In this chapter, we’re going to give you an overall preparation plan for the LSAT. Before we hit you with some test-taking techniques, we want to make sure that you know all that we know about the LSAT itself. We’ll start with a few pages’ worth of information on the test. Make sure you read all this info carefully so you’ll know exactly what you’re up against.
We hope you’ve bought this book at least a few months before the date of the LSAT you plan to take, so you’ll have time to (a) actually follow the suggestions we make, including working on actual LSAT tests released by the Law School Admission Council (LSAC); (b) work through the specific problems in Chapters 2, 3, and 4 (at least twice); and (c) complete both practice tests at the end of this book.
If you’ve bought this book only a few weeks before the LSAT, read through this chapter and absorb the test-taking tips that we give you; then work through Chapters 2, 3, and 4. Finally, try to take at least one of the tests in the back of the book.
If you’ve bought (or are merely opening) this book for the first time only a few days before the LSAT, well, we admire your bravado. Take a complete test to see approximately what you would score on a real LSAT. If it’s more than five or six points below where you want to be, consider skipping the test and taking it at a later date. The best way to improve your score dramatically is to work steadily on hundreds of problems throughout the course of a few months. Remember: The title of this book is Cracking the LSAT, not Crashing the LSAT.
The LSAT is a tightly timed multiple-choice test that almost always consists of 99 to 102 questions. By tightly timed, we mean that the test is designed so that the “average” test taker (someone scoring around the fiftieth percentile) should not be able to comfortably complete all the questions in the time allotted. The LSAT also includes a 35-minute essay. The LSAT is required by every American Bar Association (ABA)–certified law school in the United States—if you want to go to a U.S. law school, you not only have to take the LSAT, but you must do pretty well on it to boot.
The LSAT is administered four times a year—February, June, September/October, and December. Typically, students applying for regular fall admission to a law program take the test during June or September/October of the previous calendar year. You can take the test in December, but many schools will have filled at least a portion of their seats by the time your scores hit the admissions office. See Chapter 7 on Law School Admissions for more information about when and how to apply to law school.
The LSAT is not only required by every single ABA-approved U.S. law school, but also weighted very heavily in the admissions process. For many schools, it is weighted just as heavily as (or even more heavily than) your undergraduate grade point average (GPA). That’s the number that you worked very hard on in college, remember? The fact that a four-hour, multiple-choice test—one that is a questionable indicator of how well you’ll do in law school—is considered as important as your undergraduate performance seems unjust. If you feel this way, you are not alone, but there isn’t anything you can do about it. Instead, you need to focus on reaching your highest potential score.
The LSAT is scored on a scale of 120 to 180, with the median score being approximately 152. You need to get about 60 questions right (out of 99–102) to get that median score of 152, which means you need to bat about 60 percent. Very few people get a perfect score, mainly because the test is designed so that very few people can correctly answer all the questions, let alone do so in the time allotted.
Along with your LSAT score, you will receive a percentile ranking. This ranking compares your performance with that of everyone else who has taken the LSAT for the previous three years. Because a 152 is the median LSAT score, it would give you a percentile ranking of approximately 50. A score of 156 moves you up to a ranking of about 70. A 164 pulls you up to a ranking of 90. And any score over 167 puts you above 95 percent of all the LSAT takers.
As you can see, small numerical jumps (five points or so) can lead to a huge difference in percentile points. That means you’re jumping over 20 percent of all test takers if, on your first practice test, you score a 150, but on the real test, you score a 155. Small gains can net big results.
The following table summarizes the number of questions you can skip or miss and still reach your LSAT goal. Notice that 93 percent of those taking the test make more than 15 errors. Take this into consideration as you develop your strategy of exactly how many questions you intend to answer or skip.
A good score on the LSAT is one that gets you into the law school you want to attend. Many people feel that they have to score at least a 160 to get into a “good” law school. That’s pure myth. Remember: Any ABA-approved law school has to meet very strict standards in terms of its teaching staff, library, and facilities. Most schools use the Socratic method to teach students basic law. Therefore, a student’s fundamental law school experience can be very similar no matter where he or she goes to school—be it NYU or Quinnipiac Law School. Read through Chapter 7 for a much more comprehensive discussion of “good” scores and where to go to law school.
