There is one thing that best prepares you for the LSAT, and that’s doing LSAT problems. But when you take “practice tests,” do these specific questions prepare you for the actual, real LSAT? At Blueprint Prep, many of our students wonder if the practice tests we administer are the genuine thing. After all, for some other tests (such as the GMAT, which one must take to go to business school), there are a limited number of tests available, and test preparation companies have to make up practice problems. However, we at Blueprint Prep are happy to report that there are over 60 real past LSATs released as prep tests. In fact the Law School Admission Council releases three new tests per year, all of them quite real. Does this matter? At Blueprint Prep, we think it does.

The LSAT is an incredibly sophisticated test. Teams of handsomely-paid psychometricians (yes, it’s a real profession) spend untold hours coming up with perfectly crafted questions to drive you insane. These people are incredibly skilled, and the truth of the matter is that LSAT questions cannot be recreated by us mere mortals. This is why we at Blueprint Prep only use real LSAT problems in all our books. Many companies save money by creating their own questions for their prep courses, but we at Blueprint recommend that you stay away from these. With a test so important, you should only practice on real exams.

When you take a real practice test, it is literally the exact same test that tens of thousands of people took for that given date. In fact, the test you take will shortly thereafter be available as a practice test for other bright-eyed pre-law students, which will then be included in Blueprint’s prep materials (unless it’s a February test – these are not released to the public). It’s important that you take these real tests, because you can rest assured that your score is actually real. Had you taken that test at that time, you would have gotten the same score. When you take non-licensed knock-off tests, you can’t know if the score is representative of what you would have actually gotten.

To make your real tests even realer, Blueprint Prep recommends taking them in a testing environment. If you take a practice test in your comfort zone, at whatever time pleases you, your score will be artificially inflated. This is why in our prep courses, Blueprint has multiple proctored practice exams. Also, if you’re taking tests on your own, make sure you are very strict about the timing. Giving yourself even a few seconds extra per section can cause your score to be unrealistically high. Lastly, make sure you take all of the most recent tests, because while the modern LSAT has existed since 1991, the more recent tests are most representative.