December 2009 LSAT Survey

The December 2009 LSAT has come and gone, and now it’s just a matter of waiting for scores to come in (start hovering over your inbox on January 4).

We asked our Knewton LSAT prep students for some feedback on their test-day experience. The consensus? Logic Games were definitely the major challenge this time around. Over 80% of students found this section to be the trickiest, compared to only 26% in September. All told, though, students were satisfied with the way their prep experience served them on Saturday.

Full survey results after the jump.

Overall

• 50% of students felt best prepared for the Logical Reasoning section of the LSAT; 30% were the most ready for Reading Comprehension, while only 20% felt the most prepared for Analytical Reasoning.
• In terms of performance, students were evenly split: 50% reported doing as well or better than they expected on the test, while the other half felt that they could have performed at a higher level.

Timing

• Students generally were able to manage their time quite well: 57% reported that they finished all the questions in time; 43% left a few questions unanswered.
• The timing was tightest in the Games section: A quarter of students found that timing was a significant issue, while about half reported leaving a question or two incomplete.
• This was not the story in LR and RC, where over 60% of students reported not feeling rushed at all.

The Sections

• Again, Analytical Reasoning seemed to be the most trying section of the day: about 55% of students reported that it was as difficult as they expected, but 45% found it even trickier.
• This was a contrast to LR and RC, which for all students were either as difficult or less difficult than they expected. The large majority of students found the LR section to be more manageable than they had anticipated (71%),  and many found the same to be true for RC (25%).

Conclusions

• All told, it sounds like this round of the LSAT presented some definite challenges. The feedback from students, though, was positive overall. Almost 100%reported that their prep experience helped them out on test day, and we hope they have good news waiting for them in about three weeks…