The LSAT is brought to you by the wonderful folks at LSAC, based in Newtown, Pennsylvania. They work with the law schools and the ABA on many facets of the admissions process. You will register for the Credential Assembly Service (CAS), and that too is run by LSAC. See Chapter 7 for a full discussion of this alphabet soup.
The LSAT is made up of five 35-minute multiple-choice sections and one 35- minute essay. Two of the five multiple-choice sections will be Arguments, one will be Games, and one will be Reading Comprehension. The remaining section (which is almost always one of the first three to be administered) will be an experimental section that will not count toward your score. During this section you will do 35 minutes of unpaid work for LSAC, allowing them to test out new types of questions on a representative audience. This experimental section can be Arguments, Games, or Reading Comprehension. The essay, or Writing Sample, will not count toward your score either, though the schools you apply to will receive a scanned copy of it.
For instance, your LSAT could look as follows:
| Section 1: | Games (35 minutes) |
| Section 2: | Experimental Reading Comprehension (35 minutes) |
| Section 3: | Arguments (35 minutes) |
10-minute break
| Section 4: | Reading Comprehension (35 minutes) |
| Section 5: | Arguments (35 minutes) |
35-minute Writing Sample
As you can see, it’s nearly four hours of focused work. And because administrators fingerprint you and check your ID before the test begins, you can add another hour’s worth of administrative mumbo-jumbo to that number. That’s why we say that you should prepare very well for this test—so you have to take it only once.
There will be two scored Arguments sections, each lasting 35 minutes, on your LSAT. Each section has between 24 and 26 questions. Tests in the past frequently attached two questions to one argument, but LSAC has more or less phased out this style of question; you will almost certainly see one question per argument. Typically, the argument passages are no more than three or four sentences in length, but they can still be very dense and every word is potentially important, making critical reading the key skill on this section. The arguments are not arranged in strict order of difficulty, although the questions near the beginning of a section are generally easier than those at the end.
You will be given four “logic games” in a 35-minute section. Each game will have a setup and a set of conditions or clues that are attached to it. Then five to seven questions will ask you about various possible arrangements of the elements in the game. The four games are not arranged in order of difficulty.
In this 35-minute section, you will be given four reading comprehension passages, of about 60 to 80 lines each. Three of the passages will be written by one author; the fourth will be a combination of two shorter passages from two different sources discussing the same general subject. In each case, between five and eight questions will be attached to each passage. This is probably something you’re familiar with from the SAT, the ACT, or any of the other myriad standardized tests you might have taken over the years. These passages are not arranged in any order of difficulty.
The LSAT tests a few different things; the most important is your ability to read a passage or argument very closely and figure out what the author is and is not saying. On some questions, you’ll have to figure out what the author is implying, and on others, what the author is assuming to be true. You’ll find that the ability to read efficiently and identify the salient parts of a passage will be very useful on the test. Games test your ability to work with certain types of analytical reasoning, including conditional logic and logical deduction.
The schools all have access to your complete undergraduate transcript, your academic and professional recommendations, and your essays. They could also ask for some of your undergraduate papers if they wanted to. However, all this reading would take too much time and cost admissions offices too much money—hence, they’ve got a neat little shortcut in the form of the LSAT. When they combine this with your undergraduate GPA, they generate your index, a number that allows them to quickly sort your application into one of a few preliminary piles to make the process of evaluating the increasing number of applications more efficient.
The overriding point is that whatever it’s testing, your goal is to do as well as possible on the LSAT and take it only once. That’s exactly what we’re going to show you how to do.
Following are several key things you should do when taking any multiple-choice test, especially the LSAT. Make sure you follow all of these mantras—they are the sum of more than 20 years’ worth of our experience in researching and preparing hundreds of thousands of test takers to take the LSAT.
Most test takers believe that the key to success on the LSAT is to go faster. Realize, though, that your accuracy—your likelihood of getting a question right when you work it—is also a key factor in how well you perform. Generally speaking, the faster you work, the lower your accuracy will be. What this means is that there’s a pacing “sweet spot” somewhere between working as fast as you can and working as carefully as you can. Practice on real LSAT sections is important, because you need to find the proper balance for yourself on each of the three section types.
