#lsat study

Okay, raise your hand if you suddenly have a lot of “sitting around at home” to do.

Now wash that hand and use it to pick up a PrepTest or two.

This is your chance, pals - if you’ve got a little free time you’d otherwise be using at a restaurant or the gym (remember that? We used to go out and be around people...it was kinda terrible at the time, but we miss it now), why not devote it to LSAT prep? Real talk: millions of people are quarantined or self-isolating right now, and thousands of them are studying for the LSAT. If you aren’t using this time to kick some LSAT butt, others are, and they’re going to kick your butt in turn when it comes to the next admissions cycle. 

See, it’s like a butt-kicking carousel. Either kick the LSAT’s butt or have your own kicked.

So here’s a potential study schedule I’d like you to try and let me know how it goes. This is assuming you’ve got an hour a day, plus 4 hours once a week, to devote to studying.

DISCLAIMER: I know a lot of you genuinely don’t have that time. If that’s you, don’t feel bad about it, just pare this down to the time you do have and make it work. On the other hand, if you’re telling me you don’t have time while you’re binging the Office for the eighteenth time, get ready to be the butt kickee, not the butt kicker. Get in contact with me if you want a personalized study schedule!

Okay, let’s try this on for size. It doesn’t matter what day of the week you’re starting, so I’ve just numbered the days. All that does matter is that you start now.

Day 1:

PrepTest (any test will do) Section 1 - Timed section 1

Whenever you’re completing a “timed section,” I want you to set two timers on your phone or whatever. One will be for 30 minutes to serve as your 5-minute warning, and the second will be for 35 minutes to tell you when you’re really done. At the five-minute warning, fill in the rest of the answer choices with the same letter (there is no advantage to any particular letter; just use the same one to simplify your life), then go back to whatever question you left off at and try to answer a few more.

When you’ve finished the time, mark how many questions you actually answered (for example, you might make a line under #21 if that was the last one you completed), and go through and try all the rest of them, untimed. These questions won’t count toward your score for the section, but you’d be crazy to miss out on the practice they can give you!

Now score the section, only counting the questions you’d actually attempted in the 35 minutes. You can see how many you magically guessed right for fun, but don’t count those as points you earned. Unfortunately, you only have a 20% each question when you guess (which is still a hell of a lot better than 0%), so I don’t want you counting those toward your score since you can’t really depend on those points.

Do NOT mark the correct answers as you score the section, only mark the ones you got wrong. Circle the number or whatever, just don’t write in the correct answer. If you knew what the answer was supposed to be, it’d really shoot you in the foot for the next step, which is reviewing your answers.

Go back to all the questions you got wrong and try them again. Often, you’ll be able to noodle your way to the right answer now that the pressure’s off. Great! Ask yourself: do I understand why this was wrong? If you don’t get why your answer was wrong and can’t find the correct answer, that’s where a tutor like me comes in. The LSAT isn’t easy, folks, and you can’t be surprised when some of the questions throw you for a loop! As a tutor, I can help you work through those questions and see what you’re missing.

Since a section will take at least 35 minutes to complete (and often much longer, if you’re taking your time to answer questions you didn’t get through in the 35 minutes), plus at least 5 minutes or so grading, plus at least 15 minutes or so reviewing incorrect answers, one hour is a conservative estimate for how long a timed section should really take you.

However, doing full sections and seriously reviewing them is the best way for you to gain the two biggest strengths you’ll need on the LSAT: comprehension of the material and mental stamina.

Okay, so that’s Day 1. Guess what you’re doing on Day 2:

Day 2:

Section 2 of yesterday’s PrepTest - timed section and review

Day 3: 

Section 3 of PrepTest - timed section and review

Day 4:

Section 4 of PrepTest - timed section and review

After this section, you can score the whole test to see how you did overall. You should record your scores somewhere so you can see your trends as you study! I provide my tutoring students with a handy spreadsheet they can plug their scores into.

Day 5: Drill, listen to podcast, etc. 

If you’ve subscribed to something awesome like the LSAT Demon, you can spend some time just drilling the sections or question types you know you struggle with. Listen to a podcast episode, etc. Don’t do nothing today, but take it easy for a day.

Day 6:

Full test, timed (at least 2.5 hours).

Same idea as before - set your 30- and 35-minute timers, and mark what questions you’ve actually finished at the end of 35 minutes, then attempt the rest untimed for practice.

But don’t review in the middle of the test - don’t check your answers or anything, just move on to the next section. If possible, don’t take a break between sections 1 & 2 and sections 3 & 4 to somewhat simulate the reality of test day where you’ll be stuck except for a 15-minute break in between (feel free to break for 15 minutes between sections 2 & 3).

When you’ve finished all four sections, score the whole test. If you have time today, it’s great to review while the questions are still fresher in your mind. If you can’t, which I don’t find hard to believe with busy at-home work schedules and whatnot, make sure you review tomorrow so you’re not coming back to the questions totally cold. When you go back to the questions quickly, you can remember what you were thinking and perhaps how you made the mistakes that lead you to the wrong answer. However, I’d take cold review over no review, so I’m not gonna get too picky.

