Once you think you’ve escaped the power of standardized testing, they pull you back in. Making the transition from undergraduate to graduate school means more testing to gauge your intelligence and ability, and the LSAT is the test to end all tests for wannabe lawyers. A great score can mean a ticket to a top-tier law school and a future partnership. A bad score can mean a lifetime of chewing bonbons and wistfully watching reruns of “Matlock” on afternoon TV. Here’s how to make sure that you end up in the first group.
1. Relax- Oxygen is your friend, it helps your brain work. If you stop breathing you stop thinking, so freezing up with stress is not going to help at all. Start with a good night’s sleep, then stretch well as soon as you get up in the morning. Once you’re in the test, make sure to take deep breaths whenever you feel yourself tensing up, and stretch your arms occasionally to prevent cramping.
Along these same lines, try to avoid too much caffeine! One cup of coffee might help you rev your engine in the morning and get ready, but more than that is going to leave you nervous and unfocused once all of that caffeine starts to settle mid-exam. Start with a cup of joe, then switch over to juice or water.
2. Guess- Unlike the SATs, the LSATS have no point reductions or penalties for incorrect answers, only correct answers affect the final scoring. That means it’s time to switch mental gears and to start guessing. Any standardized test usually has one or two multiple-choice options that are simply untenable, so cross those out first. Then eliminate any further options possible, then cross you fingers and go with your gut. At this point you’ll have a 50-50 shot, so the numbers are on your side.
3. Let Them Go – Once you answer a question, suck it up and move along. Once you’re stumped on a question, suck it up and move along. Once a full minute or two has passed on the clock, suck it up and move along. See a pattern developing here? The LSAT is a test of time-management and momentum, so if you freeze up on a question you’re dead in the water. That’s not to say that one bad answer will kill you, it’s more a question of inertia. Just stay limber and mobile and you’ll be fine…
Along these same lines, research educational research has indicated that students who change their answers on a multiple-choice examination more often change the answer from right to wrong than wrong to right. What’s that mean for you the tester? Keep it simple stupid, and don’t start second guessing your answers or you’ll drive yourself crazy.
4. Play Games- All of the review courses in the world aren’t going to prepare for the full in-your-face challenge of the reasoning problems. But fear not intrepid Epinionator, there is still hope for you. My secret to effective and hardcore LSAT training? Those cheesy puzzle books you see in grocery stores and magazine racks, the ones marked Logic Problems.
These puzzles, all based upon collating and interpreting a situation from a set of clues(Who has a red car? Who drinks hot cocoa?), are an accurate simulation of what the LSAT problems are going to look like. To properly solve the puzzle you need to understand the mechanics of the game, from reading between the lines(If the stop light isn’t red or yellow than it must be green) to creating helpful sketches to help you plot out your ideas. All of this can be learned by playing around with a good puzzle book that has a descriptive answer key, Games Magazine for instance.
5. Study Logic- Not to brag, but I’m great at standardized testing. Can’t throw a football worth a damn, but I can tear through Scantron like a hot knife through butter. Take it from me, you will not make it through the logic section of this test without studying. The questions all circulate around semantics and logical fallacies, things that are common sense but for which you may not know the name. A one-day study session with any of the LSAT books, I preferred Kaplans, will give you all of the necessary vocabulary and concepts to ace what is a really easy section of the test.