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How to Approach your LSAT Prep Homework

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Studying for the LSAT is a ton of work. Just how intense it is is one of the biggest things people are surprised by when they begin their prep. A lot of times people assume that, while there is stuff to learn, you can memorize it in relatively short order. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Doing well on the LSAT isn’t about memorizing facts or details, but rather about building some pretty sophisticated skills. And building these skills takes time and practice. From the start, you need to be doing lots and lots of homework.

If you’re taking a prep-course, then this homework will be laid out for you. It’ll probably be a lot more than you expect. At Blueprint, each batch of homework can take eight hours or more to complete. You have to make the time to do it if you want to score well come October. But you have to make sure you’re doing it right, so keep the following things in mind.

First of all, don’t do it all in one sitting. If you spend an entire day doing LSAT homework, your brain is going to turn to mush. Burning out by doing too much work in a short period of time can be a real problem, especially early in your study before you’ve built up a lot of stamina. The other reason it’s a good idea to not do the homework all at once is that you won’t retain the information as well if you do. So spread it out, and don’t wait until the day before class to hit the books.

Secondly, don’t treat the homework as just some assignment that you’re going to hand in. In school, you might have often just knocked out homework as fast as possible, but you can’t do that with the LSAT. You need to learn from the homework to really get better, so you have to be thorough. Take your time to be confident in your right answer choices. For every single question you get wrong, go back and figure out why you picked the wrong answer choice, and why you shouldn’t have. Also, figure out why you didn’t pick the right answer choice, and you actually should have. Doing this will make your homework take a lot longer, but it’ll make it much more productive, and will do a lot to raise your score.

Lastly, don’t worry about time. At this stage, you’re still learning how to answer the questions. Before you get fast, you have to be accurate. If it takes you half an hour to do a single game or you spend ten minutes on one logical reasoning question, that’s time well spent. Once your skills are at a sufficiently high level you’ll add time pressure, but not now. For now it’ll all about accuracy.

If you’re not taking a prep-course, much of the above still applies. The difference is that you’ll be coming up with your own homework. Just make sure that you still do lots of work. Make a study schedule and stick to it. One of the biggest problem self-studiers have is staying on track and motivated, so don’t let yourself fall behind.

But no matter how you’re studying, the name of the game is hard work and thoroughness. If you keep working a lot and working thoroughly, you’ll be on your way to a fantastic October score.