It’s Halloween and while nothing could be spookier than the LSAT, horror movies will always retain a special place in our hearts. It’s probably a good idea to take break from your studying and sit down with some popcorn and Saw 8: Measure Twice, Cut Once or Final Destination 34: Just How Final Can We Get? But while you’re watching, keep an eye out for these horror movie tropes that could teach you a little something about the LSAT…

1. Not Quite Dead
You’ve finally vanquished the monster. Freddy Krueger is dead! The question is answered correctly! So that means you can turn around, high-five your friends and have an extended and leisurely conversation about what a close call that was, right? Not so fast!  Just as the monster all-too-often turns out to not quite be dead yet, the fact that you got a question right doesn’t mean you can move on. You need to make sure you understand exactly why the right answer was right, and if you were tempted by any of the wrong answers, you need to make sure you know exactly why those were wrong. If you don’t, it could come rise from the dead on test day.

2. “The Calls are Coming from Inside the House!”
Something’s off, and you can’t quite put your finger on what. Suddenly you realize… the calls are coming from inside the house! Likewise, when you’re looking at flawed arguments on the LSAT, there will be some sort of issue within the argument itself. We have to accept the premises as true, so the flaw will occur somewhere between the premises and the conclusion – in other words, for some reason the premises will fail to prove the conclusion, or to put it yet another way, the argument will be making some sort of flawed assumption. So when you’re searching for a flaw in an argument, look within the argument itself – you’re looking for an issue between the premises and the conclusion.

3. Let’s Split Up, Gang
For some reason, characters in horror movies haven’t yet figured out that it pretty much never makes sense to split up. I mean, it’s just not efficient to go around separately looking for whatever-you’re-looking-for. Likewise, the way many students approach the LSAT just isn’t the most efficient way. For Logical Reasoning, sure, you could read the stimulus and then dive right into the answer choices – but you’re going to find the right answer more quickly and more accurately if you take a moment to anticipate/prephrase it. For Logic Games, if you try to answer the questions without finding deductions first, you’re gonna have a bad time. And for Reading Comprehension, having a solid idea of how the passage is structured (which is achieved through careful and limited tagging) will save you from having to skim through the whole passage to find answers to questions.

So take the evening off from the LSAT and kick back with a scary movie. But tomorrow, it’ll be back to the books to learn the tricks and treats of the LSAT!