Effective skills help with LSAT test-taking anxiety
December 14th, 2009
Recently, I met a student who was anxious about taking the LSAT. She came to my book launch, brought by her sister, to get help for her test taking anxiety. The student was skeptical, but her sister bought her a copy of the book anyway.
A month later I received the following email from the student:
“I just wanted to tell you, thank you so much for all your insight in your book, and for talking with me that day. I took my LSAT last Saturday, and the day before the test I decided to read your book. It was probably one of the most helpful things I did for myself all month! Even more so than studying countless hours of my test preparation books. I used your techniques before and during my test, and despite not knowing my score, I feel like the positive self talk and breathing helped me focus and be confident to answer all of the questions. So I just wanted to thank you so much for your work!”
I greatly appreciate hearing from someone who used the book and found it so helpful. Notice that she opened it up the night before the test! What does this tell me? I’ve coached many candidates for the LSAT (as well as MCAT, DAT, GRE’s etc). What they say is the same as the student I’m quoting: they study countless hours. They have put in self-effort, they have done so much to grasp the material. But when they get derailed with anxiety on such an important test (and many people do), their performance suffers and they end up with sub-par scores. What’s going on here? Burning more midnight oil?
No.
You need to prepare your self—meaning you, the test-taker – to be calm, confident and focused. In this case, it helped this student right before the test. She didn’t say this much in the email but my guess is she slept better and a rested body and mind help a lot during test. On the test itself she definitely recognized the tools helped her. Her experience makes the point: pay attention to the person taking the test—to yourself—it will make a huge difference.
