For an intermediate LSAT student, making careless errors on the Logic Games section is often the bane of your existence. You missed the word “only”. You confused, yet again, a “could be true” question for a “must be true” question. You inexplicably forgot to put a cross mark on a letter to represent a “NOT” rule.
You’ve gotten pretty good at familiarizing yourself with the common game types. You’ve done enough drilling to know how to translate the rules into an efficient diagram. Heck, you’ve even developed a killer instinct to know the right instance to split the game board. But you keep on making dumb mistakes. Over and over.
At a certain point, you've come to understand the cost of your carelessness. You wasted 3 precious minutes on a game where you made a false assumption based on a careless error, which derailed the entire game or even the whole section. You then got frustrated with yourself and the frustration spills into the other sections.
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And after some soul searching, you finally realize that this chink in your LG armour can only be overcome by cultivating good habits. You may tell yourself repeatedly to “slow down” and “read carefully”, but when the adrenaline is pumping on the actual day of the exam, habit is your only trustworthy friend.
Let me share with you three golden habits:
1. After you complete a Logic Game diagram setup and prior to diving into the questions, always go over BOTH the prompt and the subsequent rules to see if you’ve represented them FULLY and ACCURATELY.
2. After you finish the above step and prior to going into the questions, always PAUSE and consider if you can make any further inferences. Spend at least 15 seconds to consider how the rules, the diagram, and the number of game pieces INTERACT with one another.
3. When you split a game board, always write down ALL the original notations onto each and every split game board.
You may end up spending 30 more seconds on each game when incorporating these habits, but it could very well save you many minutes for being careless. And the only way to make these important your habit is to replicate this process in your logic games practice.
Over and over.
Remember: Bad habits are not overcome by one’s sheer will, but rather the cultivation of good habits that replace them.
Trust the process.
Jeff Cui
Founder
AoPrep LSAT Tutoring
