Test Anxiety

Jefferson2199

I’m pretty new to prep, and I just started taking full-length timed sections. The degree to which stress and panic impacts performance on this test is bewildering to me. I took a timed games section, got thrown off guard by a question or two, and began to panic. I then forgot my technique, muddled through the rest of the section, and wound up going -7. Once I regained my composure, I took another section—this time much calmer and more focused. -2. Does anyone else experience these kinds of fluctuations based on mentality?

Jefferson2199

And, in case you were wondering, the two sections did not vary much in terms of difficulty.

Matt Sorr

I am a firm believer that repetition increases comfort. As you get more accustomed to timed sections and PTs, you will learn that coming across unusual games or difficult questions isn’t the end of the world (and that it’s really just a reality of the LSAT). There is no way to “cheat” experience; you’ve either taken a bunch of timed sections or you haven’t.

All of this is to say two things: you shouldn’t feel like you’re abnormal, and things will get better with reps. Your mentality can certainly cause your score to fluctuate greatly, but with practice you’ll learn to minimize these fluctuations and, eventually, make them basically nonexistent.

Jefferson2199

@"Matt Sorr" said:
I am a firm believer that repetition increases comfort. As you get more accustomed to timed sections and PTs, you will learn that coming across unusual games or difficult questions isn’t the end of the world (and that it’s really just a reality of the LSAT). There is no way to “cheat” experience; you’ve either taken a bunch of timed sections or you haven’t.

All of this is to say two things: you shouldn’t feel like you’re abnormal, and things will get better with reps. Your mentality can certainly cause your score to fluctuate greatly, but with practice you’ll learn to minimize these fluctuations and, eventually, make them basically nonexistent.

Thanks for your response! Are you a proponent of doing every single logic game in existence?

Matt Sorr

@Jefferson2199 Unless you need to complete and fool proof every logic game in existence, I think it’s a bit overkill. With that being said, if logic game come slowly to you, you only see improvement when you fool proof 10s or 100s of games, or you’re just more comfortable knowing you’ve done every game in existence, then by all means do them all. Only you know how you feel/what it takes for you to realize gains.

It can never hurt to be exposed to more games. After all, exposure and repetition is the only tried and true way (that I know of) to get better at games. So I’m not knocking doing every game in existence. The issue I see with fool proofing every game in existence in an attempt to prepare for “weird” games is that they’re just that: weird games. The test writers intentionally create weird games to try to throw you off. If you just so happen to be given a totally unprecedented game on test day, just know that, generally speaking, these games aren’t extremely difficult. The test makers won’t make a one-off game with a weird setup that also has absurdly hard inferences. If they did, it would absolutely shatter the curve. All of this is to say: I think fool proofing 1-35 and making sure to master the fundamentals is enough to crush the games section. If you find you need more practice after doing that, then go for it. But unless you’re still missing a lot of questions after doing 1-35 I think doing all in existence is a bit much.

Apologies for the long winded response but I hope this helps some!