A personal tale of taking the LSAT

Over the past few months, I watched my son Chris from afar sweat through preparation for the Law School Admission Test better known as the LSAT. He took more than 15 practice tests, studied with fellow college seniors and even found a ranking of test centers which looked at things like table size and the quality of the proctors. As a senior at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, he is also taking six courses this semester and holding down a 20-hour a week job with a political consulting firm.

Knowing he is a good writer (check out his travelogues from his semester in Prague earlier this year...he can coherently bang out 5,000 words in 2-3 hours which makes his journalist dad very proud), I asked him to recount the LSAT ordeal which culminated this past Saturday at Georgetown University Law Center where he took the test.

His piece below captures the anxiety, drama  and pressure of the LSAT. If you think college kids have it easy, his story might change your mind. I normally add videos to my Thinking Tech posts, but because this deviates from my usual subject of technology, I didn't. But Youtube has plenty of video accounts from LSAT takers.

Chris begins:

This past Saturday, after about five hours of anxious sleep, I woke up at 6 a.m. to take the dreaded LSAT, considered by many college students to be the most intimidating standardized test after the MCATs (Medical College Admission Test). Four months of studying and several hundred dollars worth of practice materials all came down to a three and a half hour test.

Nearly all law schools treat the LSAT as the single most important component of a student’s application and it is often weighed even two or three times as strongly as one’s GPA. While it is a bit depressing that four years of accumulated academic work is less important than a three and a half hour test, it means that the LSAT can be either an extraordinary boon or bane to a student depending on how he or she performs.

For this reason, nearly all students looking at top law schools invest in some sort of course to prepare for the test. While many take privately-tutored courses (these often run about $1,200-$1,600) for several months, I opted for a more affordable and flexible online course that allowed me to study on my own time.

I invested in a Kaplan course (Powerscore and TestMasters are usually considered the premiere programs, but neither have online courses) that ran around $600. I’d often come home from the two jobs I worked this summer, catch my breath, and then jump into some problem sets.

With the job market in the pits especially for recent college grads, it seemed like everyone I knew was looking to go to grad school. Often times a few friends and I would practice together, answering the same questions and then discussing the reasoning behind our answers.

During August and September, I would often take several “PrepTests” a week. These were formerly administered LSAT tests that are usually considered to be the best material to study before taking the real test. In total, I probably took over 15 full length practice LSAT tests before the big day and probably the equivalent of over 25 full length tests when factoring in individual practice sections.

As test day approached and my anxiety reached peak levels, I began preparing my test day “kit.” Test takers aren’t allowed to bring anything into the test room unless it is contained in a gallon sized plastic Ziploc bag. Apparently, the Law School Admission Council (LSAC) which administers the LSAT takes its security tips from the TSA.

LSAC’s fear of potential cheaters is so intense that before the test, all takers must ink their thumbs and give thumbprints in order to prevent fraud. Mechanical pencils aren’t allowed during the test, for fear that students could roll up small slips of paper inside with hints on them, take them out during the test without being observed by the proctors and use them to help figure out logic problems.

These people mean business. It is for this reason that I had a small conniption fit the night before the test. For whatever reason, I listed my name as ‘Chris’ on my LSAC account, rather than my full name, ‘Christopher.’ When I printed out my ticket for test day, the first thing the ticket says is that your ticket name must match EXACTLY (they bolded and capitalized it) with your photo ID.

The deadline to change your name on LSAC’s website was 5 p.m. the day before the test. I noticed this at 8 p.m. the night before the test. Concerned that four months of studying and a considerable financial investment were about to get washed down the tubes, I quickly turned to people, not necessarily for answers, but for reassurance that surely no one in their right mind would exclude a person from the test for a discrepancy between ‘Chris’ and ‘Christopher.’

My panic became so great that I even looked up my college advisor’s home phone number, called her (this was a Friday at 9 p.m.), and asked her whether or not she thought it would matter. She very kindly reassured me and told me to get a good night’s sleep. Ultimately, the name issue wouldn’t matter and I was allowed to take the test.

The difference between a practice test and the real thing was greater than I thought it would be. After a practice test, I usually had a very clear sense of how I performed and usually remembered the vast majority of the questions.

The real test, however, was a blur and felt like it was over in a matter of minutes, not hours. I also had less of a sense how I performed and my mood has oscillated between extremes of optimism and desperation.

Either way, the deed is done. Between friends, family, and co-workers, I’ve been asked dozens of times over the past few days, “How’d it go?” Tired of explaining the intricacies of logic games or the now-infamous “Bears” logical reasoning question to people who haven’t spent as much time obsessing over the test as I have, I’ve come up with a common response to this question.

“Well,” I say “I haven’t jumped off the Key Bridge…yet.”

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This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com