Best practices for retaking PTs?

sarahisk

Since there are only finite LSAT resources, how do you all feel about/go about retaking practice tests?

I understand that retake scores are not reflective of real test scores at all, but is it still helpful to retake? Is there anything that I ought to do differently for retakes for a more accurate score?

I took a pretty long break from LSAT studies during finals week at school, and have been struggling to get back into it. I figured retaking an old PT may be a good jumping off point as I can get the feel for testing again without wasting a fresh test.

Any advice (re: retakes or jumping back in after a break) would be much appreciated!

kes22284

Redoing problems will always have some amount of value, especially logic games. Even if you remember specific aspects of the questions, you are still drilling the skills you need to methodically and efficiently tackle the test (identifying conclusion and support, making inferences, wading through and parsing difficult language, etc.) Although it's obviously less ideal than having access to an infinite number of fresh PTs, success on the LSAT is a lot about your level of familiarity and comfort with the exam and revisiting old tests certainly helps with that imo.

jmarmaduke96

I agree with the above, I think that there is significant value in retaking old sections. Generally, the most useful ways to do this fall into two categories for me. If there was a section that I performed particularly poorly on, I'll wait awhile so that it isn't so fresh in my head and take it again. There was some LR section from one of the PTs in the 40s that I've taken 4 times at this point. For some reason that section was always challenging for me so I kept coming back to it. Also, if any problems give you real trouble on a retake section that will tell you that you need to do additional BR work there.

Secondly, doing retake sections can be very good for working on timing strategies. Sometimes it is very hard to implement new timing strategies on a brand new section that you have never seen before because your brain is so occupied on trying to answer the questions correctly. Making the cognitive task a little easier, by using questions that you have already seen with a retake section, will allow you to focus more on timing. Doing these retake section enough will allow you to build up the muscle memory for timing which will then carry over into brand new sections. I hope this helps!

sarahisk

@kes22284 @jmarmaduke96 Thank y'all both for your responses! I can definitely see how using retakes as a way to form test day strategy can be especially useful! Can't wait to dive back in :-)