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Studied just an old 03' book, some old tests, and got hands on recent '11 booklets just before test day.

I was actually thrown off that the real test questions weren't nearly as advanced/difficult as ones in practice books. My time was spent trying to nail the incredibly long game questions that filled the 2011 book. Not seeing these types actually hurt me during the test.

EX-Lgames sequencing in the 2011 ptests has 8-9 parts each. I saw just basic simple questions I studied in my initial practice. The reading passages were also simple without twists in opinion/topic. Fine with me on that one.

Is this common for test to be a bit more straightforward? Do they try to overprepare you?

If you were practicing with material that were either official LSAC (Prep Tests) or had official questions (PowerScore Bibles, etc) then the questions should have been equivalent. Any material that didn't provide official LSAT questions is not as helpful, because it doesn't prepare you for the actual test.

I took 25+ official LSAC preptests and they were all similar in difficulty to the February test. While certain sections might differ in difficulty, the tests overall are equivalent. However, I also looked through the Kaplan book and felt that some of their questions were either too easy or too difficult. If you are planning on retaking, I would recommend only using official materials.

DILLONMKCC wrote:recent '11 booklets

As asked above, what the heck were these? Presumably not official LSAT materials, so...? You want to work with real LSAT questions as much as possible, in general.

DILLONMKCC wrote:Is this common for test to be a bit more straightforward? Do they try to overprepare you?

If you work with real LSAT questions from released tests, you never have to worry about this. The test has not significantly changed since 1991. There were some minor changes in 2007, and the style and emphasis always fluctuates slightly, but this is not terribly significant.