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Hey guys,

1L here at a top 30 school. I'm one of those students that needs to take a lot of practice tests to do well on the real exam. Good thing is I don't mind putting in the work.

I'm just wondering how to best manage fitting in practice tests during the week? I'm currently caught up on my outlines for two of my classes and the other class is half way done. I'm pretty busy during the week with readings, just starting to figure out I don't have to brief as much as I was before to get the rules so this might give me more time but I usually use that to go over and look at Supp readings.

So far my best chance at taking practice tests seems to fit one or two in on the weekend. I figure I can get all of my readings done for Monday on Friday, catch up to my outlines on Saturday, and fit in a test or two on Sunday. This doesn't account for weeks that I have something due for legal research or writing classes. In that case, my Sunday's will probably be taken up by those classes.

I'm concerned that taking one practice test a week from now on isn't going to give me enough exposure to really do well on the real thing.

Thanks for your help!

It's not going to help you much if you take practice exams before learning more material. It's still pretty early on in the semester and your professors have a lot more material to cover - you just won't know enough for the exams to be useful at this point. Keep up to date with your outlines, and plan to start taking practice tests around Thanksgiving. You can try to schedule one practice test per day starting Thanksgiving break and in the days leading up to your exams.

Or do you go to a school where your exams are really early for some reason?

Slytherpuff wrote: plan to start taking practice tests around Thanksgiving.

This would be my advice as well. You don't know enough about the classes now to take practice exams; Thanksgiving is usually the earliest point at which you will be ready. Right now just focus on your outlining.

Okay that makes sense, especially for some classes.

Once I'm at the point where I can reasonably take the practice test and identify most issues, is the standard advice to try and knock out two a week? Seems like a lot but manageable.

I don't know if my advice is standard, but I alternated between writing out full exam answers and outlining exam answers every night for 2 weeks leading up to the exam.

I think it depends on how many exams are available, really.

Sorry, I'm not exactly sure what outlining answers means?

I think it is a mistake to wait until Thanksgiving to begin writing practice exams. The key is getting detailed feedback. You have already indicated that taking a lot of exams is going to help you the most but the truth is that your professor is not going to look at them all so you need a reliable alternative. Model answers or a strong study group can help a lot but also look into this:

mod edit: don't advertise

anonQs2019 wrote:Sorry, I'm not exactly sure what outlining answers means?

Prepare an outline of what your answer would hit for issue spotting purposes. For torts, for example, you might have an outline answer that looks like:

I. Trespass to land
A. Elements: voluntary, unprivileged entry onto the land of another (damages not necessary)
B. Defenses: here, John can probably argue that his entry was not voluntary because Susie pushed him onto Bob's land. The Williamsons can argue their entry was privileged because of the defense of necessity because they were caught in a snowstorm and sheltering in Bob's barn saved their lives (they will have to pay for any actual damages caused though).
II. Negligence
A. Elements: duty, breach, causation, damages
etc.

Outlining allows you to read and issue spot more fact patterns than writing full questions would. At the same time, however, there is value to actually typing out full exam answers too, which is why the (I think correct) advice is to do both.