Wrong Answer Journal

When it comes to LSAT success, self awareness is much more important than raw talent. In order to improve your skills and score, you must eliminate repeat errors, and the most efficient way to achieve this is through wrong answer journaling. 

Your wrong answer journal should not focus solely on why answer choice X is wrong and answer choice Y is right. Instead, it should address the underlying gaps in your LSAT skills that lead you to error. This type of wrong answer journal is not only more effective, it’s also a two-for-the-price-of-one effect, as it will lead to improvement on other questions as well. 

When wrong answer journaling, you should:

• Start every entry in the “Reason Missed” column with the word “I”  – what (mis)step did you take that led you to the wrong answer?
• Identify mistakes, conceptual gaps, and/or missed connections in your broadly applicable, question-type-transcendent LSAT skills 
  • Instead of I get a lot of strengthen questions wrong, think about why. Did you have trouble with the Translation? Rely on a weak loophole? Forget to employ Powerful-Provable?
• Devise an action item that you will employ on every future question to avoid making the same mistake again
  • Instead of don’t misread stimuli, try highlight every conclusion