Secrets of an LSAT Tutor: Analyzing Practice Test Results
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If you’re reading this post, chances are high that you’ve taken an LSAT practice test fairly recently. Good for you! Now, what did you do after that practice test? Did you do a blind review? Write down an error log? Enter your results into Manhattan Prep’s Navigator tool to get data-based practice recommendations? Awesome, awesome, and more awesome! As a private LSAT tutor, I advise all of my students to take all those steps, too. But even after all of that hard work by my students and Navigator, I still like to take a look at the test results myself. Why? Because there are a few more things that I find helpful for tailoring my students’ study plans. And you may find them helpful, too! If you want to take the same approach as an LSAT tutor to your most recent practice test data, here’s what you can look for:
Which easy questions are you still missing?
The LSAT Navigator will point you towards the questions that you’re missing in general, and you should study those! But it will also classify each question (and logic game or RC passage) on a spectrum from “very easy” to “very hard.” You should pay special attention to any questions you missed that were labeled “very easy” or “easy” (or “medium,” if that’s the lowest difficulty you missed!). Because those questions are easy, they are also the easiest for you to improve on! Identify the associated question type (for example, maybe you missed a few easy “Inference” questions) and brush up on your fundamentals. Missing lots of easy questions can also mean you’re rushing through the wrong sections of the test or succumbing to test anxiety.
Which questions are you missing due to time, and which are you missing due to skill?
If you missed an entire logic game or RC passage because you just didn’t get to it, your issue is timing—not necessarily the content of that game/passage. Be sure to factor that in when you’re creating a study plan based on your practice test results, and check any practice recommendations you’ve been given to make sure they’re not based on parts of the test you just didn’t do. You may be a rock star at relative ordering, but you just didn’t get to the fourth game. Don’t spend the next week practicing Relative Ordering games! Instead, figure out what was slowing you down on other portions of the test and practice improving your speed on those questions—or work on your overall timing strategy!
Is there any evidence of test fatigue?
Compare your two Logical Reasoning sections. Do you notice that your first Logical Reasoning section went much better than your last one? Or perhaps Reading Comprehension is normally very solid for you, but it was the last section on this test and went much worse than usual. Both of these situations could be evidence of test fatigue, which means that you’re losing focus as you progress through this long and stressful test. If you notice that in your results, don’t worry, you’re going to love the cure: take longer tests! Add a fifth or sixth section to your practice LSATs so that the real deal seems like a cakewalk.
On Reading Comprehension, do your misses indicate a misunderstanding of the passage as a whole?
When a student misses a lot of Main Idea, Author’s Opinion, Organization/Structure, or Primary Purpose questions, that often suggests to me that the student may not be taking the most effective approach to reading the passage itself. If you see those miss patterns, don’t just review those question types. Also revisit your reading strategies. Are you taking effective notes while you read? Are you reading for the author’s opinion and the two sides or perspectives presented? If not, use the Reading Comprehension Strategy Guide to get some pro tips on becoming a more effective LSAT reader.
How frequently does the LSAT test the skills that are most difficult for you?
Make sure that you’re prioritizing your study topics based not just on what you’re missing on practice tests, but also on how many points those misses are costing you. For example, many students struggle with Match the Reasoning/Flaw questions, getting maybe 50% of them correct. However, there aren’t many of these at all on the test! You may wish to prioritize other, more frequent question types first. In fact, closer to your test date, you may end up using your test results to pick a question type or two that you will just guess on as soon as you see it, because you don’t often get it right and you want to save time for other questions.
So if you want to be your own private LSAT tutor, the next time you take a practice test, spend an extra half hour or so thoroughly analyzing the nuances of your results. Use that analysis to create a study plan that makes sense and is based on evidence. Follow it until your next practice test, and then repeat! ?
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Ally Bell is a Manhattan Prep Instructor who lives in the Washington, DC metro area. Ally first encountered the LSAT while getting her Bachelor of Arts in English and history at Duke University. In college, she scored a 178 and very nearly applied to law school. In the end, she followed her true passion, teaching. Ally currently has the pleasure of being an eighth grade English teacher in Northern Virginia. As an LSAT teacher, she has the opportunity to blend her love for teaching with her passion for logical argument. Check out Ally’s upcoming LSAT Complete Courses here.