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Check out Part One: Conclusion and Premise and Part Three: Answering the Question

It does not matter at all if you remember that the stimulus is called a “stimulus.” You will get no points on the LSAT for memorizing vocabulary words someone else made up to describe the test. All you really need to know here is that you need to read that paragraph, sentence, or short dialogue that precedes the answer choices - that’s the “stimulus” - and you need to read it slowly and carefully. 

Step One: I want you to read the first sentence and stop. What is this stimulus going to be about? Is this paragraph introducing an issue in the world? Is this a dialogue between different people? Perhaps it’s a person expressing their opinion on a topic. Whatever it is, do not go on to the second sentence if you don’t understand the first.

If you’re new to LSAT-ing, you might think it sounds really silly to harp on this, but making sure you understand what you read before just barrelling ahead is critical, both in the Logical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension sections. You need to shift your brain from manic “I HAVE TO GET EVERYTHING DONE IMMEDIATELY OR ELSE” mode to the understanding that working slowly and steadily will get you a lot more questions right than rushing and hoping for the best. Your first priority has to be comprehension - that will give you the accuracy you need, and then the speed will come with practice.

Step Two: Once you’ve checked your comprehension of the first sentence, go on to read the rest of the stimulus (if there is more - every now and then, you get a really short one). Identify what the conclusion, or point, of the stimulus is. The vast majority of stimuli have a conclusion, but some don’t. You’ll know you’ve found the conclusion when you can say, “Therefore, [insert conclusion here].” If the sentence doesn’t really work after the word “therefore,” it’s probably a premise that leads to the conclusion.

If you’re not finding a conclusion, don’t freak out. Some stimuli don’t have one - every now and then, you have to make one yourself, or perhaps you have to see how the premises themselves work together. In other questions, you just see a little argument between two people, and those might have two conclusions.

We’ll see tons of examples of this, so don’t let yourself get overwhelmed now. You just need to understand what you’re reading in the moment - that’s how you’ll be able to do any kind of question, from the easiest to the hardest.

If you feel that you don’t quite “get” the stimulus, do not move on to the answer choices and hope it’ll start making sense once you’re there. The answer choices are meant to be tricky and often close-to-right, and they’ll trip you up if you don’t know what the stimulus is really about before you read them. 

Step Three: Judge the stimulus. Be rude if you have to. Is this a crappy argument? Think about why! If you practice this enough, you’ll be able to predict what the question will be before you even read it. Let’s use my example from the conclusion and premise post: 

The city council will vote Wednesday about whether to fund a new road-building project. The measure can only succeed if at least six members of the city council vote in favor, but all the city council members who have served more than three years will vote against the measure. So we know the measure will not pass.

Get critical here - this argument sucks. You can’t be satisfied with saying that it sucks, though - you have to be able to say why it’s so unconvincing. What makes this such a weak conclusion? “The measure will not pass?” How do they know?

I wrote the argument, so I can easily see the huge hole I wrote into it: we don’t know how many city council members there are total, so we don’t know whether veteran members opposing the measure will preclude achieving six votes. If I read this stimulus, I’d be ready for a question asking me about the flaw in the argument or maybe asking me for an assumption the author is making behind the scenes.

For this argument to be correct, it would have to be true that there are fewer than six city council members who’ve served fewer than three years. If that was true and the author simply forgot to say it, then this argument would suddenly become convincing.

So let’s say I’m taking the LSAT for real: I’ve already anticipated the question and answer, and I’ve only read the stimulus itself. I’m setting myself up to succeed, big time.

Start Studying, Step One: 

Find about three hours you can spend alone in a quiet-ish room and take a timed LSAT at home. Here’s how you do that: 

1. Either go to the digital LSAT tool or print out the June 2007 LSAT. 

I highly suggest using the June 2007 LSAT, especially if you’re going to work with me, because it’s a really familiar starting point for me to help you with! A lot of those questions have become iconic in their own way because so many people have taken this same test.

2. Set a timer for 35 minutes per section, and stop when time is up. No cheating - you’d only hurt yourself.

If you do the digital version, you’ll just need to follow instructions - it’s already timed.

3. Add up your “raw score,” which is the total number of questions you got correct. 

You’ll have to check your answers on the paper test (the answer key is at the end of the document), while the digital LSAT will automatically total your score for you.

