have to treat your LSAT like a full-time job. However, it’s important to also know your limits and take a break when you need to. You may only need a few hours, days, or even a couple of weeks to reset and refresh.
This doesn’t mean take a break when you're losing interest or something more exciting comes up. You should only take a break from your studies if you’re experiencing the following:
If you experience any or all of these issues when studying, it’s a sign you need to step back from your prep for a little bit. As important as your LSAT is, your wellbeing should always come first, for the sake of not only your sanity and health, but your LSAT score!
You will see the most improvement in your LSAT score when your brain and body have the fuel and energy to work to their optimal levels.
The final strategy to discuss when exploring how to improve your LSAT score should be implemented during the final weeks of your studies and on test day. This strategy involves having a realistic understanding of your strengths and using them to your advantage.
As much as you practice and try to rectify your weaknesses, there will always be questions or a section you struggle with the most. This is completely normal, and expected. To ensure it doesn’t cost you too many points, you should answer questions based on difficulty rather than their chronology.
Instead of answering the LSAT questions in order, you should quickly skim all of them and see which ones you can answer the fastest. Then, move onto the harder questions and guess on any that you don’t have time to answer.
In this guide, we’ve provided you with our top 10 tips on how to master the LSAT. For any remaining questions on how to improve your LSAT score, read on to find your answers.
There isn’t really a one-size fits all answer to this question. Your potential depends on how long you plan on studying, the quality of the resources you’re using, and how dedicated you are to improving your LSAT score.
Students have successfully improved their LSAT score by over 20 points, but it required several months, even years, of dedicated study, trial and error, and unwavering focus.
With enough time, patience, and practice, you should see improvements in your LSAT score every week or two. You should give yourself at least three months to see the most overall improvement from your diagnostic score.
If you’ve already gone through your prep materials and are beginning your practice sessions, then yes you can see some improvement within a week. However, if you’ve only just taken a diagnostic test and are wondering how to improve your LSAT score in one week, you should know it’s highly unlikely you’ll see any difference before studying.
The answer to how to improve your LSAT score by 10 points depends on a few factors. The biggest being what your diagnostic score is. The work necessary to improve your score from a 145 to a 155 will be far less extensive than the work required to improve your score from a 155 to a 165.
Depending on what your diagnostic score is, you should implement the following strategies into your test prep:
Following these tips should help you improve your score by 10 points!
Yes! You can really improve your LSAT score if you put in the effort needed to do so!
Getting a 160 will require diligence and practice. Considering this score puts you around the 80th percentile; it will be challenging to reach.
Equipped with the best strategies and tips to improve your LSAT score, your LSAT prep will be targeted, effective, and ultimately successful in helping you reach your target score. Not only will this get you one step closer to attending your dream law school, but it will also ensure you limit your LSAT stress and remain motivated!
