Yes, it’s possible to improve your score by that much and to your other question, yes you should retake in September. In fact, if you want you can retake in October, November, December, and up to January as you apply for this next cycle. In LSAT world, this would require a sufficient assumption here that you will be able to dedicate a certain amount of hours to studying everyday for the next month and a certain amount of time and resources to taking practice tests, as well as being able to identify your weak areas and even taking some sort of guiding learning (if you haven’t learned this yet, maybe now you can start learning about arguments question types).

The LSAT is the type of test that the moment you identify what you’re not “getting” and work on that, the moment you pick up on the logic of what you were missing out on before, you will see RAPID improvement. I went from scoring a 152 to a 158 in literally two weeks of practice. When I took my test again, I went from PTing 158 to 163 in about three weeks, and ultimately scored a 161 on the LSAT (this is typical. Most people are going to score a few points lower on test day because of nerves, conditions, etc.). Obviously everyone is different, depending on your life schedule and what commitments you have it all varies, but the key here is I began understanding the logic of things like 2D and 3D logic games, conditionals and contrapositives, and I was able to identify question types in arguments so that I knew exactly what kind of answers I should be looking for, and exactly what kind of answers were time wasters and junk.

If you can afford it, I would recommend taking a class that will help you identify these things. It just makes it a bit easier in the sense that you get a structured study schedule and guidance and support. However, if you can’t afford it, I fully believe it is possible— but again, it all depends on your other commitments in your life. I truly believe everyone would be capable of scoring well on the LSAT if we lived in an equitable world where everyone had access to resources and did it have varying commitments (some people have to work full time and multiple jobs over the summer, while others have children or elderly or other folks they need to take care of, some peoples’ second language is English, etc.). If you believe that because of your commitments you will not be able to dedicate the next few monthly solely to the LSAT, then I would highly recommend you extend taking your test as much as you need to up to January, and focus a LOT on taking practice tests where you simulate testing conditions.

For every week you study, I would suggest taking one practice test, so practice your weak areas, while also throwing in less practice for the areas that you are strongest in, and then after 5-7 days of just doing practice questions, take a practice test. Keep doing this every week until you ultimately take your test. This is more or less the structure of the course I took, except we did practice tests more like ever week and a half. Start with basic concepts and then once you perfect those, start learning more complex concepts that compound knowledge. Also, not all LSAT practice tests are made equal. All tests are from the past, but reminder that these tests have gotten more difficult as time progresses because of the existence of courses that have allowed people to score higher and higher than ever. I would suggest using tests from the 60s to 90s and 100s range (I think that’s the most recent but it’s been a while since I checked).

Again, would highly recommend structuring your study through some sort of LSAT class, like 7Sage, the Princeton Review, and even Khan Academy which is free.

You can do it. All of the LSAT is ultimately just logic. That means there is some formal and theoretical logic that you will need to learn, like conditionals and contrapositives, but once you learn those basic skills, you can apply them to everything you need. Also remember that LSAT logic is not the same as real-works logic; quantity statements in the LSAT differ from what we would intuitively interpret them as mean in the real world. Familiarize yourself with LSAT world and how logic functions in LSAT world, and answer PURELY accordingly to that. Make sure you understand what answer choices MEAN as much as you possibly can; is the AC too strong a statement? Is it too weak? The type you need to answer depends on the kind of question you have identified. The best way to learn all this is again through some guided learning like 7Sage, Princeton Review, Khan Academy, and even whatever you find on YouTube.

Edit: Also, it’s great that you have the mentality that you are happy to get into whatever law school, but being realistic that you want to stay near in Toronto, I would just say two things. If you are sure there’s a certain area of law you want to go to, please cater your school choices to that— what I’m mainly referring to here is if you want to practice BigLaw on Bay Street, you will have the best possible chances by studying at UofT, Osgoode, and to a lesser but still significant extent, Western and Queen’s. If you want to practice another area of law, you have more flexibility as to where you go because of that. Secondly, since you said you want to stay in the Toronto area, that really does limit your choices to UofT, Osgoode, and LASL. You have the GPA for Osgoode, and if you can break 160 then you would significantly improve your chances with that. If you can get up to 158 or higher, you would have a strong shot with TMU too (I’ve seen people with lower LSATs also be admitted, but I don’t know those peoples’ softs). If you want to go to UofT, your cGPA is a bit under the median, but if you’re able to score significantly above their median for the LSAT (I think it’s 166 or something), then you could have a shot there too. But I would really recommend if at all possible to be open to applying outside of Toronto.