LNAT Practice; Let me tell you something about the LNAT

I've been doing some practice on the LNAT in preparation for taking the exam on Tuesday. I know, I know--this has been nothing like my LSAT prep. The LNAT and LSAT are very different tests though.

Let me tell you something about the LNAT.

First, the LNAT is only 2 hours long. It is comprised of an 80 minute section of 30 multiple choice questions based on 10 excerpts, followed by a 40 minute essay section. In contrast, the LSAT has 6 sections, 5 of which contain 23-38 multiple choice questions comprising 2 logical reasoning sections, one reading comprehension, one logic games and one experimental section of one of the three types, followed by an essay writing section. The LSAT takes about 4 hours of testing time.

Excluding the writing portion, the LNAT is basically just a longer version of the LSAT reading comprehension section, with 10 passages of shorter length, each with 2-4 questions. The final score is the number correct out of 30. The average score is around 17, which seems rather low.
The writing section, like the LSAT writing section, is unscored. The good news for me is that there is no logic games section on the LNAT. I always score the lowest on Logic Games and the highest on Reading Comprehension.

For this reason and because I have already done 4 months of preparation for the LSAT I have not been sweating the LNAT too much. Which is why I haven't gotten around to any prep for it until 2 days before the test. I took a practice test today and I was happy with my score. Hopefully I can reproduce it at the actual exam.

Post-LSAT

I took the LSAT last Saturday and I meant to write about it much sooner, but happily I've been too busy living life to write about my life.

I was almost too late to be allowed into the LSAT test facility. If you take it here in London, it is scheduled for the early afternoon so that it is done simultaneously with test-takers in the US. That meant I had a whole morning to be nervous and to worry about getting to the test centre on time. I looked up the route for getting there on the Transport For London website. It calculates the best route for you.

I should have known better.

It told me to take 2 buses, the first down to Angel, the second to the location of the test centre. It said the whole trip would take about 45 minutes. I decided to leave 1 hour 15 minutes early, so that I would get there in plenty of time. Big mistake! It took 45 minutes just to get to Angel. I was sitting there, waiting for the next bus, which I estimated would take half an hour to get to the test centre. Yet there was... No bus in sight... and just 25 minutes before the test was to begin. I decided there was nothing for it but to do what I should have done in the first place. I topped up my Oyster card and got on the tube. I had to go down two stops, change lines, go one more stop. I got to the change and walked to the platform--guess what??? unannounced line closure!!!!! I then had 15 minutes to get to my test centre which was still one tube station away. So I got out of the station and half-speedwalked, half-ran to the test centre. I was pouring sweat when I got there but I made it. Only 6 people got in behind me before they started turning people away for being too late. Fortunately, the room where most people were seated got filled up and a bunch of us had to be put in a different room. I had a few moments to catch my breath while they sorted out the chairs and tables.

Lesson: Don't trust bloody public transport, and don't trust god-less computer programmes!

As for the test...

I'm not supposed to talk about the actual content of the exam until the results come out, so no specifics. But generally speaking, it went okay. Not great, but okay. First, I've been doing a full practice test every Sunday for months now. It was an excellent way to practice and paid off great dividends on the big day. The heart attack-inducing arrival notwithstanding, I was generally very calm. I could very easily tell myself it was just like sitting down to another practice test. In the LSAT it is especially important to stay calm, because a section like Logic Games can very easily spiral out of control. It's also a very mental test and particularly for me; I was competing against myself, my old score, and therefore my greatest natural competitor! Also, in practical terms, you're used to the time put in, your neck doesn't get stiff, your bum doesn't get sore. You make good use of your short break. It's nice to feel that you're in control of the situation.

That's all the good I can say about the exam. The rest is ambiguous or downright bad.

The logic games... the logic games. Well for some reason they seemed a little too easy which is a sure sign that in my excitement I missed some important detail. But then I don't really know. In truth, I have no idea how I did. I will find out in two week's time.

One thing that isn't going to help at all is that when I didn't finish the last 5 or 6 questions in the logic games section, time was called and I had forgotten to fill in the bubbles. You're not penalised for taking a guess in LSAT so even if you can't answer the question, you should always guess. On probability, I would have gotten 1-2 more points. That is a significant number of points in the LSAT, and I spent the entire following section yelling, 'Shit, shit, shit!' at myself in my head.

Overall, I have no idea how I did. I didn't feel strongly about any section--I might end up scoring the same or lower than my first score! In the Ivey Guide to Law School Admissions, Anna Ivey highly discourages taking the LSAT more than once and says most people do not improve on taking it a second time. (By the way, I do highly recommend that book. Ivey was an admissions officer for the University of Chicago and the book is an excellent resource.)

I've not done things the way she recommends, but... I don't know. I guess I'll have to wait for my score to see if I've been vindicated.

LSAT Tomorrow

I'm taking the LSAT tomorrow and I think it's a good time to describe my thoughts about it.

I took the LSAT once before after doing a 5-week Kaplan prep course and I did better than average, but not by much. I don't have too much difficulty with reasoning and reading comprehension. Reading comprehension is probably what I'm best at. I am slightly less successful with logical reasoning my greatest weakness being formal logic statements. My downfall, my Everest, is the logic games section. What logic games have to do with being a lawyer or even with studying law I have yet to understand. I think it has to do more with mental dexterity and juggling multiple details under pressure than solving problems. I've always been terrible at logic puzzles, since I was a child and could do them in math for extra credit. If it weren't for logic games, I would probably score pretty high on the LSAT. So I tell myself.