Don’t let the tight timing of the LSAT scare you into rushing. Most test takers do their best when they don’t try to answer every question on every section.
On most LSAT questions, you’ll find that you can eliminate two or three answer choices relatively easily. Some test takers simply pick the best-looking answer from the remaining ones and move on; this is poor strategy. It’s only once you’re down to two or three remaining choices that the real work on this test begins. Don’t let the clock force you into bad decisions.
Your mantra: I will fight the urge to rush and will work more deliberately, making choices about where to concentrate my energies so I can answer questions more accurately and end up with a higher score.
Unlike on the the SAT, for instance, there is no penalty for guessing on the LSAT, meaning that no points are subtracted for wrong answers. Therefore, even if you don’t get to work on every question in a section, you want to make sure to fill in the rest of the bubbles before time is called. Even if you do only 75 percent of the test, you’ll get an average of five more questions correct by picking a “letter of the day” and bubbling it in on the remaining 25 questions. Make sure you watch the time carefully. Just to be safe, assume the proctor will cut you off two minutes early, and stop yourself when five minutes remain to bubble in every remaining blank space in the section. Then, during the remaining minutes, you can change your answers on any questions you have time to work through.
This is a key concept that you should remember when you’re taking the practice tests in the back of this book and when you’re taking previously administered LSATs for practice. Some people want to wait until test day to bubble in questions they don’t get to, thinking that they should see what their “real” score will be on practice tests. However, if you bubble in questions you didn’t get to on your practice tests, you are finding out what your “real” score would be. And this will ensure that you won’t forget to do it on test day—bubbling in could be the difference between a 159 and a 161, for instance.
Your mantra: I will always remember to bubble in answers for any questions I don’t get to, thereby getting a higher score.
One solace (perhaps) on multiple-choice tests is the fact that all of the correct answers (credited responses in test-speak) will be in front of you. Naturally, they will each be camouflaged by four incorrect answers, some of which will look just as good as, and often better than, the credited response. But the fact remains that if you can clear away some of that distraction, you’ll be left staring at the credited response. Don’t expect that the correct answers will just leap off the page at you. They won’t. In fact, those choices that leap off the page at you are often very attractive wrong answers. Remember that the test writers have to be sure that they end up with a normal, or bell, curve when they administer the test. Making a wrong answer look very appealing (with a small, camouflaged flaw) is a great way to make sure that not everyone gets all the questions right.
Process of Elimination (POE) may be a very different test-taking strategy from what you are used to. If you look first at the answer choices critically, with an eye toward trying to see what’s wrong with them, you’ll do better on almost any standardized test than by always trying to find the right answer. This is because, given enough time and creativity, you can justify the correctness of any answer choice that you find appealing. That skill may be useful in certain situations, but on the LSAT, creativity of that sort is dangerous.
Your mantra: I will always try to eliminate answer choices using Process of Elimination, thereby increasing my chances on each question and getting a higher score.
You will be. Honest. You might not always feel that way, but you will be. True, you’ll be nervous on test day, but a little nervousness is good because it can keep you focused. Just don’t let this test psych you out. Remember that when you go into the test, you’ll have worked through reams of LSAT problems and be a lot more prepared than all the other people who didn’t put in the same amount of work you did. You’ll have absorbed all the techniques we’ve given you, and you’ll be wise to all the tricks and traps that the LSAT can throw at you.
Therefore, don’t let anything get to you. If the room is too cold for you, you’ve brought along a sweater. If the room gets too warm, you’ve layered your clothing and can get comfortable. If the people sitting next to you are scratching away loudly or coughing nervously, you’ve practiced working in an environment with similar distractions and know how to tune them out and stay focused on the task at hand. If the proctor cuts your time short by a minute on one of the sections, you’ve already bubbled in the remaining choices with five minutes left. Relax and stay focused; you’re prepared for anything.
No matter how prepared you are, it may happen that you lose focus temporarily. If you find yourself getting distracted or anxious, take a moment to focus and move on with confidence.
