The truth is, preparing for the LSAT is a very personal process. Although it’s a standardized test, preparing for it is anything but standardized. As humans who have attended sixteen-plus years of schooling, LSAT students have had ample time to figure out their studying style. So choosing the right way to study for the LSAT is a matter of simply finding the method that fits with your studying style, schedule, and location.
We who set our gazes on law school are typically not the most science-adept people. If we were, perhaps we would have chosen a career in the medical field, with its broken business model and fast-approaching reckoning with AI, rather than … um … the field we chose. Instead, we dutifully took the science GEs everyone told us were the easiest and learned the bare minimum about astronomy or physiology or whatever-it-was-it’s-so-hard-to-remember-now-maybe-it-had-to-do-with-rocks? And then that was about it for our less-than-illustrious science education. Any advances in science we would, like Arthur C. Clarke, chalk up to magic.
You must be exhausted from partying at this point. You celebrated finishing the November LSAT, then partied the Wednesday before Thanksgiving where you invariably reconnected with some high school acquaintances at the hometown watering hole, and then finally feted during Thanksgiving itself. You have been lit off the LSAT celebrations, smacked by the small talk, turnt off the tryptophan, and now you probably just want some sleep. But rest must wait, at least for now. For better or worse, the LSAC powers that be decided to tether this year’s LSAC schedule to American holidays. So just as the October test takers had to endure our post-exam festivities after a week of over-celebration, all you November test takers must now endure our favorite kind of party — a mandatory one. One we’re calling our post-exam carnival.
Many congrats to all those who just completed the November 2019 LSAT, all those who were permitted to take it, anyway. We hope the celebration carries you through the week, to the Wednesday you inevitably see people from your high school to Thanksgiving to Black Friday and, if we’re still calling it this, Cyber Monday. Toast to peptides and microchips while listening to jazz as a projection of an old film plays. Feel like you earned this week’s feast.
The November LSAT is just around the corner — once this weekend bends back around into another week, it’ll officially be test day. And that, of course means that our in-house prognosticator (i.e., me) must emerge from his dark and dank LSAT bunker, dust off a discount-bin, ersatz crystal ball, and make some predictions about what will be on the November exam.
When LSAC sends an email out to everyone with an active LSAC account, you know there’s about to be some serious, capital-“N” News announced. And last Wednesday, that’s exactly what LSAC did. So when I got that email, I didn’t read passed the first four words of the subject line — which read, forebodingly, “Changes to the LSAT” — before frantically opening the email to see which changes LSAC wrought to the exam. Would they finally clarify how the Logic Games section might be changing? Would they add even more test administrations? Would they concede that, actually, the digital LSAT is more trouble than it’s worth, and go back to the traditional paper-and-pencil test?
If you were tasked, by some cruel and capricious force, with completing a piano recital at a theater full of people, would you start preparing for the performance by attempting to complete the recital, from beginning to end, over and over again? Most of us who don’t know the first thing about pianos could not start this way; those who would have to endure our discordant performances might also prefer we didn’t.
Are you studying for the LSAT? Have you already taken a class and want guidance to fine tune your study schedule? Were you just Googling “any tricks to improve on the LSAT overnight?” If you feel exposed, don’t worry — many have been where you are! Much to your dismay, you may have realized there’s no “LSAT Crash Course” or magic tricks.
As someone who teaches and blogs about the LSAT, I’m always trying to follow the test very closely and discern which skills, concepts, and question types are being emphasized on recent tests. To be clear, since the LSAT took its current shape in 1991, it’s always tested the same broad set of skills, concepts, and question types. If you have the time to master all of those, you definitely should try to master all of those.
We just celebrated a week of Halloween, but the party isn’t over. If you’ve been getting into the Halloween spirit after taking the October 2019 LSAT this Monday, you are invited to the best party of the week. So clear the gunk from your reddened eyes, wipe that melted chocolate off your mouth, rub that Joker make-up off your face, and get ready for our favorite kind of party — a carnival!