With the February 2017 LSAT held right before Super Bowl LI, it’s only fitting that the June 2017 LSAT fell on the same day as the deciding game of a major sporting championship. And while the, let’s say less-than-transparent, New England Patriots were appropriate victors for the ultra-secretive February exam, the Golden State Warriors, love ‘em or hate ‘em, are the appropriate winners for the start of the published LSAT year, as that team perfectly embodies this test.

In fact, you could make a compelling(-ish) argument that the starting five players on the Warriors personify each section of the LSAT. You have Steph Curry, a dynamic, if undersized, point guard with a quick release and huge shooting range. If short, fluid, and able to cover a lot of ground doesn’t describe a Logical Reasoning question, I don’t know what does. There’s Klay Thompson, quiet, stoic, oft-overlooked, but deadly to those unprepared for him—basically a Reading Comprehension section with a pretty stroke and great perimeter defense. Of course, we can’t overlook Finals MVP Kevin Durant, one of the most versatile and unique basketball players ever. A player who’s great at both ordering (like when he runs the offense and orders the plays) and grouping (like when he assigned himself to the already great group of players at Golden State). KD is a 7-foot Logic Game. Draymond Green, the unpredictable and wily heart and soul of this Warriors team, who can guard all five positions, is a great stand-in for the Experimental section. And in center Zaza Pachulia you have someone who is too long and kind of pointless, much like the Writing Sample.

So congrats to the goLden StATe warriors, and many more congrats to those who just completed the June 2017 exam.

We’re here today to give an instant reaction to what we’re hearing about the June LSAT, before LSAC actually publishes the exam later this year. If you didn’t take the exam yesterday, but are studying for September or beyond, hopefully this discussion will give you some insight into the LSAT trends we’re seeing. Let’s get started!

Logical Reasoning

Logical Reasoning is one of the hardest sections to report on, given that test takers are inundated with around 50 LR questions (and if you got LR as the Experimental, around 75), which could be about literally anything. If you’re going to purge anything from the old short-term memory bank after the test, it makes sense that these short questions would be the first to go.

The overall difficulty of these questions weren’t especially bad, according to most test takers, although there are some saying that the first section was pretty challenging. We’re also hearing reports that there were quite a few Necessary questions on this exam, some of which were quite tricky. As far as topics, we’re hearing stories of questions about the skin of marsupials, government officials and state secrets, constructing t-shirts and skirts (a topic that may reflect the fact that, right now, men’s t-shirts are far too long and look like skirts), layering clothes for warmth, vampire books, and orangutans. Fascinating stuff.

Reading Comprehension

For Reading Comprehension, we’re hearing near universal reports that this was an especially brutal collection of passages. This is par for the course on recent LSATs. More than any other section, the test writers have been ratcheting up the difficulty on Reading Comprehension with longer, more complex passages and more difficult questions.

From what we can gather, it sounds like we got a passage about a jazz traditionalist (sounds like someone at LSAC was a fan of Ryan Gosling in La La Land), a passage about psychologists who have some hot takes on how we interpret our thoughts, and a passage about the benefits of dowsing. We’re also hearing that passage four, a comparative passage about judges doing their own investigation on both trial and appellate courts, was especially tough.

Future LSAT takers: get started on Reading Comprehension early, and make sure you have a good system for doing any passage. Practice a lot. Because the writers are getting pretty ruthless on this one.

Logic Games

Fortunately, reports from this LSAT are suggesting that there weren’t any unusual games or crazy curveballs thrown in this section. In fact, most of our birds are telling us this was an especially manageable games section. Unlike the trading building games from the December 2016 (a rare operation game, according to our system), the computer virus game from September 2016 (a pretty bizarre twist on an ordering game), or the office draft game from June 2016 (a weird version of a tiered ordering game, or a pattern game, depending on who you ask), this games section didn’t have anything that threw most test takers for a loop. It sounds like all the games were straightforward ordering or grouping games, just like they were in February. Does this mean the LSAT is done with its avant-garde phase in games? I guess we’ll see in September.

It sounds like we got a tiered ordering game about rural and urban magazine articles, two 1:1 ordering games about setting up an obstacle course and amusement park rides, and an underbooked stable grouping game that involved people traveling to three cities.

Writing Sample

Sounds like it was about a city councilor who was debating whether to support lowing sales taxes and adding a toll road to her municipality. Hope you all constructed fire persuasive essays on this one.

So what now?

Well, if you feel like you did great, take a well-deserved victory lap. May we suggest emulating J.R. Smith from last year’s NBA Finals?

If you’re not sure if you got the score you desired and are considering canceling it, may we suggest watching this video first?

The LSAC’s official cancelation policy can be read here. In short, you have until 11:59 pm Eastern on the sixth day after the exam to cancel. So relax today. Think it through. Sleep on it. Consider whether the section you tanked was the probable Experimental section.

Got any additional thoughts, feelings, or concerns about the exam? Drop a comment below!