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Maintaining Confidence on the LSAT

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Last week, we talked about the importance of keeping up your confidence on the LSAT. Sometimes, that’s easier said than done. So, here’s some concrete advice for staying confident when the clock is running:

First of all, stay calm. Self-doubt tends to enter your headspace when you’re overly nervous. But if you’re the sort of person reading an LSAT blog, you probably don’t need to be. And keep in mind that the stakes on any given LSAT administration are actually quite low. In general, only your best score counts for law school admissions. If you can’t really hurt yourself by giving the LSAT a shot, there’s no reason to be deeply worried about it!

Second, don’t deviate from your practice test habits. It’s a lot easier to be confident about processes you’ve already done multiple times. Test day is not the time to shake things up. That could do a number on your nerves.

Third, practice under distracting conditions. You’re going to feel great when you walk into a relatively quiet, controlled testing room if you’ve been doing your practice tests in coffee shops or other noisy places!

Fourth, focus on what is going well. That tough diagramming question you nailed? Awesome job! That brutal grouping game you made it through? We’re so proud of you! Those are valuable points you just scored. Remember that to get a great result on this test, you don’t need to get every single question right. Don’t let the ones that got away from you get you too down. Instead, use your victories as positive momentum. And from there, channel your energy towards more questions that you have a high likelihood of getting correct!

Fifth, be selective about skipping around on questions. Oftentimes people will repeatedly skip questions that they started but then got overwhelmed by. Now, it’s not the end of the world if you have to skip a lengthy Parallel question on LR or Rule-Substitution question on LG every now and then. In some cases, it might even be strategic to do so. But if you make a habit out of starting a question and then skipping it before you finish, it’s probably going to hurt your mojo, waste your time, and lose you net points.

Overall, you’ve got this! In the words of Elle Woods, “You must always have faith in people. But above all, you must always have faith in yourself.”

Today’s contributing writer is Maria LaBella, a Blueprint instructor in Washington, D.C.