Logic Game anxiety during LSAT?

mds19193

Hi all!

The LG game section has always been my best one during PTs and I always get max 1-2 wrong. However, during my actual recent LSAT for some reason I totally messed the section (as in I got more than half wrong!!). I think it was a combination of nerves and because the games are becoming slightly more weird/less traditional in the recent LSATS.

Did anyone else experience this struggle in their LSAT experience? At this point I feel like I almost maybe overstudied the games and whenever a rule feels new or different now I freeze and mess the whole game up. I also feel like being nervous affects my games section the most because its easy to mis diagram or something?

Please let me know if you went through something similar and/or have tips to master the LG games

Thanks so much!!

NotMyName

Execution in LG was a constant struggle for me. Three things really helped me:

1) Developing a consistent process without becoming mechanical. This reduces effort by standardizing an approach to games. Mine was: (1) Read the stimulus, rules, and scan the questions (lots of "If.." questions meant I probably wouldn't need to split much or at all) before writing anything down, (2) translate rules in conjunction with the acceptable situation question and pushing each rule up against previous rules, (3) think about the game, (4) consider splitting, (5) answer "if..." type questions first and open-ended question later.

2) Learning to move on when things go bad. If I'm not "seeing" the game, if I think I may have made an error in the rules/setup, I move on to the next game and return. Personally, no matter how hard I practiced, I'd still find myself making stupid errors, but I maintained -2 avg by moving on and fixing them in a second round. Although, I could only ever bank on having time to return to a single game. If however, I dug myself a hole by stubbornly sticking with a game, I'd waste all that time and miss the questions anyway and set myself up for failure on proceeding games. If games 1-3 went great but 4 was giving me trouble, I'd still return to some previous game and check my work or make sure I bubbled properly in order to give myself some space form game 4 before returning.

3) Meditation. I meditated for 10 minutes every morning and would envision myself executing my process when things go wrong. Without a doubt, this reduced anxiety and improved my execution.

mds19193

Thank you so much! Number 2 sounds like it could be my issue for me. On my actual test I spent 10 + minutes checking my work on stuff on this one game trying to find an error when in reality I just wasn't "seeing" something as you mentioned and misinterpreted one of the rules. I think it would have helped me if I had just moved back to another game and come back to it with fresh eyes.

Thanks again!!

Sam Tyler

I never took an actual LSAT under test conditions, but I'd just chalk up your actual test as a bad test and not worry too much about it. I know for me, the LG sections I often run into problems on when I try to force out inferences that are not there. I think often, especially during stress, I'm worried I'm missing some key detail or something, and i make the game harder for myself than it needs to be. learning to just be okay with moving onto questions without any inferences and doing a question based approach can be a good strategy in those situations, works for me at least when I'm worried about time in a preptest. Either way, just try and again and dont worry too much about it. Your obviously great at LG.