4. Compare your “raw score” to the “scaled score” on the chart for the PrepTest you took. 

Each test gets its own “scaled score,” or SS, because some are slightly easier or harder than others. Because of this, you can’t just say, “Okay, great, I got 75 right, which is a 158.” On some tests, 75 correct answers might get you a higher or lower SS than 158. The July 2007 LSAT has the score conversion chart right at the end of the document, as with any book of past PrepTests you buy. You’ll can also Google the score conversion chart for the PrepTest you took.

5. Don’t freak out, don’t get too excited, don’t give up, don’t decide you’re a genius - just take your starting point for what it is: the very first data point in your LSAT Domination (insert flexing motions here).

You can find tons of people who will tell you what the ideal starting score is (I guess probably a 180, right?), but I think that’s all baloney. 

I started out with a 163 in March-ish of 2019, and I ended with a 176 in September 2019. A 13-point increase is quite a bit, and I was really happy with it - but I had to work hard! If you start much lower or higher than 163, though, that doesn’t mean you can’t go up by a bunch.

It all depends on how long you’re willing to study, how much time you’re willing to put in per day, and how quality you’re going to make your study time. If you started with a 120 but were willing to work at it long enough, you could get there eventually. Some folks like to make themselves feel elite by pretending there’s a cutoff score below which you shouldn’t even try to study for the LSAT - and that sounds like someone who is either a jagweed or a crappy teacher. 

Let’s be clear: there could certainly be students who might need years to get to a very high score. If you don’t have that kind of time, we’ll have to make a different plan and goal. But if you understand that this is a learnable test, not just some magical roulette wheel, you’ll see why I believe everyone can make it eventually.

This is one of those awkward questions to ask. Let’s say you just took a cold LSAT diagnostic (meaning you took an LSAT with no prep or study beforehand) and got a score that you feel is “terrible.” 

Of course, I use quotes around “terrible” because your “terrible” might be someone else’s “progress.” But I digress.

You’ve scored poorly, and you’re wondering:

Is it possible to make it to my goal score from this starting line?

I have two answers to that question: Absolutely, unreservedly yes, and also very possibly no.

Here’s what I mean by “yes:” 

The LSAT is learnable. You could absolutely go from a 120 to a 180. That’s how learning works. But when I say a person can go from a 120 to a 180, I am living in a fantasy world where they have unlimited time to study. Here’s a potential example:

An English Language Learner moves to America and learns English pretty fluently. They decide they want to be a lawyer, so they hear they should take the LSAT. Well, the LSAT doesn’t really play to their strengths in the English language yet, so they bomb it and score a 120.

Undeterred, they continue studying the English language for a couple more years. They take a couple extra English writing and literature classes as they’re finishing their undergrad. When they graduate, they work for a couple years and start studying. They study a few hours a week for nine months, reviewing carefully and seeking out tutoring. Eventually, after some serious work, they have so totally mastered the test that they score a 180. 

But here’s what I mean by very possibly “no:”

Are you willing and able to put in the work it will take to get to your goal score? Maybe you’re not talking 120-180, but you still need to jump 25 points or so to get in or get scholarships. 

You can absolutely do it, but it might take longer than you want or take more time per day than you have (or both). Can you delay attending law school for one year? You might be able to study the LSAT, get some work experience in, and grow up a little before you start law school. 

But if you don’t have time to wait, you really gotta make your studying count. If for some reason, you can’t wait a year and you need to make some serious LSAT improvement, you need to devote serious time every day to the LSAT and reviewing what you’ve missed, as well as taking whole PrepTests regularly. Do you have at least 8-10 hours a week to devote to totally focused study? If not, you need to reconsider why you have to apply this year.

Maybe you were looking for some specific numbers and timelines here. Perhaps you thought I’d say, “If your starting score was a 145, it will take you 6 months of studying for 5 hours a week to gain 10 points.” I can’t possibly make that kind of guess until I know you and see where you are at individually. And even then, my best estimate means nothing without you backing it up with the work.

Check out Part One: Conclusion and Premise and Part Two: Reading the Stimulus first.

So, we’ve read the stimulus itself and made sure we understood it inside and out. Remember the example stimulus we’ve been working with: 

The city council will vote Wednesday about whether to fund a new road-building project. The measure can only succeed if at least six members of the city council vote in favor, but all the city council members who have served more than three years will vote against the measure. So we know the measure will not pass.

