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I took the December LSAT this morning and since I do not want to think about the test AT ALL at least in the next few weeks, I'll just write a few things down here that I wish I had done before I forget. Those of you who plan to take the test might find these things to avoid:


1. I wish I had done a warm-up section of LG before the test this morning. I arrived at the test center 15 minutes early, and found a room near the test room to do warm-up. I did a RC article and a couple of LR questions before I found that the registrations has started. While I could have done a LG warm-up when people were lining up, I instead thought the LG shouldn't be a problem and went ahead for registration. My first section turned out to be LG and my brain was really not tuned in for LG. I blew up a grouping game.

2. I wish I had drunk some coffee at the break. I stared at the words on my last section, which is an RC section, and found my eyes fixed on the words and it took so much efforts to move ahead. Maybe I was burned out at the time or maybe I was just bored. But definitely a coffee would have helped to energize and read faster. Test day is hard to simulate perfectly for me, as I tend to get anxious during real test that I do not usually feel when practicing. I didn't take coffee as I thought it might make my heart pounding too hard, if not so already. The truth is, a pounding heart might be better than a slow brain.

3. I wish I had not rushed the bubbling. I was running out of time for the second LR section and I did bubbling really quickly and sloppily. The sight of those several half filled bubbles has been vivid in my mind ever since the answer sheet was collected. It might haunt me until the score is released.

4. I wish I had paid more attention to subtle details that affect my performance instead of brainlessly doing all the pretests. It was only until the very last weeks approaching the test did I realize that sometimes a change of thought or attitude and make as many as 10 raw points difference. When I write lightly on LG I tent to write faster and think faster and make less mistakes (probably because when writing more lightly the attention is focused on my brain instead of on my hands). This may not be the case for everyone but it applies to me almost every time. I reduced wrong answers to 1/0 on RC after I promised myself I would only make marks when reading when I feel a strong compulsion that I HAVE TO (this saves me much time and forced myself to mark only the most essential, which is usually the key points that will be tested). My errors on LR went done 4 points on average after figuring out that the process of elimination is distracting for me except on the Must Be True questions and Parallel questions.

5. I wish I had saved more pretests. It was only when reviewing the "People Who Did Exceptionally Well" thread did I know that the 180ers sometimes spend twice as much time reviewing than doing the pretests. I spent the whole summer doing one pretest per day consuming almost all pretests available without thorough reviewing. The result is I had to do them again and buy Princeton Review and Kaplan 180 to keep myself used to reading new articles (I had impression on most of the readings of the pretests I did, and that made me have some sort of expectation when reading for the second time).

6. I wish I had taken advantage of TLS earlier. I discovered TLS in September after the test. It was really late already, as I already spent a summer preparing the test and took the September one. But as I wasn't feeling good about the test and prepared to retake, I was thrilled by the discovery of so many insightful articles on LSAT preparation. However, after that brief excitement I delved into doing pretests without reading thoroughly through the articles. Only until a week before the test when I had problem sleeping and went to look for advice did I thoroughly go through the "People who did exceptionally well on LSAT" threads and several other long articles. I made a document of the a collection of quotes that seem particularly useful to me. Had I done this earlier I would put print the quotes and stick it on the wall so that I can review the tips often.

Thanks for posting, helps alot!

Could you elaborate on how the process of elimination was a distraction on your LR performance?

fhdjks wrote:Thanks for posting, helps alot!

Could you elaborate on how the process of elimination was a distraction on your LR performance?

Without doing the process of elimination I found most questions straightforward. Wrong answer choices are often very misleading, but if you focus on the stimulus and know the question type well enough (probably one of the few benefits from my having done almost all pretests, which I strongly warn against), the right answer will be very obvious among the wrong ones. I find the process of elimination distracting, because when I look at choices one by one I tend to be bogged down to the details and fall into the traps of wrong choices. For example, when doing Flaw questions, I usually notice the flaw when reading the stimulus and skim through the answer choices to find one or two that fit the flaw I find, and then I compare them to pick the best one. When I do strictly the process of elimination, however, I do not quickly see the fittest choices (if they are not A or B), and the first choices that appear can be very attractive and I would try to figure out what's wrong with them, which oftentimes fail, and during the process I forget about what originally I was looking for.

Thanks for sharing from your experience. Good luck!

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jeech wrote:Thanks for sharing from your experience. Good luck!

Thank you! I'm glad my experience could be of some help. Good luck on your LSAT preparation!

mornincounselor wrote:I'm glad I spent the extra cash to have the king size bed and fireplace in my hotel the night before.

My test center was in my college 2 minutes away from my dorm so I just slept in my room. The night before people in my hall were partying hard...

When I write lightly on LG I tent to write faster and think faster and make less mistakes (probably because when writing more lightly the attention is focused on my brain instead of on my hands). This may not be the case for everyone but it applies to me almost every time. I reduced wrong answers to 1/0 on RC after I promised myself I would only make marks when reading when I feel a strong compulsion that I HAVE TO (this saves me much time and forced myself to mark only the most essential, which is usually the key points that will be tested). My errors on LR went done 4 points on average after figuring out that the process of elimination is distracting for me except on the Must Be True questions and Parallel questions.

are you mixing up LG / RC / LR anywhere here, or did you write what you meant to write in each case? THANK YOU!

yepuhhuh wrote:

When I write lightly on LG I tent to write faster and think faster and make less mistakes (probably because when writing more lightly the attention is focused on my brain instead of on my hands). This may not be the case for everyone but it applies to me almost every time. I reduced wrong answers to 1/0 on RC after I promised myself I would only make marks when reading when I feel a strong compulsion that I HAVE TO (this saves me much time and forced myself to mark only the most essential, which is usually the key points that will be tested). My errors on LR went done 4 points on average after figuring out that the process of elimination is distracting for me except on the Must Be True questions and Parallel questions.

are you mixing up LG / RC / LR anywhere here, or did you write what you meant to write in each case? THANK YOU!

Not any mixing up that I noticed

I wish i had brought a snack to eat during the break. I became very irritated at any noise or change in temperature. You're not you when you're hungry.