Return to Blog Homepage

How Your Last 24 Hours Before the October LSAT Should Go

BPPshinners-lsat-blog-last-24-hours-october-lsat
The October LSAT is less than 24 hours away (for our LSAT blog’s East Coast readers, at least). But that’s not a cause for panic. You’re prepped and ready to go.

Unless you didn’t take Blueprint. Then, you’re kinda effed.

Seriously, though, this last day before the October LSAT isn’t a day for cramming. It’s not a day for tackling that concept that always gave you trouble. It’s not even a day for refining your methods. Today is a day for rest.

Studying and stressing out depletes neurochemicals. For anyone taking a test, those are bad things to be short of. So today should be relaxing, allowing your brain to recover (slightly) from the hell you’ve put it through over the past few months.

What’s on the agenda?

1) Get some exercise early in the day. Don’t go crazy if you’re out of shape; a brisk walk will do. It’ll boost your endorphin levels and help you de-stress.

2) Plan some intellectually stimulating, but not intellectually taxing, activities. Read the newspaper. Do a crossword puzzle. Play a board game. Listen to some classical music.

3) Veg out a bit. Nothing wrong with an hour or so of TV. Just don’t spend the whole day on your couch watching Married…with Children.

4) Treat yourself to a massage. Swedish, not sports. And while a happy ending might sound like a fun way to end a massage, a prostitution charge is no way to start a legal career (it’s certainly a way to end one, though).

As far as what you need to take care of, administratively, you should have an email by now from LSAC describing the October LSAT test day procedure. Some important things to remember:

1) You need a passport-style photo. There’s no way around this. Don’t have a friend snap a picture and print it out. Go somewhere that does actual photos for passports. Your local CVS will be more than happy to do it for $10 or so. Yes, it’s annoying to have another cost added on. But is $10 going to break the bank? If it does, you might want to reconsider law school.

2) Get your LSAT test day materials ready. ID, pencils, erasers, sharpeners, snack, etc. Throw them all in an appropriately sized Ziploc bag. And don’t put anything else in there, especially not ear plugs. If you’re caught with a non-approved item, you’re gonna have a bad time.

3) Check weather reports, and see if there’s any construction going on by your LSAT testing center. Plan accordingly (both dress-wise and timeline-wise).

4) Make plans for the travel home after the October LSAT. You won’t be allowed to have a cell phone in the LSAT testing center, and they won’t have lockers in which you can store these items.

5) If you’re going to make plans to celebrate after the LSAT, make sure to give yourself a 3- to 4-hour buffer. As dumb as it sounds, you don’t want to worry about being late to meet your friends after the exam. Any distraction is bad, so don’t let this one crop up.

The day of the October LSAT, make sure to get there half an hour before the check-in deadline. Something will probably go wrong and slow you down.

If you find yourself taking a few minutes/questions to ‘get into gear’ on your PTs, bring 10 LR question and 1 LG, all of which you’ve already done. I recommend going back to your first PT and pulling questions you answered incorrectly then but have a firm handle on now. Talk yourself through them before entering the LSAT testing center to get your brain in LSAT mode. If you find that you drag at the end of the test (sections 4/5), don’t do this, as it’ll start the process an hour or so before you start the LSAT.

Be ready to stand in line for a while at check-in. There will be more people there than you think, and at least two people will have forgotten photos/ID and stand there noisily complaining.

When the October LSAT starts, the proctor is the boss. Don’t give them any reason to write you up, even if they call time 10 minutes early. If you get written up, your credibility goes out the door. If you sit there quietly and complain afterwards, you’ll be taken more seriously.

After the October LSAT, go out and blow off some steam. It’s a stressful moment, so you need to properly de-stress afterwards. There’s an old saying I just made up: “Everyone remembers the 24 hours before the LSAT; no one remembers the 24 hours after.” You’ve got a plan for the 24 hours before; have some fun the 24 hours after.

And if you’re so inclined, spend some of that time on the LSAT blog Saturday afternoon reading and contributing to the October LSAT Instant Recap.