A common complaint and challenge in LSAT strategy I hear from my students is the “answer choice trap.” They’re on Logical Reasoning question 11 of 25. They’ve read the stimulus (that little paragraph) and understood it well enough, but now they’re stuck between answer choices.
“Answer choice (A)—that must be it!”
“But (B) looks so good. Yeah, (B) is better than (A).”
“But, hey now, how about (D)? This is way more straightforward than (B). Maybe too straightforward? Let’s look at (A) again…
Around and around they go; it’s a carousel of indecision. How do we get off of this ride? Through anticipation!
Anticipation 101
In a nutshell, anticipation is taking a short thinking break after reading the stimulus, but before reading any of the answer choices, to consider the right answer. It’s where we front-load much of our thinking about the question.
Students tend to get this process in theory, but they have their doubts when implementing it in practice. “It takes too long,” they say. “It’s too hard!” they say. Or maybe they just have doubts about whether it makes any difference.
We’re going to talk about why you should implement anticipation into your LSAT strategy and how to use it to increase your LSAT score.
Anticipating Answers in Real Life
But first, an analogy.
Imagine you’re going to Trader Joe’s on a Tuesday night. It’s 5:00 PM and the after-work crowd, soccer moms, and students from the nearby university have all descended upon those narrow, bright-colored aisles to get their shopping done.
Your mission, if you accept it, is to get the ingredients needed to make your favorite chili.
Let’s play out two scenarios in this day-to-day life drama.
In the first scenario, you pretty much know what ingredients you’re shopping for. It’s your Mom’s famous chili recipe and it’s not the first time you’ve made it. So, you pick up the can of red kidney beans—or was that white kidney beans? Then, the two cans of diced tomatoes—wait, diced or crushed? And was that two cans or three? By the time you’re rounding the corner for the ground beef, you forget that you need to get the seasoning mix in the last aisle.
But wait. As you turn back, there it is: right on the end cap, shining in bright red and blue colors: chocolate-covered peanut butter pretzels, for only $1.99. For a moment, all dreams of chili are forgotten, as you imagine pure peanut-buttery chocolate bliss.
Then, you snap back to reality and continue your shopping. After several wrong left turns, head scratches, and retracing of steps later, you finally emerge from the store 45 minutes later. “What happened back there?” you mutter with bewilderment.
At least you have everything you need to make your dinner, right? Right?!
And, oh yeah, you got the peanut butter pretzels, even though your significant other is trying to lose weight, and it really wouldn’t be kind to him to keep them in the house. Oh well. Hopefully, you didn’t forget anything important.
Now let’s play through a second scenario.
You pull out Mom’s old stained recipe card and read off the ingredient list. After checking your pantry, you carefully copy down the missing ingredients onto your trusty notes app.
At the store, the app is open and your head is down. The older gentleman stocking Three-Buck Chuck looks at you on your phone and shakes his head (“Kids these days…“). But you know what you’re doing. You’re on a mission. You barely notice the peanut butter pretzels as you float by them, a leaf on the wind.
You pile every last ingredient into your cart and tap your phone to pay. Bing bam boom, you’re in and out in 10 minutes.
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The Takeaway
The above two accounts show us the difference between anticipating and not anticipating on the LSAT.
Yes, anticipating the right answer takes time and forethought, just like making a grocery list. You have to check the argument (or your pantry), take stock of what you have (premises, conclusions, ground cumin), and think about what you need once you’ve arrived at the store – er, answer choices (flour or flaw-er? main point or tri-tip?).
Okay, we’ll cool it with the grocery stuff. Let’s just reflect on the benefits of anticipating the right answer!
For starters, you save so much time on the back end of the question. With the right answer already in mind, when you see that answer choice (B) starts with the exact opposite, you don’t have to even read the rest of it! The precious 30 seconds you save by avoiding answer choice agony can be time that is banked and stored for later, tougher questions.
Even more importantly, with anticipation, your accuracy soars. Because you have a better idea of what you’re looking for, you tend to stick to it and find it, while not being led astray by tempting peanut butter pretzels–I mean answer choices.
In turn, higher accuracy is how you can increase your LSAT score. Simple, right?
