LNAT practice test: free questions in the real four-option format

Below is one full-length passage with four questions, written in the format of the real test: four options per question, one of them correct.

Treat it like the real thing. Give yourself 8 minutes for the passage and all its questions, which is the pace the real test needs.

1. Read the passage once, carefully. Note the main claim and where the writer changes direction.

2. Answer every question before revealing any answer. There is no negative marking, so never leave one blank.

3. Use only the passage. Each answer can be justified from the text alone, and LNAT's own advice is never to rely on what you know from other sources.

4. Then reveal the explanations and read why each wrong option is wrong, not just which one is right.

The passage below is a real published text, not taken from an LNAT paper, followed by four questions GhostPrep wrote in the LNAT format. Set a timer for 8 minutes and answer all four before revealing anything.

On GhostPrep, every worked solution also highlights the sentence in the passage behind each option, so you can see the evidence as you read the explanation.

One passage is a small sample, so read your result as a pointer rather than a prediction.

For context, LNAT's last published statistics, for 2015-16, found that the average question was answered correctly by 56% of candidates. Getting half or more right on a passage is normal.

1. All correct, inside 8 minutes: a strong start. The real test asks you to do this 12 times in a row, so the next test is stamina.

2. All correct, but slower: your reading is accurate. Work on pace with timed passage sets until 8 minutes feels comfortable.

3. Half or more correct: close to the average candidate on the day. Look at which kind of question you missed, and whether the same kind keeps catching you.

4. Fewer than half: slow down before speeding up. Practice reading for the argument's structure first, then come back to timing.

What counts as a good score out of 42, with averages for eight universities and offer chances by score at Oxford, UCL and LSE, is in our guide to what is a good LNAT score.

The real LNAT is 2 hours 15 minutes on screen, in two sections:

Your score is a mark out of 42 from Section A, one mark per correct answer. The essay goes to your universities unmarked.

The full rundown, from which universities need it to fees and dates, is in our complete guide to the LNAT.

LNAT publishes a small set of free practice material.

It is the right foundation for anyone sitting the test, and each piece is good for something different:

Two things are worth knowing before you start.

The online sample test asks you to accept a non-disclosure agreement before it begins, and LNAT says its timings reflect the live test.

It is the same paper every time, and six of its 12 passages come from the 2010 papers. Sit it before the 2010 papers if you want an unseen measure of where you stand.

The 2010 papers are older than the current format. Every question has five options, A to E, where the live test has four.

They are still good practice, as long as you know your score on them will not map exactly onto the real thing.

Because of that overlap, the official material comes to about 110 distinct questions. That is the gap a question bank fills.

A mock is only useful if it feels like the real test. It is easy to sit practice papers untimed, with notes nearby, and then find the real thing much harder.

Set it up like this:

1. Time Section A at 95 minutes, all 12 passages in one go. Aim for about 8 minutes per passage and keep moving.

2. Use one sheet of paper as your whiteboard. On the day you get a whiteboard and pen, and no scrap paper, books or dictionary.

3. Answer everything. Flag the questions you are unsure of and return to them if time allows, as you can in the real test.

4. Go straight into Section B for 40 minutes. In the real test you cannot go back to Section A once you start the essay.

5. Practice on a screen when you can. Reading 6,000 words on a monitor, with highlight and strikethrough tools, is different from reading on paper.

Two full mocks before the day, plus timed passage sets in between, is a sensible minimum.

We classified 112 questions from LNAT's own published material.

They fall into seven families, and knowing them makes the real test far more familiar:

1. The claim: what is the passage arguing? (17% of questions)

2. The machinery: how is the argument built, and what role does each part play? (20%)

3. The voices: who holds which view? (11%)

4. The unsaid: what follows that the passage does not spell out? (11%)

5. The record: what does the text say, and not say? (19%)

6. The language: what do the words, tone and devices do? (18%)

7. The transfer: can the passage's ideas be applied beyond it? (5%)

About a quarter of the questions are negative, asking which option is not supported. Read every question stem twice.

How the families fit into the wider format is in our complete guide to the LNAT.

Most of the improvement happens after the practice, in the review.

For every question you got wrong, or got right by guessing, work through three steps:

1. Find the evidence. Point to the exact sentence in the passage that makes the correct option right.

2. Name the trap. Say why the option you chose looked right and what was wrong with it: too strong, true but not what was asked, or stated by someone other than the writer.

3. Log the family. Note which of the seven families the question belongs to. After a few tests the pattern of your mistakes becomes clear.

That is exactly what GhostPrep's worked solutions are built for. Each one explains every option, and highlights the part of the passage behind it, so a proper review is quick to do.

The practice passage is an excerpt from a published essay, used under its open licence.

Here are its full details, and the sources for the other facts on this page: