LSAT Diaries: Test Day Tips (Part 2)

This installment of LSAT Diaries comes from RC, who took the October 2013 LSAT after completing 59 LSAT practice tests!  (Read part 1 of her LSAT diary.)

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Thanks to RC for sharing her experience and advice!

RC's LSAT Diary (Part 2):

Altogether, I took 59 full LSATs. I kept a spreadsheet of my scores and my percentage of correct answers by section to help me track my progress and weak spots. The big advantage of doing lots and lots of practice tests is that the LSAT becomes a habit. It was utterly tedious by the last week (except for LG, which got to be my favorite section by far!), but it was not scary. Demystifying the test and making it merely routine turned out to be more important than I could predict, for reasons I’ll explain shortly. I could walk in on test day saying to myself—and meaning it—“this is just like any other day.” By the end I was averaging 178, with scores ranging from 174 to 180. (The first timed test I took, I got a 165...and that was after I had taken a few untimed tests.)

But whooo, test day. I had sharpened dozens of pencils, bought three varieties of snack, printed extra passport photos; I’d visited the site the day before and made sure I knew how long it took to get there. The thing about being hyper-prepared, though, is that there’s always something you can’t prepare for. For instance, spending the night before the test vomiting up your body weight. I’m pretty sure it was something I ate; whatever the cause, I was up until the wee hours being violently ill. It was hard not to panic and at times (times like 4 AM) I wondered if I should show up just to cancel my score.

The one good thing about taking the test in Paris, though, was that it was at 2 PM. So I managed to sleep until about 10—far from a full night, but possibly not catastrophic, as it would have been if I’d had to get up at 6. I felt horrible in the morning, but I knew I had one weapon against fatigue, the only tool I’ve ever found that can really compensate for sleep deprivation: I went for a run. On my run I gave myself a pep talk worthy of an underdog sports drama. When I got back I danced my ass off to two Robyn songs and stood in power poses for five minutes. Then I made my way to the bus stop.

I waited five minutes, then ten. Eventually I asked the woman next to me if she knew when the next one was coming. She told me I’d just missed it and that the buses were running irregularly because of the neighborhood street festival I hadn’t remembered. I thought I’d left plenty of time, but a quick recalculation showed me I could be late. I sprinted back to my friend’s apartment and she helped me call a cab. The cab was late. All that not-panicking I’d been attempting was snuffed out. Finally I intercepted another cab and made it to the test center on time, stomach still roiling from illness and stress.

In the test center I took the preliminaries as an opportunity to reprise my pep talk and breathe deeply. My proctor cracked jokes but also clearly ran a tight ship, which set me at ease, and by the time Section I started I felt reasonably relaxed. And, while I don’t know how I did yet, the test seemed…fine. No surprises. No insane logic games. Just another PrepTest. Just like any other day, uh, sort of. Now I wait and see.

Oh, the other thing I did on test morning was make a list of tips to use during the test itself. Many of these I’ve never seen elsewhere, but these are the things that helped me the most each test, as opposed to long term. Here they are:

1. Avoid unfamiliar foods the day before the test. Okay, just one pre-test tip, so you don’t repeat my mistakes.

2. Visualize success. This is one we all know, but really. Especially if you’re nervous..

3. Read carefully and underline the main word in the stimulus. Sometimes I would get questions wrong because I was looking for “strengthen” when it said “weaken” or for where two people disagreed when it asked for where they agreed.

4. Check the bubbles frequently. Other times I filled in two bubbles on the same line and only realized the mistake many questions later. Don’t waste time erasing and rebubbling; make sure you’re in the right place every couple questions, and check that you’ve transcribed correctly if you have time left at the end of the section.

5. If you’re stuck, reread the question word by word, then the stimulus, then the rules (for logic games). Sometimes I’d panic during a logic game because one question seemed to throw the whole game into doubt; then it would turn out I’d missed a key word in the question.

6. If it still doesn’t make sense, revisit discarded answer choices. Because you have to move briskly, it’s easy to get in the habit of quickly ruling out answer choices that look wrong. This habit can be useful, but if you find yourself choosing between two bad options, make sure you haven’t prematurely eliminated the right one.

7. Remember to pay close attention to words of scale, especially if you’re torn between two answers. I frequently found myself stuck between two seemingly identical, or at least equally correct, answers. Often what makes one right and one wrong is a “probably” or an “always.”

8. Don’t freak out. Panicking will never help you. Take a second, breathe from the diaphragm, skip it and come back.

Photo by bobaubuchon