Day 7: 

Review from the day before if necessary, or take another “rest day” where you drill questions or listen to a podcast episode. 

This is just a basic schedule I want you to try. It’s not magic. It’s not guaranteed to raise your score by 15 points in 2 months. It’s just based on what I know really, really works: intentional, frequent practice and meaningful review.

Days of Productivity 1/100. 

(I haven’t done a PrepTest Notes post in a while, my last one was for PT 64, but I’ve also taken PT 65, 67, and 69 since then. This one is for PT 70.) 

So I did not do a PT on Wednesday like I had planned, because I wanted to actually read more of the Logical Reasoning Bible and do some more timed LG sections, but I did one today and got my highest score to date: 172 (!!!!). I am cautiously optimistic that I can replicate it, if not on the actual test then maybe on another PT. I decided to take this PT at home, both to avoid trekking to the library in the rain, and also because I want to start doing PTs under less-than-ideal conditions. I had read some comments from people who under-performed on the actual LSAT and that made me a bit worried about doing most of my PTs in a deserted corner of the silent floor of the library. Sitting at my wobbly desk, with my family members walking by and animals in the background, is definitely less-than-ideal. 

PrepTest #70

Score: 172 (92/101)

LG: 20/23 RC: 27/27 LR1: 21/25 LR2: 24/26

I reviewed the LG section and I understand why I got three questions wrong. For one question I switched my answer on the scantron to a clearly wrong answer, and even though I just finished the test 15 minutes ago I can’t recall my reasoning for that. For LR I do not understand why my answers were wrong though, so I need to go find the test explanations for those. This is also my first time getting 100% on RC, though I’ve gotten 26/27 a bunch of times. 

I’m really going for broke here and giving you my best reading comprehension advice right out of the gate: 

You’re probably not taking it seriously enough. 

I’m sure some of you laughed when you read that, but I mean it. If you’re struggling to answer reading comprehension questions on the LSAT, it’s almost certainly not an issue of the passage being beyond your reading ability. For example, I took all the reading comprehension (or RC as I like to call it so it sounds like a toy car) passages from the June 2007 LSAT and plugged them into the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Calculator. The passages all scored at either a 10-12 grade level or a college reading level. 

In other words, you can read these. They are not beyond your ability. 

However, the LSAT makers have done something quite smart in designing those passages: they’ve made them intentionally boring and poorly written. The LSAT writers will take well-written passages from books or magazines and “adapt” them so they’re the right length and terribly organized and boring. Woo!

Now, before you write off the whole RC section as a waste of time, consider the reading lawyers have to do all the time. Sure, some documents you’ll slog through in your career will have been written with care and attention to detail, but the vast majority will be a little less polished. 

So with that in mind, you need to approach this section as being two things: fundamentally do-able and fundamentally designed to test your ability to read like a lawyer. 

You need to approach each reading passage for what it is: the answers to every question you’re about to take on. You might think that really good LSAT takers are the ones who read the passage really quickly, but the opposite is true. If you wanna do well on the questions, you have to wring all the information out of the passage itself before you even get started on the questions. Check out the video explanation of how to read an RC passage to see what I mean.

So slow down, take it seriously, and get in touch with me if you’re hitting a wall.

You have 35 minutes and a crap load of questions. So, what are you gonna do?

It’s tempting to just say, “Okay, how many questions can I possibly get through before time is up?”

It’s not a stupid idea by any means: you’re thinkin’, I can’t possibly get these right if I don’t attempt the question.

But here’s the problem - you stretch yourself so thin that you don’t get the questions you probably could have.

You need to slow down and remember that every question gives you enough information to find the correct answer. If you’re only answering 18-20 questions per section but you’re answering them correctly, you’re looking at a score in the mid-160s. 

So here’s what you do: completely ignore the timer. I mean it - don’t speed up or slow down, just go at a pace where you know you’re answering each question you attempt correctly. When you get to the five minute warning, bubble in all the remaining answer choices the same letter (that’s just to save time - it doesn’t matter at all what letter you pick). After that, go back where you left off and answer a couple more questions if you can. 

Remember, the questions in each section tend to get harder as you go. But you get the exact same amount of credit (one point) for each question, whether it’s number one or number 25. You’ll do better overall if you extend the effort on earlier, easier questions that you know you’ll get right, and then any of the last handful of questions are just icing on the cake.

You have to approach the test this way because you’ll never make progress if you’re not striving for comprehension above all else. The speed will come as you continue practicing and studying, don’t worry. Isn’t that how everything goes? 

Remember the last skill you learned (and remember, the LSAT is a skills test). Maybe it was cooking or knitting or whatever. You were slow at first, right? But if you focus on doing it right, you will eventually get faster just by practice.

If you’re shooting for a score in the 170s, this still applies, but you’ll have to practice to the point where you’re consistently getting to at least the last two or three questions. Don’t forget, though, that you can miss up to 14 questions and still score a 170 on many tests! That means you could randomly guess on the last 3-4 questions on every section and still score in that upper echelon. 

Days of Productivity (4/100) 

Got myself a good nights rest and ready to tackle this LSAT studying. 

I love these WoodWick candles...the wood crackles are the best for studying. soothing

Whats your favorite candle to burn while studying?