Retaking Old Prep Tests

clarissa.h

Hi All,

So, having taken and reviewed about 13 Prep Tests, I moved my test date to December instead of this weekend. My score was still not as consistently where I need it to be as I'd like, and I find that this has more to do with the experience of taking the test than it does with understanding the questions. I'd like to reiterate the act of sitting for a timed exam over and over again, essentially to train myself to have the kind of discipline of focus and pacing a standardized test requires.

What I don't want to do is use up all of my "pure" (unseen) exams in doing this over the next few weeks. I think the compromise is to spend the next two weeks retaking the tests I've seen already. There does seem to be value in that, because presumably I should see an improvement in the questions that tripped me up before on those tests, and in that case it would indicate either that my review has been effective or that I still have some work to do on certain kinds of "Flaw" arguments, for instance.

It seems a better option than using up new (unseen, and more recent) tests too quickly. Any thoughts?

Thanks for the feedback!
-C.H.

adrian.miko

Did you analyze the questions you missed on these LSATs?
I find that I tend to memorize the correct answer once I do my review, and thus re-taking the same exam makes me believe that I know more than I actually do. It also gave me the bad habit of skimming over the stimulus (assuming you memorized the question from before).

That's just my own experience though...

What I do now instead is just mark down the questions that gave me the most difficulty and look them over until I understand the mistakes that I have made.

On the other hand, going over the Logic Games from previously written exams isn't such a bad idea. If you struggle with a game, print off numerous copies and hit the game again after watching the video explanations, take a few days off and try it again later.

mjjohns6

I agree with the above comment. Instead of wasting the new "unseen" PTs I just type up the questions I got wrong on previous PTs that gave me a hard time and I kind of go over them a day or two after I've reviewed the video. It helps me reinforce what I understood from the video. Sometimes i feel like I've memorized the correct answer but I force myself to read through the stimulus and use lawgic to get to the correct answer choice. I also try to say why the 4 other answer choices are incorrect since it's not a timed pt. I've noticed that when I take a timed PT I tend to do better on the questions stems that I was having a hard time on because I've been practicing and I've managed to understand the concept of what answer choice makes that stimulus/Q stem correct.

clarissa.h

I did analyze them, but it's been long enough since I've taken them that I'm not merely memorizing. Considering I've already reviewed, I should get a perfect score on a test I've seen, studied, and understood. However, today I actually got a few wrong - same ones I got wrong before. The two that I still got wrong seem to suggest I have to revisit these.