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LSAT cram courses - yea or nah?
Overseas LSAT vs. North American LSAT + LSAT-India
"Any differences in tests administered in the US and those outside the US? I got another one also about the Asia test? Is there any difference between overseas and North America? I assume there wouldn't be any, but still wanted to ask someone with more expertise just to be sure."
It turns out that there is a difference -- in that it's not the same test form.
If you get a circle game about monkeys, someone in Asia might get a pure sequencing game about clowns - you get yours and they get theirs and there's no overlap.
So the people who are taking the test overseas a month from now, or a week from now, whatever it is, or they're taking the Sabbath observers' tests, it's not as if they're going to get advanced knowledge on the internet from everyone taking it now and everyone taking it on your test date.
So don't worry. Nothing unfair is happening here. The test is exactly the same in nature in that it's meant to be of equal difficulty. They're also going to have one Logic Games section, one Reading Comp section, two Logical Reasoning sections, and the experimental. And they'll also have the 35-minute constraint, and everything else will be pretty much the same.
As a bit of LSAC trivia, the LSAT-India exam is a little bit different in that that's a test administered for law as an undergrad-level degree. Whereas in North America, the LSAT is used for admission to law as a graduate-level degree and program. So for that reason, the LSAT India only has four answer choices per question, whereas everyone else for the regular grad-level LSAT has five answer choices per question.
So if you ever come across LSAT-India practice exams, you might notice that small difference, but that's pretty much it. One reason LSAC doesn't release every test administered is because they want to save some exams, i.e. some test forms, to use for overseas administrations and to use for Sabbath observers, or if something goes wrong due to the weather and they have to delay by a few weeks.
There's no benefit to taking it one location or another. It really just depends ultimately on which is the best test center for you.
I saw one photo where test-takers in India (taking the LSAT-India) they seemed pretty crammed in small desks very close together.
Maybe certain test centers in other big cities could be just as crowded and maybe not the nicest facilities. I've heard reports from students taking the LSAT in places like Beijing and Rome, and I've heard reports that those test centers might not be the nicest.
Do your research. There is an advantage to taking the LSAT when your test center is going to be relatively nicer.
For more, I've got an entire playlist focused on LSAT Test Day prep here -----> and several articles on LSAT Test Day prep here ----->
"What non-LSAT materials should I read?"
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LSAT Test Day Food, Bathroom Break, and Clothing
LSAT Test Day Food
What to eat and drink? I would recommend keeping it simple and light the morning of.
For example, oatmeal, eggs, or a banana. Protein is good. Energy bars are totally fine. I wouldn't try anything new on Test Day. I wouldn't eat something that I hadn't ever eaten before - like a bagel with tuna fish immediately upon waking up, for example. That's a really bad idea.
The night before, I would not eat anything too heavy. I would try to keep it light so that you can sleep well. So again, nothing you haven't eaten before. I wouldn't eat too late at night. I wouldn't eat anything especially spicy. I wouldn't go to the all-you-can-eat buffet. None of those things are likely to end well. You want to go to bed early, you want to go to bed on a fairly light stomach, but not being hungry.
As for what to drink the morning of, coffee's fine. If you already drink coffee, don't change anything. Keep with that if it works for you. You don't want to have a caffeine headache. But also keep in mind that coffee is a diuretic, so you don't want anything that will make you have to go to the bathroom too often or for any reason.
LSAT Bathroom Breaks
So that relates also to a question I've gotten about bathroom jitters. “Has any student asked you about bathroom jitters, such as nerves creating the urge to go? Maybe the coffee or water is just doing their thing.”
I get what you mean. Nerves can definitely do that to a person and it's happened to me at times. I would say reduce your coffee, reduce your water, still have what you need. They’re a symptom of a root cause, which is anxiety, and this is normal. So if you can reduce anxiety, you can reduce your bathroom jitters.
So I'd be walking through best case and worst case scenarios, three to five years from now. The more you do that for yourself, the more real you make it, the more your anxiety will diminish because you'll see that the awful negative, your catastrophic outcome that you're envisioning for yourself, isn't necessarily as bad as you think it is and things can turn around for you.
LSAT Dress for Success
If you're worried the room could be too hot or too cold, you might want to think about dressing for comfort overall. For other people, wearing a button-down or a suit and dress shoes might help them feel confidence and going in dressed professionally. For other people that might be really comfortable. For me personally, that would be a bit uncomfortable. And so I wouldn't do that.
I would have loved to wear a hoodie on test day, but they don't permit those. I actually did bring a hoodie when I took the LSAT because I didn’t know about this and I actually had to leave it outside because the proctors wouldn't hold onto it.
But comfort is important. If you want to wear sweatpants or basketball shorts, I think that's perfectly fine. If you want to wear flip flops, totally fine. It's what about whatever works for you.
For more, I've got an entire playlist focused on LSAT Test Day prep here -----> and several articles on LSAT Test Day prep here ----->
LSAT Reading Comp, Logic Games, and Logical Reasoning with 5 Minutes Left
"Any strategy in reading comp if I have only five minutes left when I get to the last passage or game?"
If you have five minutes left, you want to go back and attack anything you had difficulty with previously in the section.
So if there's a tough problem you encountered, you weren't sure about, spend a few extra minutes on that.
If you have five minutes left for the last passage or even the last game, your odds obviously are not going to be that high.
(Keep in mind our average amount of time allotted is 8 minutes and 45 seconds.)
You want to attack any general global questions for reading comp. So those would be: main point, primary purpose, passage organization, best title for the passage, author's tone, anything general in nature, those are easier to knock out.
And those are the sorts of things that you want to be knocking out anyway when you're reading the passage for the first time. That's what you want to walk away with.
If you had five minutes left when you got to the last logic game, that's a very different story. In that case, you want to make your main diagram, answer any orientation questions, then answer any local questions because those give you a jumping off point.
You simply have to draw the diagram for those. There's no major inference that you need to have seen at the beginning.
If you had only five minutes left and you still had something like 10 hard logical reasoning questions remaining, then I would probably just focus on a few of those hard ones because they require the time.
You might not be able to solve them in only 30 seconds per question. That doesn't strike me as the most reasonable course of action. So I'd be thinking about just cutting your losses and doing fewer rather than trying to attempt everything.
That's a general theme of my answer for this question:
Don't try to do an extraordinary amount of questions in a very short period of time because the harder questions have a greater deal of complexity and will actually require more of you than the easier questions that would appear earlier.
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How my toughest LSAT students increased their scores (by a LOT)
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