As the June LSAT approaches -- rapidly, scarily, I know -- now's a good time to have an honest conversation with yourself, and your LSAT instructor (if you have one), about whether you're on track to achieve the score you're aiming for. Our brains can play funny tricks on us (recommended reading: How We Decide and Predictably Irrational), and one of those funny tricks makes us overestimate our future performance.

Here's what people often think is going to happen (with numbers just as hypotheticals): "I just got a score of 172 on my most recent practice LSAT. Woohoo! I'm a rock star! That's my personal best so far. So I'm definitely going to break 170 on the real test, and maybe I'll even do better than 172."

Here's what is more likely to happen, based on years of post-score-release phone calls from disappointed applicants:

If your personal best is 172 on your practice tests, and you've been consistently scoring around 166, then that 166 is likely to be your upper boundary on the real test. More likely, you'll see a 3-5 point "melt" from that 166 as a result of the anxiety we all experience in real-life testing conditions, when our lizard brains know it's for real and not some no-stakes practice test. So you were expecting a 172, or hey, on a good day even a 174, and you get back a 163.

"Holy cow, what happened?!?" you think, beating yourself up. "How did I screw that up so badly?"

You didn't actually screw up the test, though, if we go by your practice performance. But you did screw up the predictive analysis. If you knew in advance that you wouldn't settle for a 166 on the real test, let alone a 163, and there's no way you'd pull the trigger and apply with those scores, then don't take the test... yet. Wait until you're consistently scoring where you want to end up on the real test plus a gross-up of 3-5 point to factor in the anxiety melt. So if you're shooting for score X, I want to see you scoring X+3 on your practice tests over and over again, under timed conditions, with lots of distractions. It shouldn't be some outlier score that you achieved on a practice test in some perfectly quiet and comfortable environment free of annoying, gum-chewing, fainting, or otherwise distracting people. You're training for an elite sport here -- build in the annoyances so you can train yourself to ignore them.

If that magic number is where you find yourself in the run-up to June, excellent. Carry on and rock the test. If you're not there yet, ask yourself whether it's worth taking the June test. It's fine to reschedule the test for October (LSAC finally reversed its silly policy, and you can now reschedule up to the day before the test). The October test is the last test I'd want you to take to be competitive in that year's admissions cycle, and you'd want to have all your other application ducks in a row and be ready to submit once your October score has arrived (assuming you're happy with it). That's still plenty early in the admissions season.

If you sit out June and find you're still not scoring where you need to be on your practice tests in the run-up to the October, I'd strongly advise you to (1) consider sitting out this application season to get the score you need, and applying nice and early the following year or (2) consider the possibility that you've maxed out your potential on the test and reevaluate whether it makes sense to continue chasing the LSAT. Spending six months chasing an LSAT score is already a big deal; I would discourage anyone from spending more than a year, tops. You may need a different approach, or you may need to invest in a good (or better) test prep program. In any event, if you've been working hard and not seeing results, doing more of the same is not likely to change the outcome.

Maybe that's not what you want to hear -- your brain likes to cling to those outlier practice scores from outlier testing conditions, and your brain likes to think you'll never plateau on a test, that if you just give it enough time you can keep getting better and better until you reach 180 -- but it's best to be realistic now, expect anxiety and distractions, train like athletes do for high-stakes events, and be realistic about diminishing marginal returns. And don't take the test if your practice scores are telling you you're not competitive (yet). 

Former Dean of Admissions at the University of Chicago Law School and a recovering lawyer, Anna Ivey founded Ivey Consulting to help college, law school, and MBA applicants navigate the admissions process. You can read more admissions tips in The Ivey Guide to Law School Admissions, recently updated and available as an e-book, and find Anna on Twitter and Facebook. Have a question for the blog? Please email us.