As you may or may not know (and as we at Blueprint are about to tell you), your LSAT score will be based on how you answer approximately 100 questions. Your score is based on two logical reasoning sections (~25 questions each), one reading comprehension section (~28 questions), and one logic games section (~22 questions). These 100 LSAT questions are what you need to be prepared for. Each of these sections is 35 minutes. But, as you may or may not know, the LSAT is actually five sections. So where is this phantom fifth section coming from? Well, as you may have guessed from the header, it’s the experimental section.

Where is it?

The LSAT always has one unscored experimental section. It could be an extra logic games, reading comprehension, or logical reasoning section (and unfortunately in our minds at Blueprint LSAT Prep, never the writing sample). And what you get for an experimental will be different than the people sitting next to you. You also won’t have any idea which section it is. From what we know at Blueprint LSAT Prep, it has always been in the first three sections (which could change), but you don’t know much else. If you got three LR sections, you would know that one was experimental, but you wouldn’t know which. It’s frustrating, but we at Blueprint LSAT Prep would like you to try not to cry. Since you can’t know which one it is, we at Blueprint LSAT recommend just treating them all as the real thing.

Doing Your Part for LSAC

“But why, Blueprint LSAT, do they do this terrible injustice to us?” you ask. “Why extend what is already a terribly long and difficult test?” The reason the people at LSAC do this is for their market research. It’s important that every LSAT problem is airtight, so they test them out in experimental sections before the questions make it to the real test. For 35 minutes, you’ll basically be an unpaid guinea pig.

Prepping for the Experimental Section

Since there is no way of knowing which section you’ll get as experimental in advance, and since you can’t know for sure which one it is when you’re taking the test, it shouldn’t change what you study. But we at Blueprint LSAT think it should slightly change how you study. Practice tests only have the four real sections from the test. But if you want to make a test more realistic, we at Blueprint LSAT Prep advise you to add your own fifth experimental section. You could take apart one test, and use its four sections as experimental sections for four other complete tests. This might sound unnecessary, but doing a test for 2:20 is quite a bit different than 2:55, so you should get used to it.

Article edited by Jodi Triplett and Trent Teti, founders of Blueprint LSAT Prep. Blueprint LSAT Prep was founded in 2005, and thousands have since bought into the Blueprint LSAT wisdom.