June lsat takers- what would you have done differently ? Forum

[October_2010_lsat]

Congrats on being done!!!

June lsat takers- what would you have done differently if you were starting your prep next week for the October lsat? Any advice to people like me who are going to start their prep for the October lsat?

[kkklick]

Congrats on being done!!!

June lsat takers- what would you have done differently if you were starting your prep next week for the October lsat? Any advice to people like me who are going to start their prep for the October lsat?

Not take the RC section lightly. Now my score is dependant on how hard or soft I bombed it

[Ship87]

I will probably be joining you in October. I would say don't take any section for granted, and make sure you study on the really difficult LG because they killed this test

[budafied]

Well, at this point, I could see my score ranging from 160 to 166, so I'm not sure if I'm screwed or not, haha.

But, I would study in an entirely different way. With problems I won't bother getting into, I wasn't able to do solid study until early May. I'll probably retake in Oct, especially if I score under 165. If I do retake, I'll be reading and memorizing all the PS books (didn't spend too much time on them the first time around) and donig legit 5-section preptests, covering about every one I haven't done yet, which is at least 25.

Hopefully that will result in a 170ish. But I feel I did well on June, so I'll have to wait until my score comes in...

[3|ink]

Some will tell you LG made this test hard. Others will tell you RC made it hard. And some will say LR made it hard. It is all relative to how many prep tests you take and how well you familiarize yourself with the material.

If I could start over, I'd work harder on games. I owned games all throughout my study period and I took them for granted. I paid for that today.

Don't get cocky. If you start to do well on one type of section (i.e. games), make sure you continue to study for that section as thoroughly throughout your study period. There's almost always something you haven't seen.

[Saltqjibo]

Make sure I got enough sleep. I couldn't sleep last night cuz of nerves and felt like I was in a fog the whole time. Couldn't read fast enough.

[malfurion]

I thought I had done a really good job of making my PT's as realistic as possible, but I now realize I should have done even more. I always started my PT's at an even time, for example 11:30:00 and did my sections back to back with exactly a 5-minute break between sections 3 and 4, so the times always lined up nicely and all that. On the real thing the sections start at times like 2:17:46 and the two clocks at the front of the room aren't perfectly synchronized, nor is your watch, so I never knew exactly how much time was left and that threw me off a bit. Also I hadn't prepared with an audible 5-minute warning and that was a mistake.. it definitely put me into a brief panic each time I heard the beeping sound and the announcement. If I had to do it over again, I would find a way to build that into my practice tests.

As far as actual studying of content, I don't think I'd change much really.

[Deep Trench]

Do not rush when you are reading rules and drawing diagrams for LG.

[James Bond]

Randomly guessing on LG would probably have yielded me better results. Those games were brutal.

[wjun15]

everything.

I was devastated that the hardest LR was first and then my second section, I couldn't figure out if the mulch game was even a game or not. I swear I wrote 7 lines and didnt even see any damn rules. Maybe it was a easy game, but just the fact that I had never seen anything like it before threw me off BIG TIME.

cancel is coming...

[yinzspurs]

I thought I had done a really good job of making my PT's as realistic as possible, but I now realize I should have done even more. I always started my PT's at an even time, for example 11:30:00 and did my sections back to back with exactly a 5-minute break between sections 3 and 4, so the times always lined up nicely and all that. On the real thing the sections start at times like 2:17:46 and the two clocks at the front of the room aren't perfectly synchronized, nor is your watch, so I never knew exactly how much time was left and that threw me off a bit. Also I hadn't prepared with an audible 5-minute warning and that was a mistake.. it definitely put me into a brief panic each time I heard the beeping sound and the announcement. If I had to do it over again, I would find a way to build that into my practice tests.

As far as actual studying of content, I don't think I'd change much really.

This is a good idea. Accounting for every element of the test exactly as it would be. I might try doing some tests in the quiet study of the library as well. Having people around who are also working offers the same sort of distracting things that the exam offers.

[James Bond]

everything.

I was devastated that the hardest LR was first and then my second section, I couldn't figure out if the mulch game was even a game or not. I swear I wrote 7 lines and didnt even see any damn rules. Maybe it was a easy game, but just the fact that I had never seen anything like it before threw me off BIG TIME.

cancel is coming...

