When should I start studying/how long? Forum

[Xixak]

I'm going into my junior year next year, and plan to take my LSAT in June or Oct 2014. When should I begin studying?

[SteelPenguin]

I'm going into my junior year next year, and plan to take my LSAT in June or Oct 2014. When should I begin studying?

It will ultimately depend on what your diagnostic score ends up being and how quickly you can progress, but I think most people need at least 3-4 months. If you have the time though, or if you have other time consuming commitments (like school), 5 or 6 months could be ideal. Personally, I think more than 6 months for a first test can be overkill.

[mx23250]

This heavily depends on how much time you're able to devote to LSAT studying. If you're able to devote 15-20 hours per week to studying, I would plan on at least 4 months. For me, I'm taking the LSAT this October and I started studying in February (totaling ~8 months of studying) since I've been in grad school for my PhD and MBA, and also working ~60 hours per week. So I'm averaging 15 hours per week for 8 months, although I plan on increasing this from August to October. My first PT gave me a 152 and after the first 3.5 months I'm now at a 168, but I figured I would need another 4 months to get to the score I want (173+). I'd recommend at least 6 months if you're really serious about doing well, but if your workload is high I'd recommend starting even sooner.

I would also recommend you taking a LSAT practice test without any studying to see where you are and that might indicate how much studying you need to do to get where you want to be.

[bp shinners]

I'm going into my junior year next year, and plan to take my LSAT in June or Oct 2014. When should I begin studying?

It will ultimately depend on what your diagnostic score ends up being and how quickly you can progress, but I think most people need at least 3-4 months. If you have the time though, or if you have other time consuming commitments (like school), 5 or 6 months could be ideal. Personally, I think more than 6 months for a first test can be overkill.

If you prep correctly for 6 months, you're at or near your limit. Not saying you can't improve more, but at that point, you're going to see severely diminishing returns on the time spent. So I think Penguin is spot on.

[Xixak]

When you say diagnostic, you mean the free test that LSAC gives out right?

[SteelPenguin]

When you say diagnostic, you mean the free test that LSAC gives out right?

Any prep test will do, but that one is free, so many people start with it. I took a Power score course that used a different test.