LSAT Prep Diary: Retaking The LSAT

This installment of LSAT Diaries comes from Sarah, a 22-year-old college student studying for the June 2011 LSAT.

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Please leave Sarah some encouragement and advice below in the comments!

Sarah's LSAT Diary:

Hey fellow LSAT-ers! I write to you as I procrastinate a little bit longer on my studying.

I turned 22 years old (suckily enough, right in between taking the LSAT, and getting my score back. Can you say wasted-birthday-wish?). I spent the last 3 years working full-time, and going to school full-time. I have pretty much completely my undergrad but due to so many changes and new developments, I’m still working through the remainder of my undergrad, chalking up a minor in Humanities to partner my major in Criminology. My GPA has been at mediocre to decent all throughout. I have my great references and extra-curricular activities and all that and eventually placed a lot of pressure on my LSAT.

Actually, before I even get to that, I pretty much didn’t study for my LSAT until about a month prior to it. Up until that point, I fooled myself into thinking I was studying. To be fair, up until that point, I also thought I would be heading to England for law school who didn’t need an LSAT score or anything, really. However, because of the difficulties in returning to Canada to pursue a career in law with an international degree, my plans changed, and I realized I had to actually study for the LSAT.

After researching several schools and realizing my slim shot of getting in, I found a couple I would probably be considered competitive for. I’m one of those people that needs to be organized and I need to have a plan for everything. Everything that's happened up until this moment appears to be hindering my main plan. What’s my main plan? Pass my LSAT, get into a law school, practice law, be fabulously rich? Well, close. Even still, I stressed in so many different ways, I think my body went into shock from being stressed as I don’t think I’ve ever really been significantly stressed, ever. I put this enormous pressure on myself to study and do well on my LSATs but also found it difficult to study. Granted, I was doing one class a week, which is nothing compared to some of you but between work and my own personal pressures breaking me down slowly I got very little accomplished.

So, let’s see. I submitted my law school applications (for Canadian schools) by November 1, because that was their deadline and I was under the impression I would be leaving, so I just didn’t care all that much. Usually, my obsessive-compulsive need to be ahead of the rest, need to have everything prepared and ready to go when needed would have had these applications in by September 31 (the day applications are accepted) in an express post FedEx envelope.

Alas, my lack of caring for Canadian schools won over and I procrastinated and somehow managed to get everything in by November 1. Pathetic. I realized I wanted to actually go to a Canadian law school by end of the second week of November and immediately realized studying for the LSAT was an absolute must. I assumed the maybe combined 3 days of studying I’d done since the summer would give me a tiny head start. I was so wrong on that one, it was almost funny.

Anyway, I started studying, of course I hated that it would interrupt my life after work so most of my studying took place at work where I’m a receptionist for a big investment banking firm, and something else that I don’t totally understand. To be fair, I also went home each night, dead tired from the day that I knew if I took out an LSAT book and saw those misleading bright colors I would shoot myself in the foot just to get away. So, I went to work each day, played out Genius Plan Number 1 and worked through about 4 logic games in the span of 8 hours (not because I was insanely slow, just because of all the disruptions).

By disruptions, I’m talking about everything: the creepy delivery men chatting it up to me, the visitors that happened to be downtown that thought they should come say hi, numerous layoffs resulting in me doing actual work, actual work I had to do, and above all else, my colleagues coming up to me and just to give you a really good picture, I’ll transcribe a full transcript of the conversation I went through about once an hour:

Colleague: ooh what are you studying for?

Me: The LSAT

Colleague: Wow! Law school? Nice!

Me: I know, really trying to get some studying in.

Colleague: Oh! Give me a question, let me see if I can do it..

This happened so often, I think the rest of the employees did more questions combined than I did. The best was when they’d do a question so much faster and bitch about how easy it was… that was just fantastic, just absolutely-kick you-in-the-crotch fantastic. So, to sum up, I did basically nothing and got very little done, but I figured I could make it all up with Genius Plan Number 2. Ready? Take the week before the LSAT off and do 2 tests a day (including the Friday before my Saturday test). I should mention here, I was super-sick and coughing and sneezing and flu-y all over. Fast forward to week off, I studied every single day. I woke up around the same time needed for the test, burnt myself out each night by 7, passed out, and did it again. This happened till Thursday.

