What is the “experimental” section?
The LSAT is composed of four multiple choice sections, but only three are scored. Those four sections include one Logical Reasoning (LR) section, one Logic Games (LG) section, and one Reading Comprehension (RC) section.
The remaining section is the experimental section, which can be an LR, LG, or RC section. Crucially, that section does not affect your score.
On 7Sage’s Forums and elsewhere, you’ll see people refer to the experimental section as “fake” to distinguish it from the three “real,” that is, scored sections.
Given that there are always one RC, one LG, and one LR section that determine your LSAT score, if you see an extra section—for example, you see two RC sections—you can rightly infer that one of them is experimental or “fake.”
How can you find out which section is experimental?
You can’t. So don’t bother.
When you are taking the test, you might think, “Wait, another LG section? And this flowers game... it’s so weird. I’ve never seen anything like this before. Must be experimental.”
You could be right or you could be wrong. The point is: don’t think about it. Your suspicions will only divert your valuable attention and other mental resources away from the far more important task at hand—taking the LSAT.
The experimental section could appear as your first, second, third, or fourth section. So treat every section like it’s real.
The LSAC says, “Identification of the unscored section is not available until you receive your score report.” However, after the test, you can come to the 7Sage forums and, through a process of cross referencing against many students' reports, identify which section was real and which was experimental. For example, if you had two LG sections, you know one of them was fake. But you don’t know which one. Was it the one with the flowers or was it the one with the planets? On the forums, you're bound to encounter someone else who had only one LG section. That means their LG section was the real section. They’ll say something like, “Thank goodness I only got one LG! It was about flowers.” Now you can infer that the planets section was experimental.
Why does the experimental section even exist?
According to the LSAC, the experimental section “typically is used to pretest new test questions or to preequate new test forms.”
It is a way for the LSAC to test new questions to ensure fairness and comparability across different LSAT administrations.