As I posted a little while back, I took the LSAT (yes, the official one) on October 3, 2015. I promised that when I got the score I’d post it here.
173
That’s not what I was hoping for, nor what I expected. It’s well into the 99th percentile, but I’d like to think I should have done better. But that’s fine; the point wasn’t scoring well, it was seeing firsthand what the test-taking experience is like these days.
And see I did. Some changes to the procedures have been incorporated over the years (in particular, they’ve changed how they prevent people from taking the test for others, which is good), but more importantly, I’ve now seen for myself that preparation is harder than it used to be. It’s one thing to see it in the “prep tests” LSAC releases, which are the actual tests given; it’s another to experience it while trying to take in an entire test in very-tightly-timed 35 minute intervals.
The specifics will vary from student to student, but the overarching theme is this: LSAC is trying to take the test prep companies out of the equation, and I think to some extent they’re succeeding. It’s now far more difficult than it’s been in a long time (since about 1995, I’d say) to prepare for the logic games section, because the patterns are now much harder to see. And as the big test prep companies need to write their methods for largish classes, these methods can’t be as adaptable as the student would prefer. No mass-produced solution is likely to work terribly well.
I’ll be doing a video breakdown of the games when they’re released to the public in a couple weeks. In the meantime, if you’d like to know more about how best to prepare for the LSAT, contact me.