How to Anticipate on the LSAT
All right, so you’re sold on the benefits of this LSAT strategy, and you’re never going to forget your shopping list ever again. But what if you’re still a bit new to this anticipation game and aren’t sure what you’re doing?
Let’s take a closer look at anticipation through the lens of LSAT Logical Reasoning questions.
Remember Your Job
In the Blueprint method, we always start a Logical Reasoning question by reading the question prompt first. This helps provide us with the appropriate mental frame for reading the stimulus. Are we looking for a flaw or the method of reasoning? Are we looking for the role of a particular statement, the main conclusion, or a required assumption?
Importantly, the question prompt tells us exactly what our job is; i.e., what we should anticipate looking for.
Break the Argument Down
From there, we need to adhere to that job. For most questions, that starts with breaking down the argument. The vast majority of LSAT Logical Reasoning questions are trying to prove something (the conclusion) and provide evidence (i.e. one or more premises) in furtherance thereof.
Keep in mind that exactly how we read and digest the argument we’re given depends on the question type we’ve identified. For example, if all we need is the main point, we can kind of drive with our blinders on. We’re looking just for the conclusion and any statements that help point us that way.
Assuming we’re looking for more than just the main point, though, there is usually more anticipation to be done.
Got your question type down? Good. Got your premises and conclusions? Good. Onto the next step.
Specific vs. General
Many students think that anticipation means predicting the answer choice verbatim, like some sort of fortune teller. True, sometimes this will happen, and you will feel amazed at yourself when it does. Most of the time, though, it’s helpful to realize that anticipation can be on a spectrum from general to specific. Let’s use a basic example to illustrate.
Say we’re asked to strengthen the following basic argument:
Premise: Bob’s fingerprints were found at the scene of the murder.
Conclusion: Therefore, Bob must have committed the murder.
Open and shut case, right?
If we know a little about strengthen questions, we know the basic LSAT strategy: Find a new fact that strengthens the link between the premise and the conclusion.
Let’s start with the premise: Bob’s fingerprints were found at the scene. Maybe not the most compelling evidence for the prosecution, but let’s work with it. How can we build upon it, and make it better?
Maybe Bob’s fingerprints were found specifically on the murder victim. Or the murder weapon. Or maybe, we can rule out other suspects — perhaps, Bob’s fingerprints were the only fingerprints found at the crime scene.
These are all great anticipations. They’re also specific anticipations. If you’re the creative type, your brain probably thinks this way without much effort, and if it does, great. Don’t change what’s working for you!
But if you’re not that creative? Not a problem.
Failing a specific anticipation, we can still come up with a general anticipation: “The key piece of evidence for Bob is the fingerprints, so we need something that provides context to this evidence to strengthen Bob’s guilt.”
This more general form of anticipation is arguably better because we don’t know what we’re going to get in the answer choices – the victim, the weapon, or something else entirely!
Wrapping Up – A Challenge
Hopefully, this post has inspired you to try tapping into your anticipation skills a bit more deeply. If you’re not sure where to begin, we suggest doing some untimed questions to put this LSAT strategy into practice. Pick a set of 10 LSAT Logical Reasoning questions, and write down your anticipation for each question. Good or bad, specific or general—just try your best.
Then, after finishing and grading the problem set, review.
- How close was your anticipation to the right answer?
- What anticipation techniques were helpful and which ones weren’t?
- What question types seemed easier to anticipate. Alternatively, which ones gave you a bit more difficulty?
- How many times, despite your best efforts, did you still fall for the “peanut butter pretzel” answer choice?
Writing your anticipation down is not something we’d suggest on test day. But the idea is that if you’re trying to build better reading and problem-solving habits, we want to be more intentional.
So give it a try! Before long, your anticipation skills will be the LSAT equivalent of the grocery list zen master of Trader Joe’s and you won’t have to wonder how to increase your LSAT score quickly!
And if you need more help figuring out how to incorporate anticipating into your broader LSAT strategy, learn from the best in a Blueprint LSAT course. Whether you want the flexibility of a Self-Paced Course or prefer to navigate the LSAT with instructors in a Live Course or private tutoring, we have the study method that fits your learning style.
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