What is the best LSAT guessing strategy if I don’t know the answer to a question?
You should NEVER leave any bubbles unfilled on the LSAT answer sheet. If you don’t have time to get to a question, you should guess. When guessing on the LSAT the best strategy is generally to… always guess D.
Of course, if you are able to eliminate D as an answer choice, don’t choose D.
However, if you do not have time and you simply need to make a guess, you shouldn’t guess randomly.
- Statistically, the most common credited response is answer D.
ON THE LAST 5 questions of the exam, however, a slightly different pattern has appeared:
- On the last 5 Logical Reasoning questions, you should guess E.
- On the last 5 Reading Comprehension questions, you should guess D.
- On the last 5 Logic Games questions, you should guess A.
Source: LSAT guessing strategy and probability statistics
There is no “guessing penalty” on the LSAT. As your odds of getting a question right by blind guessing are 1 in 5, if you guessed on 20 questions throughout the test, you would get about 4 raw points. Not guessing would be throwing those points away. You should fill in an answer for every question.
As for what you should guess, there are many strategies for eliminating some answer choices before you resort to randomly guessing. For example on arguments, you can usually eliminate answer choices that are outside the scope of the argument (unless you are asked to add external information, as in a strengthen or weaken). On reading comprehension you can usually eliminate answer choices that contain extreme language. On games, you can often find answer choices that violate an explicit rule of the game.
On extremely hard questions, quickly eliminate as many choices as you can and then make an educated guess, keeping the aforementioned statistics in mind. Spend the bulk of your time on attainable points.