...the mulch game is the only one I got

[malfurion]

This is a good idea. Accounting for every element of the test exactly as it would be. I might try doing some tests in the quiet study of the library as well. Having people around who are also working offers the same sort of distracting things that the exam offers.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of the "take your practice test at Starbucks" approach because you really don't hear people talking during the test. But you do hear a lot of little sounds, people shuffling around, the wooden pencils are really scratchy sounding on the shitty paper that the tests are printed on, etc. So a library is closer to the real thing, imo. But the best thing would definitely be if you knew other people studying for the test and you could all take your practice tests together in the same room or something like that.

[Dany]

Study with your analog watch. Do not use your iPhone. Do not use online-stopwatch.com. Set your analog watch to 12:00:00 before each section, and get used to using it for keeping time.

(Was anyone else surprised that the majority of people in their testing room didn't have watches at all?)

[oxford_don]

[]

[alex_cryp]

I was so shocked at how close I was to other test takers. I mean, right next to the other test takers--no elbow room, sitting on top of each other close. It was sooooo distracting. I'm 99 percent positive that I'll have to retake in October. One of my biggest priorities will be to practice with lots of distractions. I didn't ever think they would cram us in like that, I had a better experience taking my high school SATs. CRAZY!

[Sentry]

.

[LSATNightmares]

My problem was anxiety. I studied five months, took 20 PT's timed with experimental sections spliced in there, and took 15 PT's untimed as practice. I was scoring the 170's, and I bombed (like, randomly guessed on 7-8 problems) on today's LG. I couldn't retain my calmness and composure when things weren't going super well. I totally panicked. If I could redo it, I would try -- not sure how, though -- to practice on keeping composure.

[d34d9823]

Study with your analog watch. Do not use your iPhone. Do not use online-stopwatch.com. Set your analog watch to 12:00:00 before each section, and get used to using it for keeping time.

(Was anyone else surprised that the majority of people in their testing room didn't have watches at all?)

I didn't take a watch. I feel like as long as I pace myself, I'll finish or I won't. Worrying about time just slows you down.

[cmutone]

The thing is what screwed me on this test is something that has NEVER screwed me before - losing it on the very first games question. When it didnt come right away after grabbing the rules, I froze. I don't know if this is an eventuality you could prepare yourself for but I wish I had moved more quickly to the second game, I sat there for five minutes panicking. in retrospect, I would've just moved on and gotten more of the last two games which I had to guess on. I came back to game one after doing game two and finished it, but by then I had something like 12 minutes left for the last two games, I was fucked.

[sch0123]

i need to figure out how i'm going to not mess up the LG section. I can generally make deductions quickly and get -0 on MOST of the pacing LG sections or practice tests I do, but somehow managed to just blank on my 2nd LG section today (I went LG, LR, LG, LR, RC).


I spent so much time trying to perfect my LR, mainly because I enjoy working on that section more than the other two. I was worried that I'd be thrown a tough game or two and would struggle, and should have figured out a way to better prepare myself for this seeming inevitability.

[jamlip]

Probably could've just dropped acid and tripped balls the entire test. Would've done me just as much good as actually taking it seriously.

[October_2010_lsat]

Thanks for the replies.

[filmorejive]

I thought I had done a really good job of making my PT's as realistic as possible, but I now realize I should have done even more. I always started my PT's at an even time, for example 11:30:00 and did my sections back to back with exactly a 5-minute break between sections 3 and 4, so the times always lined up nicely and all that. On the real thing the sections start at times like 2:17:46 and the two clocks at the front of the room aren't perfectly synchronized, nor is your watch, so I never knew exactly how much time was left and that threw me off a bit. Also I hadn't prepared with an audible 5-minute warning and that was a mistake.. it definitely put me into a brief panic each time I heard the beeping sound and the announcement. If I had to do it over again, I would find a way to build that into my practice tests.

As far as actual studying of content, I don't think I'd change much really.

Advice for future test takers:

Change your watch to a time that makes it easy for you to remember. I started it at 12:00 and went exactly when the test started, then I could easily get 12:35-1:10 for the next section if there wasn't time to adjust my watch--then leading to 1:10-1:45. Tiny things like that can help big time since it's one less stress of "okay what's 35 minutes from 2:27."

[MiamiUG]

My advice to you is to not get too sucked in to reading this site. Sure, its great to get advice from fellow test takers, especially on a site like this where people take things pretty seriously. The problem is that it can get to your head when you constantly think about how OTHER people prep and how much they stress out before the test. I wouldn't even look at this site the last few weeks before the test; worry about your own abilities and don't read too much into anything you hear on this site.