Lowest Hanging Fruit!

[chike_eze]

I was just talking to my Law Professor about strategies for the mid-term law school exam. And he said "You know, and this applies to the final as well... you are going to realize that you have more things in your head than you have time to write...".

"The best thing to do" he continued, "is to go through all the questions and provide the majority law answers; once complete then go back and provide minority law and policy type answers"

"In other words, go for the lowest hanging fruit, and then time permitting, aim for the little ones up top"

Few weeks prior to taking my last LSAT exam, I was advised to do just this -- i.e., "Don't waste time on the really difficult questions (pesky fruit up top) also worth 1 point, instead answer as many relatively easy questions (low hanging fruit) as you can, then if time permits, come back to the hard/impossible questions later"

Not that it matters now, but I think I would have done appreciably better on the LSAT exam if I had incorporated this advise into my PTs from the start. It is hard to to do this consistently later... especially on D-Day!

[tommywallach]

Hey Chike,

The only problem with this advice is that it implies that you're spending some amount of time to ascertain the difficulty level of each question. I find that I don't really know how hard a question is until I'm looking at the answer choices. The only exception is with LG, where you can often tell if a game is hard (if only because it's of a type that you know you struggle with).

In general, I recommend you work through the test from start to finish, and only skip a question if it's deeply obvious at a glance that it's a hard one (but this is pretty rare!).

-t

[chike_eze]

Hey Chike,

The only problem with this advice is that it implies that you're spending some amount of time to ascertain the difficulty level of each question. I find that I don't really know how hard a question is until I'm looking at the answer choices. The only exception is with LG, where you can often tell if a game is hard (if only because it's of a type that you know you struggle with).

In general, I recommend you work through the test from start to finish, and only skip a question if it's deeply obvious at a glance that it's a hard one (but this is pretty rare!).

-t

I disagree in part, and agree in part.

I don't think it necessarily implies that one has to spend time figuring out the actual difficulty level of each question. Some time back, Matt shared his opinion, and I agree, about a general pattern to LSAT question difficulty.

...Remember that the earlier questions in an LR section are easier, with a short plateau of difficulty between questions 9-13 and the most challenging series of questions between 17-23. Go with your gut instincts early in the section, and don't over-analyze. Later in the section, start becoming more skeptical...

Assuming this to be true, then what I am suggesting is that if one gets to those difficult or impossible questions somewhere probably (but not definitely) between 17-23 or 9-13, that instead of spending much time (e.g., 3+ minutes each) on multiple difficult questions with high probabilities of picking the wrong answers (at worst), or picking the right answers and burning precious minutes (at best), one may want to skip/return to difficult questions, and focus on answering as many relatively easier questions as possible.

Obviously, a delicate balance would have to be struck so as not to skip indiscriminately -- but that will come with practice. No one size fits all.

[tommywallach]

Hey Chike,

You're absolutely right that if you're in a "danger zone" and something immediately looks hard, you should consider skipping it. That's great process!

But I would argue that if you've already read it and glanced at the answer choices (i.e. that's how you decided it was hard), you're already in it now, and you might as well go through and finish with your best guess relatively quickly.

Hope that helps!

-t