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The Little Things That Will Build Confidence Before Test Day

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One of the most important things you can bring with you to the LSAT is a healthy sense of self-confidence. If you’re feeling good about your LSAT abilities, you’re less likely to second guess yourself or waste time, which allows you to move through the questions more quickly.

This is, of course, something of a catch-22 — cultivating confidence ahead of a test as important as the LSAT is no small feat. With that in mind, here are a few things you can do in the final weeks before your LSAT to boost your self-confidence:

1. Practice your worst-case scenario

Everyone has some nightmare scenario that they dread seeing on the LSAT. Maybe it’s having Reading Comprehension as the last section or having two Logical Reasoning sections back-to-back.

Whatever your nightmare scenario, you should absolutely practice it. Do at least one practice test where you add an additional section from another test (in order to simulate the experimental section), and design your own worst nightmare. Maybe taking it will suck! Maybe it won’t. Either way, you’ll go into the test knowing that you’ve already dealt with whatever you’re most dreading, and you’ll know that you can handle it.

2. Re-do questions that gave you trouble in the past

There are probably some questions that were an absolute headache when you started studying.

If you revisit that question now, it’s very likely that you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the finding that those terrible questions now seem relatively straightforward. No matter what, you’re sure to see the progress you’ve made. Re-doing questions is helpful from a learning perspective, but it’s also great for a quick self-esteem boost.

(In fact, it’s helpful to keep a list of questions you’ve gotten wrong, in part because it helps you with exercises like this! Consider keeping track of particularly questions so that you can do them again at a later date.)

3. Plan ahead

When you’re taking the LSAT, you don’t want to have to worry about the minor details, like finding out that the journey to your test center takes much longer than you’d expected or stressing about what to eat for your mid-test snack. The more you plan ahead, the more you can eliminate these test-day uncertainties, thus leaving all of your considerable brainpower available to deal with the actual LSAT. Look through the test requirements well in advance and practice in an environment similar to the test if possible.