How to Study for the LSAT (according to a 176 scorer) Part Two: Make Your Review Count
You can check out Part One: Take a Dang LSAT here!
So, you’ve taken your first LSAT! I’m sure you missed some questions - probably a lot. Don’t be surprised, and don’t be discouraged. Tough love: this test is hard. Did you really think you were going to do perfectly the first time?
By the way, if you do score perfectly the first time, you do not need this LSAT blog and should immediately sign up to donate your brain to science.
Anyway, you missed some questions. Maybe you had no stinking idea what was happening with the logic games or didn’t even get to the third or fourth reading comprehension passages. You’d be in good company if that’s the case!
The most important thing to do is make sure that you take the time to review what you missed - if you missed the question and review it until you understand it completely, you will be so much more likely to kick butt on the next question like that one.
That’s what’s kinda “breakable” about the LSAT - the questions have a lot of similarities. You’re using the same basic skill when answering any question, from any PrepTest. That’s what makes quality review so valuable!
How to review well:
First, don’t rush it. You need to accept that studying for the LSAT is going to cut into your time in a big way. Don’t tell me you don’t have time to review your answers if you’re still watching two hours of Netflix or sleeping in for an extra hour every morning.
Those of you who have a lot of responsibilities might really need to move things around in your life. You might be hiring a babysitter or taking on fewer hours at work. The LSAT is worth doing only if you’re going to do it right. Otherwise, you’re just giving LSAC $200 to take a test you didn’t prepare for.
So let’s say you took a Logical Reasoning section with 25 questions. You timed yourself (35 minutes) and only finished 21 of the questions. What do you do now?
Well, the first thing you should do is mark what questions you completed within the timespan. In other words, don’t count any of the questions past number 21 as correct. However, since you got those bonus questions for practice, you should go ahead and attempt them now, untimed.
Once you’ve answered all 25, you can check your answers. You’ll probably find you missed fewer questions toward the beginning of the section and more toward the end. This is for two main reasons:
First, the questions in all sections (Logical Reasoning, Reading Comprehension, and Logic Games/“Analytical Reasoning”) tend to get harder as you go on. This is why anyone who tells you that you should attempt some of the last questions in the section first is a ding-dong and should not be listened to. You want to take advantage of the easier questions, because they’re worth the exact same amount (one point each) as the harder ones.
Second, you might find that your brain starts to fatigue at the end of the section. Focusing for 35 minutes on an LSAT section is actually fairly taxing for the vast majority of people. I’m planning a little video on avoiding brain fatigue that I’ll link here, but the best thing you can do is practice 35-minute timed sections and build that stamina.
So at this point, you’ve got a list of questions you got wrong - I want you to look back at the question without the correct answer. You’ll learn a lot more by figuring it out yourself than just being told, “It was B!” and pretending you made that connection.
You’ll read the simulus again, but this time you won’t be reading it as part of this stressful, timed-test situation. This time, you can take as long as you want. Your only goal is to see what they’re talking about.
Pretty frequently, you might notice that you just straight-up missed a word or misread a part of the stimulus. If that’s the case, see if you can answer it correctly and make a mental note to slow down with your reading.
But on the other hand, you’ll have plenty of questions you really struggle with and can’t figure out. You might not be able to see why your answer was wrong, or what other answer could possibly be right. You might even peek to see what the right answer is and be totally unsure why it’s supposed to be right.
I want you to really lean into these moments, because this is when you’re going to make the most progress. Grinding through these challenging questions is how you eventually make some awesome breakthroughs.
This is also where having a tutor comes in handy (shameless self-promotion!). Sometimes, you just need another person to show you how the question and answer really work, or help it all connect. Especially when you’re new to the test, you’ll hit a few brick walls. Those are the times you tend to really make the most progress, because you’re really learning as opposed to just skating by on what you could already do.
So, salient points?
1. Set aside at least an hour to take a 35 minute section, grade it, and go over the questions you missed. It’s not worth rushing this, because if you just take the section and don’t review what you missed, you’ll only learn what you might have accidentally taken in from attempting the questions. It’s thoroughly reviewing the answers that will get you the improvement you need.
2. Embrace the struggle. You can learn a little when things are easy; you’ll make small improvements just by showing up. But when you’re hitting the wall and learning to scale it, you’ll be making big gains. That’s the grind that will give you a ten-point increase after a few months.
3. Don’t be surprised when it’s hard, and don’t forget to seek help when you need it.
You Can LSAT!
