if I am drilling LG from recent PT's, am i screwing myself Forum

[flash21]

for later in my prep when I start doing timed PT's ? would my score be inaccurate because I may have seen the games before on those pt's?

[dkb17xzx]

The SOP is that you drill from earlier PT's while leaving the later ones for timed practice.

However if you read some of the threads, you'll notice people saying that LG on newer PT's are different that earlier ones - not all of them, but one or two of them. I would suggest taking one recent PT and analyzing the hell out of it. Look at the type of questions asked, look at the multiple solutions, and figure out what works for you. Save the other PT's for timed practice as you edge closer to your test.

There's a lot of LSAT gurus on the site. Ask them as well.

[californiauser]

Save recent PTs for the week leading up to your test.

I saved the 8 most recent PTs for the 7 days leading up to the test, and I'm glad I did.

[Reframe]

Contrary to the standard operating procedure, I normally recommend that students do some recent (what I call "modern") games fairly consistently throughout their prep. There are just too many stylistic and substantive differences between old games and new ones, and the optimally efficient methods are quite different for, e.g., PT1-40 than for PT41 on. You want to be "reminding" yourself of what the modern games look like as much as you can, and you don't want to go perfecting old-fashioned mechanical strategies just to sit down in October and take a four-game section where you don't need any of them.

I think this goes against conventional wisdom here and among most of the test prep companies, which has people spending a ton of time on old games, or deriving the approach from material comprised almost entirely of old games. If the test were likely to be an average of all of the other tests LSAC has put out, that would make a ton of sense. But actually the test is likely to be an extension of modern trends, and so when you practice, you always want to be practicing in ways appropriate to those trends.

[flash21]

So if I save the 10 most recent pts and do not look at any of their questions this is a good idea? Thanks.

[Reframe]

So if I save the 10 most recent pts and do not look at any of their questions this is a good idea? Thanks.

Several of my students who have done this have been surprised and confused by the newer material, and saw drops in their scores in the more recent tests. I don't recommend it.

[SteelPenguin]

So if I save the 10 most recent pts and do not look at any of their questions this is a good idea? Thanks.

I would save it for closer to the test, but two months away from the test you could start taking the most recent ones. With 9 PTs in the 60s, you could do around one a week and still get through them that way.

[steel_shot]

So if I save the 10 most recent pts and do not look at any of their questions this is a good idea? Thanks.

I just went from 1-38 for drills and then 39-68 for practice tests. I found using the cambridge drill sets was very helpful, before moving on to timed PTs. It may be worth saving the most recent 5 or so for the last two weeks, and then alternating between newer and older (e.g. do 39, then 51, then 40, then 54 or something). I really don't suggest doing tonnes of PTs the week before the test, I tried it before my actual LSAT and was exhausted for the write, I think more than two or three is overkill.