How to stop running out of time on the LSAT
Try these two drills:
1. Timing Extension
If you’re struggling to get sections done in 35 minutes and are forcing yourself to rush through questions as a result, you should start by extending the amount of time you have for each section. Remember: 35 minutes per section is the ideal goal to strive for on test day, but you don’t need to start there.
Start off with taking 60 minutes, or 45, or whatever amount of time feels comfortable for you, and then slowly reduce the overall time by a few minutes at a time until you reach 35. This will help you slowly adjust to the time pressure instead of getting frazzled. Adapting to the time pressure slowly is one of the best ways to overcome it.
2. Forced Skipping:
This drill is a variation of the one above, but instead of giving yourself more time per section, you’re going to consciously choose to answer fewer questions per section. If it's too hard to get to all 25 questions on a given section, then say that you’re only going to answer 15, or 20, until you feel comfortable with that level of intensity. Instead of wasting your time trying to answer 25 questions and rushing through what you know – focus on answering 20 of them perfectly. Once you’ve mastered this, you can begin to add questions one at a time until you get to 25 for a similar effect as the timing extension drill. For games and reading, this could look like only doing 3 passages or games per section.
On LR and RC, you can skip whole games or passages, and individual questions within each, but don’t move on to the next logic game or reading passage until you’ve answered every question in the previous one.
Remember, there’s no rule that you have to do game 2 before game 3, or question 15 before question 24. Don’t be afraid to skip a question that looks hard and come back to it. Just make sure to flag it so you can come back to it at the end and guess, so you still give yourself a 20% chance of getting it right in the event that you run out of time!
Other options:
If your blind review score still isn’t as high as you’d like it, chances are that your struggles are more conceptual than timing-based. Go back into any of the lessons in phase 1, and use your targeted drilling days to reinforce any concepts that need work.
If you’ve tried all of these strategies and nothing seems to be working, a big gap between your timed and blind review scores can also mean that you might be a candidate for testing accommodations. There are a variety of reasons and diagnoses that qualify someone for accommodations such as extra time. Don’t be afraid to look into them if you feel that the timing creates a serious burden for you.
The LSAT should be a fair measure of skills, and we’ve helped many of our students get accommodations who were being held back unfairly due to learning differences. You can refer to the LSAC website for a list of potential accommodations and what it takes to qualify, or if you’re working with an Apollo coach, reach out to them to ask for their advice on how to look into accommodations for yourself.
Still struggling with timing?