At this point, everyone told me to stop studying and I finally listened, and I went to my office Christmas party. As usual, I got quite drunk, went home at 3:30am, woke up at 8am to get back to my house on campus, slept till 12, woke up and did a test from about 2-5pm, my boyfriend came to pick me up at 6pm to drive to another city about an hour and a half away for us to write our tests, we get there at 8pm, go to a grocery store, find a nice coffee area and work out some questions, realize nothing is being done, head to the sleazy motel (which was EXACTLY like all horror movie motels, I didn’t know those actually existed), fell asleep around 12am, woke up at 7am, coughing and sniffling (EVEN MORE!) and with a slight fever and went to write the test.

Interesting note: I JUST got rid of that same cold about 2 days ago. By the way, the week I took off was filled with sleepless nights of coughing and sneezing, and when I did sleep I was grinding my teeth, to the point that it got so bad I had to get a night guard for them because they started to shake. Oh, also to add, to all you women out there and more mature males, I stressed myself to the point of being late by 2 weeks! That is very significant!

My first section was the RC, got through 3 passages, thought I did well, ran out of time and guessed the last one. Then came LR, which whatever, I thought I did fine. Then came LG, which was super easy and my delusional fevered self hoped and prayed it would be scored. Guess what, section 4 was also LG, yay! Failed that, pretty much got through 1, guessed 2 and a half because that first question in all LGs can basically be solved by reading the rules and elimination. By the way, during the break in between my boyfriend felt my forehead and I was literally burning up. The fifth section was LR, which not to brag, because I have so little room to do that, I did AWESOME. I <3 the writing sample, I love writing, it was actually fun.

Anyway, they call time and say we can leave. I literally run out of the room with my boyfriend behind me and we’re walking to the car and he tells me about how it went for him. Now, just to divert a bit, my boyfriend started studying about the same I did (second week of November) and did MAYBE 3 sets every 2 days. The week before the LSAT, he didn’t stress AT ALL, and did MAYBE 4 tests in all that time. He slept well everyday, actually, he played videogames all night and pretty much let nothing affect him.

I decide to not cancel mine (even though I wish I had) just because my applications would have been completely invalid. In retrospect, the applications just made the deadline, definitely not as good as I could have made them, it probably wouldn’t have been the biggest loss of 700$. Damn. I’m having one of those super-annoying realizations right this second about how cancelling would have been smart. Ah well, can’t dwell on that.

So, I hope and wait for my score. This is quite a depressing moment of the story and I’ve tried so hard to forget this number, so I’m going to just rip it off bandaid style, I got a 147 (practice tests = 160/163). My boyfriend got a 160 (practice tests ranging from 150-170). I cursed myself for not being more carefree like him and realizing that stress will hinder my ability. Neither me or him have ever thought that it was because he’s smarter academically. Rather, we’ve realized how our styles of benefited him and failed me completely.

This is getting pretty long, so I’ll start wrapping up. I eventually found LSAT Blog and read everything I could about it. I bought the 4 month LSAT study schedule.

I know it seems strange that I would have any good advice to give in this situation, but believe me I do. With comparing my situation and my boyfriends: don’t stress, don’t lose sleep, don’t cram.

Those are three things that can influence so much of your score. Being sick the day of the test will affect you in ways you don’t even see until you’re looking at it from a different perspective. Don’t get me wrong, I did not study even a fraction of how much I should have and that played a LARGE role in my score, obviously. Keep in mind that external factors can have a huge toll on your performance.

This time, I'm studying with the ever-so-helpful accompaniment of Steve’s LSAT study schedule, and focusing on what he says. I’m going to pretend I haven’t studied anything for this test and I’m just going to do a gradual study for the next 4-5 months as opposed to cramming it into a week or so. I don’t want to have to do this three times, not even for the obvious reasons of schools looking down on it or anything to that affect, I cannot bear the thought of studying for this crap again. So, this time, I will not stress, I will eat healthy, I will remind myself that cramming is useless, I will tell myself that I need to take a break, and doing 2 tests per day is the stupidest idea I’ve ever had (at least for myself, it might work for some of you, but I highly discourage that).

But seriously, good luck to all you test-takers, I’ll be right there without you, where we’re all going to sit down, write this test, and move on with our lives. It’s not the end of the world. I know it’s easy to say it, but another to live up to it, but it’s just so true. I realize that now, unfortunately too late, but still, its not the end. Stressing to the point of being unhealthy and sick is just not worth it. Writing this has now made me more positive and ready to conquer this. Now, I'm no longer scared of that 147, but rather it's a reminder of how I went wrong, and what I need to do to improve and what strategies absolutely did not work. It's my motivation now.

Good luck everyone!

Photo by lij