Volume III: Reading Comprehension · Chapter 27
You now have the reading method (Chapter 24, passage mapping), the question types (Chapter 25), and the comparative set (Chapter 26). This chapter is about the thing that sits above all of that: how to spend 35 minutes so you walk out with the most correct answers. The single most expensive mistake on this section is not misreading a passage. It is mismanaging the clock by treating all four sets as if they must be done in order, at the same pace, with the same care. They should not be.
The Reading Comprehension section gives you four passage sets and about 27 questions in 35 minutes. Three of the sets are single passages; one is a comparative pair of shorter passages (see Chapter 26). Each set carries between five and eight questions. RC is now one of three scored sections, not one of four, so the section matters more to your score than it did on older versions of the test.
Here is the rule that governs everything else in this chapter: accuracy beats speed. Doing three sets thoroughly at high accuracy almost always beats rushing all four at a low hit-rate on the last one. Think about why. Suppose you have time to do three sets carefully and answer about 90% of their roughly 20 questions correctly. That is around 18 right. Now suppose instead you sprint through all four sets, reading too fast, and your accuracy falls to roughly 60% across all 27. That is about 16 right, and that is before counting the panic spiral that fast, shallow reading usually causes. The slower, smaller plan wins. The test does not pay you for passages attempted. It pays you for questions correct.
You do not earn anything for taking the sets in the printed order. Treat the four sets as a menu and choose your route. In everyday terms: on a timed errand run with only an hour, you scan the whole list and decide the order of your stops before you start the car, instead of driving to them in the order you happened to jot them down. Here is the plan.
Before you read a single passage in full, spend about 30 to 45 seconds flipping through all four sets to size them up. You are not reading them. You are grading them. By the end you want a rough ranking from easiest to hardest. The heuristics for doing this fast are in the next section.
Start with the two you graded easiest. The order between those two does not matter, so just begin with whichever appeals to you. Doing the gettable points first banks score early, builds rhythm, and protects you from the disaster of running out of clock before you ever reach an easy set buried at position four.
Your pacing depends on how many sets you plan to finish:
The three-set plan is the right default for most test-takers, and there is no shame in it. The extra reading time and the extra time per question are exactly what buy you the higher accuracy that makes three sets outscore four.
After the two easy sets, you have two harder sets left. Do not flip a coin. Consult your missed-question log (the running record of which question types you tend to miss, which you have been keeping since Chapter 23). If one of the two remaining sets is heavy on a type you reliably handle, take that one. If one leans hard on a type that has been costing you points, leave it for last. You know your own profile better than the test does. Use it.
You may not have time to fully work your hardest set. That is fine. But do not skip it blind, because there is free score sitting inside it. Line/Function questions (Chapter 25) give you a line or word reference, which tells you exactly where to look. The line window technique (read the sentence before, the cited line, and especially the sentence after) lets you answer those questions without having read the whole passage. So even on a set you are otherwise abandoning, go in, find the one or two questions that point you to a specific line, run the line window, and collect those points.
If you cleared three sets at a good pace and you have real minutes left, then yes, work the fourth properly. But do not start the fourth set out of obligation and then read it too fast to be accurate. That trades sure points for shaky ones.
And whatever you do, bubble an answer for every single question. There is no wrong-answer penalty on the LSAT. A blank and a wrong answer score the same, so a guess can only help you. With about a minute left, fill in every empty bubble. If you have a default letter you guess with, use it consistently. Guessing is free money. Take it.
Step 1 lives or dies on your ability to size up a set in seconds. Here is how to do it without reading.
A five-question set is usually one of the easier ones. Sets run from five to eight questions, and the short ones tend to be the gentler reads. The trade-off is real, though: a five-question set offers fewer points than a seven- or eight-question set, so an easy short set is a quick win but not a big one. Factor that in when you decide where the short set falls in your order. It is a good early set, not necessarily your richest.
More text on the page usually means harder. Long, dense paragraphs and long answer choices both signal a heavier set. Lots of white space signals an easier one. You can see this from across the page without reading a word: a wall of small print is a warning, and an airy layout with short choices is an invitation. This is the fastest single read you can take on difficulty, so take it first.
Read just the opening two or three sentences of each passage to gauge clarity. A passage that states its subject plainly and moves in normal sentences will likely stay readable. A passage that opens with thick jargon, heavy abstraction, or long winding sentences will likely fight you the whole way. The opening is a fair sample of the prose you are signing up for.
This is the one most people get wrong, so read it twice. Do not rank sets by subject matter. The test is background-neutral: every answer is provable from the passage, and you are never expected to bring outside knowledge. The test writers deliberately decorrelate subject from difficulty, which means the science passage can be the easiest set in the section and the arts passage can be the hardest. If you have decided in advance that you “can’t do science passages” and you skip them on sight, you will routinely skip the easiest set on the page and fight through a harder one instead. Never categorically skip a subject you fear. Rank by ink, length, and clarity, not by topic.
Glance at the questions themselves before committing. Two signals mark a harder set: many long answer choices (three-line choices take longer to process and hide more traps), and many Arguments-style questions, especially the “Suppose…” prompts that import a new scenario and ask you to strengthen, weaken, or parallel the passage. A set thick with those plays more like a Logical Reasoning workout grafted onto a passage, and it eats time. When you are choosing between your two harder sets in Step 3, the one with the cleaner, shorter question mix is the friendlier pick.
Do not treat the comparative pair (Chapter 26) as a special case in your ranking. Rank it like any other set. Run the same heuristics on it: count its questions, count the ink across both passages, preview the openings, scan the question mix. The dual format adds the small overhead of summarizing two passages separately, but a comparative pair built from two short, clear passages can easily be one of your easier sets, and one built from two dense ones can be your hardest. Let the heuristics decide its place in your order, the same as everything else.
The goal is not to feel busy. The goal is to be accurate on the sets you choose to do. That means reading at a pace that lets you actually map the passage and actually go back to the text for each question, the way Chapters 24 and 25 teach. If you catch yourself reading faster than you can comprehend just to “stay on schedule,” you have the plan backwards. Slow down to your accurate pace and do one fewer set.
Set two mental checkpoints:
Falling behind is normal and recoverable. Do not panic and do not start skimming everything. Instead, downshift the plan on purpose:
A controlled retreat to three accurate sets plus mined points plus full guessing is a strong section. A breathless dash through four sets at low accuracy is not. Choose the plan that scores.
Put it to work: run a full timed Reading Comprehension section in the practice platform, free during early access, with every answer choice explained.
