Here's an excerpt from the interview:
I know a few students who scored close to 180 on practice exams. Then, on the LSAT, they plummeted 10 points.
How can one make sure the scores they’re getting on their practice exams are a real indicator of what they'll get on the actual exam?
Steve: I hear about things like this happening all the time. People are scoring close to 180 and then dropping 10 points. There are people all across the spectrum who have what I would call a ‘test day drop’, and there are a variety of reasons this can happen.
There are two main reasons I can think of. Firstly: nerves and stress. The other big reason is not practicing under real test day conditions. Regarding nerves and stress, some people find stress actually boosts their score. There’s positive stress, which lets people shine. Then, there are other people who kind of fall apart under stress, and that’s a big topic. I’m not an expert on stress, in general, but one thing I’ve heard that can help people with stress reduction or anxiety reduction is meditation, which I talked about on my blog. It’s something that a lot of people are interested in, and it applies to the LSAT. So, meditation, any kind of stress reduction technique, could be helpful to make test day just seem like another practice test.
Another way to reduce test day stress would be to practice under conditions similar to those you will be experiencing on test day, as much as you can, to make your actual exam simply nothing more than just another practice test, another one in the long line of exams you’ve already taken. Okay, just talking about practicing under real conditions, a big part of that is strictly timing yourself, not taking a break in the middle of a section to go get a drink or going to the bathroom and pausing the clock while you do that. If you want to go do that, the clock’s going to be running. It’s like on test day, or you can wait until the break.
Also, taking five-section exams rather than just four section exams is a good idea because on test day you will have that experimental section, and you need to factor that into your studying so that you will be accustomed to developing that level of endurance that you’re going to have to deal with on test day. So, don’t do only four sections on your practices and then do five on test day and be like, “Geez, I was so tired by the last section.” You have to be practicing under those realistic conditions. Otherwise, your scores could be falsely inflated when you’re getting those super-high scores, and then you’ll see that drop.
If you’re scoring 155, it might be safe to assume that your actual test will be 3 or 4 points lower than that, but with a 180, you can’t get 183. So, how can you make sure that your score stays up there? We all know about the fight-and-flight reactions. People don't realize how much test anxiety can lower your score, and if we might put even 1% of what we’re actually studying into meditation, or any other method that could lower stress, it’s well worth it.
Steve: When I've talked about meditation on LSAT Blog, I was actually talking about meditation as it applies to developing focus and concentration, helping you avoid getting distracted when you have to read those really dense, and often boring, passages or logical reasoning stimuli, but I think it has a number of other benefits too. It doesn’t even have to be something spiritual. It could just be something that you do for practical reasons to just gain the benefits of it.
There are other ideas that you also have on your blog, such as playing the famous Dual N Back game to improve logic games, as well as other ideas that are intended to improve the underlying skills to the LSAT. So, how much time should one dedicate to these non-directive ways of improving vs. traditional LSAT studying?
Steve: Meditation, in particular, has such a variety of benefits that I think even just devoting five minutes to it a day could really help a lot. Of course, if you don’t like it, don’t do it, but at least give it a shot. Five minutes a day - I would certainly recommend that for anyone preparing for the LSAT.
It remains to be seen how much Dual N Back would help, but I know a lot of people like to play sudoku as a way to try to help with their logic game performance. I think they both have some loose relationship to LSAT Logic Games or LSAT Logical Reasoning, in terms of making inferences, but I wouldn’t count sudoku or Dual N Back as LSAT study time.
So, don’t say, “I’m not going to bother doing LSAT logic games because I did Dual N Back today, or “I did Dual N Back for 20 minutes. That’s 20 minutes of LSAT studying.” I think that non-LSAT puzzles are something that could be a supplement to studying, something you do to take a break, or maybe if you’re taking the LSAT a year or two from now and you want to casually get into studying without doing something as focused as actual LSAT problems, these can be a good way to dip your feet in the water without getting too stressed or too focused on this.
I would say that they don’t really count as studying, but sudoku is a great thing to do. It’s a great way to do some studying during your commute to work if you’re taking the train or the bus, maybe, but you don’t have enough focus during your commute to actually look at LSAT-specific things. As always, the best way to improve your LSAT score is to do actual LSAT problems, read LSAT books or watch LSAT videos.
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