We’ve already decided this argument is missing the explanation of how they know they won’t get six votes since the veteran council members won’t vote for it. I’m expecting that this question is going to say something like, “The argument is flawed in that it…” and then I’ll be able to express that it’s missing that important detail.

So let’s say I go on to read the question and I see this:

“Which of the following is an assumption required by the author’s argument?” 

At first, you might think, Oh crap. We did all that thinking for nothing - this isn’t even asking about the flaw in the argument! But guess what? The fact that I know the flaw also means I know the assumption they’re depending on.

The author is depending on the assumption that there are fewer than six members of the council who have served fewer than three years and will vote for the measure. I already know that before I even look at the answers, so I’m not really going to pay any attention to answer choices that don’t address that.

Let’s say these are the answer choices I’m given:

A. The road building project will not be funded by outside means and therefore succeed.

B. No city council member who has served more than three years will vote for the measure.

C. Of council members who have served fewer than three years, there are no more than six who will vote in favor of the measure.

D. The proposed roads in the project are necessary for the city and do not affect other municipalities.

E. The city council members who have served fewer than three years will not vote against the measure.

So here’s where my LSAT philosophy differs from many LSAT teachers. I don’t give a rip if you know all the different question types - that is all made-up LSAT dogma, and you’ll waste weeks studying “official” question types that some dude made up to sell books. If you were to see a question like this in one of those books, they’d call this a “necessary assumption” question and tell you that you need to approach it a specific way because of its type. 

Nope. You just need to read the question. It’s in English. Just answer what they’re asking. Don’t waste time in the abstraction of translating a question into some made-up “type” so that you can supposedly answer the question better.

Now, a disclaimer here: once you’re further along in your LSAT studying journey, I actually might advise you to look at what question types you tend to miss most often - some folks certainly might benefit from specifically drilling a certain question type that gives them trouble (lookin’ at you, parallel reasoning). I’d just never suggest you spend time on that in the early days of your LSAT life, when you need to be more concerned about the actual work of understanding arguments.

So instead of drilling question types, what should you do when you get to the question stem and answers? Read them carefully. Of course, that’s a little over simplified, so let’s look at it together. They’re asking me what assumption the arguer is depending on, in other words, what little factoid or condition they need in order for their argument to actually make sense. 

And guess what? We already found that earlier. So let’s look through these answer choices and see what we can see. 

A. The road building project will not be funded by outside means and therefore succeed.

Nope, they’re not relying on this. It could happen, I guess, but it wouldn’t change their argument about the fact that the measure itself will not pass. If the roads still get built anyway, that’s great, I guess, but I don’t really care. 

B. No city council member who has served more than three years will vote for the measure.

 At first, this sounds a lot like our prediction, so you’ll probably initially want to pay a lot of attention to it. However, this is a classic LSAT fake-out. We’ve already been told in a premise that this is true, so it can’t be an assumption they’re making behind the scenes. For example, if you show me that you have a five dollar bill in your wallet, I’m not making an assumption that you have five bucks. That’s already granted. 

C. Of council members who have served fewer than three years, there are no more than six who will vote in favor of the measure.

Boom - this is exactly what we predicted. You might be thinking (and you probably should be thinking), Okay, cool, very impressive. You made your own argument so it magically had the answer you’d predicted as an answer choice. Real neat. But here’s the thing: we’re gonna look through a bunch of actual LSAT questions, and you’ll find that we are able to completely predict the answer to the question maybe half the time. You wanna talk about saving time in the Logical Reasoning sections? This is your guaranteed method: know what the answer is before you’ve even read the answers.

D. The proposed roads in the project are necessary for the city and do not affect other municipalities.

Yeah, no. Every now and then, the LSAT gives you an answer like this that’s just irrelevant. I just don’t care about this sort of information in context of the argument I’m actually looking at. It’s pretty tempting at first, because, as a person who lives in the real world, these kinds of considerations would usually be really important and interesting. However, in the made-up universe of this question, I don’t care if other towns even exist or if these roads serve literally no purpose.

E. The city council members who have served fewer than three years will not vote against the measure.

Another good fake-out: it’s very similar in some ways to the correct answer, but it doesn’t address the real issue: the author is assuming that we won’t be able to scrounge up enough votes because of the three-year veterans voting “nay.” The statement in E - that the newbies would vote for the measure - would actually weaken their conclusion. It’s a little hard to even understand that that’s what the author is saying because the answer choice is written with a double negative (“will not vote against”), which means you have to do some thinking to even understand what they’re saying.

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