So You Think You Can Take a Practice LSAT and not Do Horribly?

The title of this post can also double as the name of a brand new Reality Show competition, of which I could easily be the star. Except I would be one of the fools who make the show worth watching because I failed horribly at the outset of the season - at least according to Kaplant Test Prep.

This Sunday, I took it upon myself to take a practice version of the LSAT. I have never taken the test in a serious setting, and I wanted to see how I would do as if it were the real deal. I got in late, so I only had about 30 instead of 35 minutes on the first section. I budgeted my time accordingly and finished the whole section. My first impression of the LSAT, on the very first question, was one of slight despair. Here’s the first question:

If we must refrain from liberating the conquered islands simply because the lives of some civilians would be endangered, then we must never engage in any kind of armed conflict near populated areas.

The Author of the argument assumes that

a) armed conflict invariably endangers the lives of civilians
b) the conquered islands can be liberated without conflict
c) one cannot engage in armed conflict near populated areas without endangering civilians
d) the liberation of the conquered islands is less important than the lives of a few citizens
e) the conquered islands should be liberated despite the risk to civilians

Easy stuff, right? It’s not that I found the question hard (it’s C, by the way), but you had to think about it. C and A are very similar, so you can’t just fly through it - without practice, but even then you can miss the key phrase “near populated areas” if you fly through the test. I was somewhat expecting it to be like the SAT, where you could kind of figure out which answer sounded right, without really knowing the right answer. Well the whole test is like that first question. The despair I felt at the outset of reading that question was pretty much based on the thought of how much thinking I would have to actually do. I got used to it, and sailed through most of the rest of the exam. Two logic games questions stumped me, but for the most part, I grasped the point behind each question.

So I wait until the next day to find out how I did. Apparently I got a 144…out of 180. That’s the lower end of the bell curve. A disheartening fact for me to learn since I hope to go to Georgetown for law school, and you would need at least a 165…if not higher. I spent most of my day at work on monday feeling quite depressed, thought of how bad it would actually be if I just stayed in the parks system for the rest of my life, and anxiously awaited the end of the day when I could go to Kaplan and see which questions I had gotten wrong.

When I actually checked the answers, much to my relief, I realized that there was no way the answers they said were correct were better than my answers. (The whole test is a “choose the best answer kind of thing). When I looked up the explanations online, it turned out my answers were right, for the most part, so instead of getting 30% of the Logical reasoning questions right, it looked more like 80%. I still don’t know what my actual score was, but I’m hoping that helps it out a little.

All in all, though, the test was a lot of fun. Despite all the thinking, and all the Kaplan-making-me-feel-like-my-career-choices-have-been-ill-made thing.

~ by aeqvitas on June 11, 2008.