Your mantra: I’m fully prepared to succeed. Nothing will distract me on test day. Nothing.
We’ve given you two full sample tests, plus explanations, to work through in the back of this book. Many Logical Reasoning and Analytical Reasoning questions that appear in this book are closely based on actual LSAT questions, with the permission of the Law School Admission Council. Unfortunately, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. You should be ordering at least six recent real tests from LSAC (www.lsac.org or 215-968-1001), if not more. Here’s a rough study plan for you, over a two-month period.
Week 1:
Order at least six real LSATs (the most recent ones) from LSAC. Take one of the LSATs timed. Have a friend proctor the test for you so it’s as legitimate as possible.
Week 2:
Work through the Arguments chapter in this book; redo the Arguments questions from the test you took in week 1.
Week 3:
Work through the Games chapter in this book; redo the games from the test you took in week 1. Take one of the two practice LSATs in the back of this book.
Week 4:
Work through the Reading Comprehension chapter in this book; redo the reading comprehension passages from the test you took in week 1 and from the practice LSAT you took in week 3.
Read through Chapter 6 in this book for pacing tips. Work untimed through one of the real LSATs you’ve ordered from LSAC; time yourself on another one.
Week 6:
Review your mistakes in the work you did in week 5 and review the Arguments, Games, and Reading Comprehension chapters in this book. Work the specific problems again. Take the second test in this book.
Week 7:
Work untimed through another real LSAT you’ve ordered from LSAC; time yourself on another one (this should be the fifth real LSAT you’ve looked at).
Week 8:
Review all the general techniques in this book, and review any specific problems you might be having in Arguments, Games, and Reading Comprehension. Read the Writing Sample chapter in this book (Chapter 5). Take one more real LSAT timed (using a friend as a proctor again) and analyze your performance thoroughly.
If you follow this plan, you’ll be extremely well prepared for the LSAT when it comes around. Don’t worry too much about your scores on any of these practice tests. Your performance on the real LSAT should be a bit higher than any of your practice tests if you’ve been working steadily; you should be taking the LSAT at the culmination of your studies, and if you follow the plan above, you will be. Never let more than one day, or at most two days, pass without looking at LSAT problems once you’ve started this workout. You’ll waste valuable study time relearning techniques that you would have remembered if you had been practicing steadily. The best athletes and musicians are the ones who practice all the time—follow their example and you’ll be totally prepared for the LSAT on test day.
Your mantra: I will work steadily and consistently to master the techniques in this manual by practicing them on real LSATs that I’ve ordered from LSAC.
Not all questions on the LSAT are created equal, yet each is worth one raw point. Also, most test takers won’t have enough time to finish all the questions and still maintain a high level of accuracy. Clearly, it is in your best interest to choose carefully which questions to work through and, even more important, which questions to skip if you don’t have time for them all. By knowing the test and by knowing yourself, you will be able to make good predictions about which questions are your friends and which are your enemies before you start working on them; this will save you time, prevent frustration, and ultimately get you more points.
Your mantra: I will fight my urge to work aimlessly through all of the questions in the order they are presented. Instead, I will make good decisions based on sound reasoning that will ultimately get me the most points.
During almost any standardized test, you can find people who have just completely lost their concentration. Losing concentration can take different forms, but we’ve all experienced it—staring at the same question for too long, reading and rereading without really having anything sink in. Needless to say, you don’t want to join this group of test zombies.
Using your pencil is a surprisingly easy way to stay focused and on task, and it can help to ensure that you’re sticking with the method and visualizing information.
You should constantly be crossing out incorrect answers, circling the right answer before transferring the information to your bubble sheet, underlining and jotting down key pieces of information, taking notes, drawing diagrams, and so on. Don’t let the test take you—take the test on your own terms; attack the test. Keeping your pencil involved in the process prevents you from getting passive and losing touch. Stay engaged, stay aggressive, and stay confident.
Your mantra: I will use my pencil to stay engaged with the test and maximize my performance.
Take these mantras, learn them well, and—most importantly—use them. They are the distilled wisdom of much test-taking expertise. Here they are again.
Got ’em? Good. Now let’s break the test down section by section.