If I were to take 6 Prep Tests between now and the real LSAT, which ones should I take?

jacqueline.l.landry

Want to focus on harder ones so I'm not surprised on test day. I have access to all of them and have taken 82, 81, 79, 78, 76, 70, 69, 66, 54, 18, 17, and J07 (and I took PT 89 when it was a real LSAT administration). Particularly want to challenge myself on Logic Games (my weakest section) but other hard sections are good too. All advice welcome!

canihazJD

88 definitely.

clmf1008

@canihazJD said:
88 definitely.

Out of curiosity, are there specific parts of 88 that are most difficult? I want to drill harder sections but won't be taking a full length practice test before the test.

canihazJD

LR is a bit more nuanced. I don't know if I'd call it harder, but you definitely need to be a bit more nimble. It has one of the harder games sections... don't want to give too much away. I felt RC was middle of the road.

gabfletcher128

88 for sure. just took it last week and the games were challenging. a little bit of everything

VerdantZephyr

I came to also recommend 88, it was discussed in a post recently, but I really felt that taking the 3 most recent tests made me better at the LSAT. The hardest questions on those tests are hard for a different reason than many earlier tests in that earlier tests often raised the difficulty of questions by giving you multiple appealing answer choices that you were left to rule out for one reason or another. The late 80's (there may be others like this which I have not taken) have many hard questions that are particularly difficult because no answer choice is appealing at first blush. You have to use a different kind of reasoning to decide, "okay, this answer choice is acceptable and resolves the issue". That really helped me to understand a bit more about the test and after taking 89, 88, and 87 I went back and looked over my answers that have never satisfyingly made sense to me and most of them came to me much more easily.

My average on my last three PTs before the exam increased a half point, which I feel like is a pretty big deal above 175. I did not do as well on the exam as I would have liked, stress definitely got to me and I suppose it affected my score, but I definitely think that 88 and 87 should be on your list. Beyond that maybe find some that are considered difficult on different sections, maybe one LR, one RC, and one LG. For the last one, take an exam that others consider pretty easy. A confidence boost before the exam is important. Also, do not dwell on all the technical issues people complain about or problems like that outside of your control before the test. I was stressed about that sort of thing and my adrenaline was definitely through the roof during the test. If you can not control it, do not worry about it. Best advice I can give.

VerdantZephyr

@jacqueline.l.landry Also, BR them with a partner, that is a very important step. It does not do you any good to just take questions that are harder than usual unless you are able to gain new understanding of them. Lean on a partner with complementary strengths in both sections and strategy viewpoint.