What do you before you take a full PT? Forum

[Freyer92]

About to take one, to see where I'm at. I've noticed it helps that I'm "in the mood" by maybe practicing a little here or there. Getting a good breakfast, using the bathroom, and all of that. What are your prep steps?

[papercut]

About to take one, to see where I'm at. I've noticed it helps that I'm "in the mood" by maybe practicing a little here or there. Getting a good breakfast, using the bathroom, and all of that. What are your prep steps?

Make sure you do it in the morning around 9AM, since that's when you'll be doing the real thing.

I think it's different for different people.

I don't like to eat anything, and I drink just enough to wet my mouth and feel comfortable. Basically, I don't want to get gassy during the test.

I also went for really short jogs in the morning. It woke me up and made me feel less nervous.

Finally, I would remind myself to just deal with unexpected noises, really difficult questions early in the test, and to reset mentally after each question.

[banjo]

I used to drink a XL cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee with skim milk and splenda. I also walked ~2 miles to the library for PTs and walked to my exam center in Chelsea on test day. Both the coffee and the light exercise REALLY helped.

[Jeffort]

There is no one size fits all answer for this, so you have to experiment a bit to figure out which combination of things works best for optimal performance for you personally. What works for some doesn't for others. One thing a lot of people find helpful is doing a little bit of warm-up at least an hour before starting the PT, such as a game or two, RC passage and handful of LR questions just to get the LSAT gears warmed up.

Keep in mind the June is test is afternoon, not a morning administration so you need to figure out routines that work with 12:30pm reporting deadline on test day. Figuring out a good diet and routine with some exercise, good sleep wake cycles, etc. is important for keeping your body and brain in good condition and for stress relief.

Other than that, take your PTs in unfamiliar environments rather than the comfort of your room or wherever. You don't want to take your PTs under super cozy conditions you engineer on purpose to do better since you have no control over the environment on test day. Head to a library or bookstore or somewhere with some minimal level of distractions and unfamiliar room/desk if you want accurate assessments for test day prediction purposes. It's easy to inflate PT scores just by making your testing conditions extra perfect/comfortable and sometimes cutting a few corners with things like strict timing/breaks/no water on the desk/etc.

Honestly stick to strict test day conditions/rules in all ways so that your PT scores are accurate, that's the most important thing. No extra bathroom breaks, pauses between sections, bubbling a few seconds after time expired, etc. People do that type of stuff all the time on PTs and end up with false inflated beliefs about current score/ability range.