When I first started practicing them, I was lucky if I was able to finish one game out of four. I found them really, really difficult. Then I took the Kaplan course and improved somewhat, but not as much as I had hoped to improve. I was disappointed in the Kaplan prep course's approach to teaching logic games. I will explain why in a moment.

The first time I took the LSAT was two years ago. I had just started my master's degree and was already in classes when I took the exam. Once in my classes, I had very little time to keep up the LSAT prep and I felt that I did not do as well as I could have done. I also felt that I had failed to focus adequately on the area that gave me the most trouble and the area in which I could potentially see the most improvement, the logic games section.

This time around I began studying earlier in the hopes of improving, especially by focusing most of my time on logic games, while not ignoring improvements I could potentially make in the other sections. I kept up a fairly rigorous study schedule throughout the summer, accommodating holidays and special occasions as best I could. I worked long and hard, I have to admit that. I also have to admit I could have worked harder, although that would be true no matter how much I worked. I did LSAT practice between 1-3 hours every day for the past 17 weeks, and a practice test each Sunday morning. Looking at my little printed schedule right now, I'm faintly proud at how much I worked. But also disappointed. I can never seem to shake the thought that I could have done more.

In my study schedule, I spent 4 days each week doing logic games exclusively, then the other two between a mix of logical reasoning, reading comprehension and more logic games.

Over the 17 weeks, I have raised my LSAT score, according to my practice tests, by 6-7 points. I set an initial goal and have surpassed that, but find I am still disappointed, as on further research my goal score is still not good enough to bother applying for the Top 14 schools. They have gotten a lot more selective, competition has gotten stiffer with more people going back to school because of the recession, and my grade point average is not good enough to make up the deficiency of my LSAT score. I'm heaving a great sigh.

I am disappointed that my 'numbers' are too low to make me a serious contender for the top schools because my subjective factors are pretty good, I think, and I'm fairly certain I would do well at any school. And I was really looking forward to a good legal education at a law school that educates legal minds, instead of just cramming minds with law.

Despite losing that opportunity, I am still really excited about the prospect of studying law at the Midwest State School, for all the reasons I have articulated before. In fact, it will be a form of bliss.

Now about the Kaplan LSAT course. I said I was disappointed in their method of teaching logic games. I felt their teaching style was based too much an assumption of intuitive understanding. The teachers they hire are basically anyone who scored higher than 170 on their LSAT. I have a strong feeling that people who score higher than 170 have an ability naturally that the rest of us who take prep courses are trying to learn artifically. Their style of understanding is much more intuitive and automatic, because they're simply that bright and clearheaded. I however, am not that bright or clearheaded and I need things explained to me, step by step. The Kaplan teachers and the Kaplan method I felt assume you will understand something, or that you will become aware of something, simply by your own brilliance, a characteristic which I lack.

That's not to say that logic games can only be done using intuitive reasoning. Quite the opposite. People who don't get them naturally can be taught to do them, I firmly believe that, they just need more help and more instruction at each step to see the patterns and inferences which seem axiomatic to those more fortunate. I felt Kaplan did not teach to this type of student.

Now, for a digression. My Midwest State School has a study abroad programme for law students to come to London for a semester. I was not aware of that until day I saw a girl walking by on the street with a big sweatshirt of my Midwest State School. I stopped her and had a chat with her (another digression: I was coming home from a bad day and it was too irresistible to not take the opportunity of speaking to someone from home, when I knew it would be so comforting and familiar, and it was both). She told me about what she was studying at Midwest State School, and we discovered we had some friends and acquaintences in common. She also told me she had been a teacher for a prep course that was a rival to Kaplan and that they also felt Kaplan's method of teaching logic games was deficient. She recommended that although I couldn't take one of their courses in London, I should get one of their books.

Well, this year I got one of their books, the Logic Games Bible. If you struggle with logic games, I cannot recommend this book enough. It gave me exactly what I needed in terms of instruction and more importantly it taught me the cues or tools to recognise when there is an intuitive inference to be made. Suddenly it became far less intuitive and mysterious and incomprehensible and much more like a game with defined rules and recognisable patterns. It put logic games in a context such that they were amenable to being solved by skills rather than by luck or intuition.

From using this prep book, I was able to go from completing 2 games in one section to completing 3. The fourth is still elusive and there are still some types of games that I struggle and struggle with endlessly. I am still prone to inaccurate transcriptions, misread rules, a failure to understand the global view of a game (losing the forest for the trees, in a way) and I am still far too slow. If I had another 4 weeks to focus solely on logic games, I might improve.

Then again, I might not.

Sometimes I think I have simply hit my natural plateau and no amount of work will make me better. I struggle with the knowledge that I'm not as smart as I wish I was. Things don't seem to come as easily to me as they do to other people and I seem to need two cracks at something before I can do it right. Obviously, life rarely affords that kind of opportunity. Yes, I think I may have hit my natural wall on logic games. On the day of the exam, that is to say tomorrow, the types of questions they put on the logic games will determine how well I do on the section. If it's 3 relatively simple games and 1 hard game, I might come out all right. If it's 2 simple and 2 hard, I probably won't significantly improve my score. If it's 1 easy, 3 hard, it could very well be a complete disaster. I am doing practice sections from old exams. Sometimes it's a disaster, sometimes it's pretty successful. I guess my success will depend on my luck on the day.