Relax.

Test day is the culmination of weeks or months of hard work.  If you’re not prepared, there’s nothing you can do about it but redouble your efforts for next time.  But if you ARE prepared, like I know many of you are, then today is about rest and tomorrow is about kicking ass.  Here’s how you do those things:

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Take a peek at Section 2, number 13 of the June 2007 LSAT, but stop before you get to the answer choices.  Pretend you’re a litigator and the argument is being made by your opposition, an evil soft-drink executive.

Who is suing whom here, and over what, doesn’t really matter.  What does matter is that the evil soft drink executive is your opponent, and you need to try to discredit his argument.  Does the argument on the page make sense, or is it bullshit?   In other words, what is he trying to prove here?  Do his facts justify the conclusion he is trying to reach?  Or is there something missing?  If you were cross-examining this guy, what question(s) might you ask?

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Section 2, number 12 of the June 2007 LSAT is an obvious beast.  It takes up its own column on the page, for Chrissakes!  Once in a while a question like this will be easy, but usually a question that has twice as many words is going to 1) take twice as long as a normal question, and 2) be twice as hard.  So, let’s see here.  This question is likely to be much harder and much more time consuming than the other questions in the section.  But it only counts for one point, just like everything else.  If time is a concern for me (like it is for almost all test-takers), then what should I do?  Hmm–I think the answer is obvious.

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Sometimes students panic in the last few days leading up to the LSAT, fearing that they’re not as ready as they wish they were.  Since it’s too late to get a refund, students have to balance the money they’ve spent against the possibility of getting a bad score.  The options are 1)  Late withdrawal, with no refund, 2) Don’t withdraw, but don’t show up for the test, 3) Show up and take the test, with the intention of canceling your score, 4) Show up with the intention of keeping your score.  There’s definitely no “right” answer, but I have some thoughts about each road you could take.

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Section 2, number 11 of the June 2007 LSAT asks us to identify “the role played in the argument” by one sentence of a longer argument.  The sentence in question is “several centuries ago, the complaint was that certain intellectual skills… were being destroyed by the spread of literacy.”  I’m going to attack this question by asking one, two, or three questions of my own.

1)  Is it the conclusion of the argument?  (If yes, then that’s the answer.)

2)  If not, then does it support the conclusion of the argument?  (i.e., is it a premise of the argument?)  (If yes, then that’s the answer.)

3)  Or is it something else entirely?

Go ahead and ask yourself these questions now.  As always, remember that the answer choices aren’t going to explain anything to us.  We’ve got to arm ourselves with a prediction before wandering into the disorienting jungle of the answer choices.

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With less than one week remaining until the LSAT, I get a lot of panicked questions.  Students want to know exactly what they should do, hour-by-precious-hour, with the time they have remaining before the big day.  Some of them are nicely prepared, and some of them are woefully unprepared.  No matter who’s asking, my answer is always the same.

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Go ahead and read the argument for Section 2, number 10 of the June 2007 LSAT.  The question asks “Which one of the following most accurately expresses the main conclusion of the argument?”  As I’ve said before, it’s critical that you predict the answer choice on a main conclusion question in advance.  So stop before you look at the answer choices and try to make a prediction.  Hint:  There’s one word in the argument itself that is an awfully big clue.  Can you find it?

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Onward through the June 2007 LSAT.

Take a look at the argument about video game sales that’s presented in Section two, Question nine.  Stop before you get to the answer choices.  Now, tell me what you think about the argument.  This is a test, by the way.  Your opinion of the argument will indicate whether you’re good at this or not.

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Let’s continue through the June 2007 LSAT.  (It’s the only thing the LSAC is ever going to give you for free, so go ahead and print yourself a copy.)

Section 2, Question 8 is another “Complete the Argument” question, like Question 3 of the same section.  This argument makes more sense though.  (I wasn’t buying Question 3′s stupid analogy.)  If you haven’t already read the argument for Question 8, go ahead and do so now.  Don’t look at the answer choices until you’ve attempted to fill in the blank with your own words.  What do you think?

My first thought is that this sounds like the argument that an ANTI-electric car person would say.  It starts off by saying “proponents of the electric car maintain…”  There’s something snarky about that word “maintain,” isn’t there?  You get the sense that there’s a “but actually” coming right around the corner.  Like “my brother maintains that he has been applying for jobs every day for the past six months, but actually he is a lazy piece of…”

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As I mentioned yesterday, most people should start studying for the LSAT as soon as possible.  A slightly different–but no less common–question is “When should I take the test?”  That’s a much tougher question.  I can’t really answer it offhand, but I can definitely give you some factors to consider.

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