Should you change your answer on the LSAT?

The folklore says go with your gut and never change. It is repeated confidently everywhere and I cannot point you to anything supporting it, so treat it as what it is — a saying, not a finding.

What can be reasoned about is the difference between two kinds of change, and that distinction is more useful than any statistic would be.

Change on a reason

If you can say what you now see that you did not see before, change it. That is not second-guessing; it is having read more carefully.

• You misread the stem — it said weaken and you answered strengthen, or it carried an EXCEPT you skipped past.
• You noticed a word: an "only," a "most," a "not," a scope term that changes what the choice claims.
• You realize your choice answers a slightly different question than the one asked.
• A later question in the set made you re-read a line and see the passage differently.

Every one of those is new information. Refusing to act on it because of a superstition about first instincts is a strange way to lose a point you have already earned.

Do not change on a feeling

"B is starting to look better" is not a reason. Neither is discomfort at the number of times you have picked C, nor the sense that a question this hard cannot have an answer this simple.

Late in a section, tired, that drift is common and it is not evidence. It usually means you are re-reading a choice for the fourth time and the repetition is making it familiar. Familiarity is not correctness.

The real fix is upstream

Most agonized changing comes from having chosen without a criterion in the first place. If you eliminated four choices for stated reasons, there is nothing to revisit — you would have to overturn a reason, not a feeling.

So the habit that ends this problem is prephrasing and eliminating on stated grounds. It also saves the time that going back costs, which on a 35-minute section is not free.

Practical rules

• Do not revisit answered questions with spare time at the end unless you marked them as uncertain. Trawling for mistakes invites feeling-based changes.
• Do revisit the ones you marked, and re-read the stem first — misread stems are the most common recoverable error.
• Give a revisit a limit. If you cannot name what changed within about thirty seconds, leave it as it was and move on.
• Study your own record. In blind review, note whether your changes helped. Your pattern is more informative than the general rule.