LSAT games - how much of an improvement on score can that make?

Question

I'm scoring around 160 on practice tests, and missing almost all the game questions. Have been getting around -2/-3 on the other sections. How much of an improvement in my score can be made by acing the games? Just wondering about how many questions one can miss and still get high 170's?

Answer 1

The LSAT is scored on a bell curve, so this is just an approximation, but you could miss anywhere from 9 to 13 raw points and still score 170. With a  160, you're probably missing about 24-26 raw points.

So, how many are you currently missing on the games, and is that enough to to get you 12-15 more raw points?

The risk in this strategy is that all your eggs are in the games basket. What if you get a totally weird hybrid game that throws you on test day. Or, because you didn't study the other sections, maybe you panic a bit with test day jitters and even acing the games is not enough.

Logical Reasoning is half the test, so it would be hard to ignore.

Answer 2

THe games are pretty important.  I don't know the exact numbers but I am pretty sure you cannot get in the high 170s, even if you totally ace the other sections, without getting a fair number right.  The thing about the games is that you should really try to map it out.  Once you see the whole picture, you'll get all of the questions related to that question right.  Practice trying to get a visual on what is being described -- spending a fair amount of time upfront on the question to do so -- and the other answers tend to fall in place (e.g., if the question is about people sitting in a particular order around a table, draw the table and try to position people according to the facts you're given, using an eraser or a big enough space on your drawing to cross out and try again when your initial assumptions don't work.  There are some books that try to help with that section.  While you don't have to ace that section to do well overall, you do have to do reasonably well on it to do very well.

Answer 3

Games is probably the easiest area to improve in. Most people haven't encountered anything like the games before, and once they learn the right way to do them, they get better very quickly. Try PowerScore's LSAT Logic Games Bible if you need some help--that is probably the best known book out there just for Games.

As far as how many you can miss and still get 170, the average is about 9 to 11 missed, depending on the scale for that test. A list of recent scales is at this link: http://www.powerscore.com/lsat/help/corr...

To get in the high 170s, you are probably looking at missing 5-6 max--pretty tough.

You can see it varies, but it varies depending on how hard or easy the test is from a logical standpoint. Let's just say that if you added 13-14 more correct answers in LG, you would be very close to 170. Adding 18-19 would put you around 175.