1) What score did you get?

177, June 2007 administration (-3)

2) What books did you use? (Kaplan, Powerscore LRB, Powerscore LGB, etc)

Let me see...
+ Kaplan LSAT Workbook - barely used
+ Kaplan LSAT 180 - useful practice problems, average instruction
+ Kaplan Premier Edition 2006 - moderately useful, first book I used
+ Princeton Review LSAT Workout - seemed very hard to me, didn't use much
+ Powerscore LR Bible - found select sections useful, skipped around alot
+ Powerscore LG Bible - quite useful

3) What prep courses did you take (if any)? Full length, weekend?

Technically I signed up for a Kaplan month long (3 days a week if I recall correctly) program but I ended up canceling as it was ridiculously slow-paced and elementary.

4) How long did you study for, and under what conditions? (during school, during the summer, etc)

I started studying during the last few days for Spring Break, which meant I had just under 11 weeks of practice. This occurred during the school year (I took a full class load); the LSAT itself fell on the first day of finals week (a Monday), which was unpleasant to say the least. For people on the quarter system like I am/was, I recommend that you take the Sept/Oct exam to circumvent this problem, especially if you also have a part-time job (I didn't, but I could see it becoming ridiculous). It was not fun constantly having midterms/papers to write (one of my hardest quarters to boot too, which was lame).

During the first 3 weeks I put in about 3-5 hours a day, 7 days a week. I took a diagnostic test and then began to work on the sections, starting with LG. After about a week in a half (roughly 4 pure LG days, 3 pure LR days, and then a few hybrid days which included RC) I began taking practice tests again. I tried to take at least two practice tests, timed, every week. No cheating, no extra-long breaks, etc.; I even began using no.2 wood pencils (though I did use a digital timer).

For certain LR/LG types (those I was proficient in) I dedicated less or no study time. I focused almost entirely on my weak question types for LG/LR (the LR bible was amazing for some of my weakest sections like Parallel Reasoning) and saw dramatic improvement (from ~157 to 170 in two weeks). I slowly incorporated RC into my study regimen, focusing simply on improving my annotation techniques and raw practice.

5) How many preptests did you do?

I started on 29 and went to ~41. Then I started mixing in a few from the tail end of the 20's (27, 28, maybe a few earlier tests) along with the 42+ practice tests. I broke several of the mid-20's tests into half tests and did two sections timed on one day and then two sections timed the next (which remarkably produced similar scores to 4 section tests). By June 11 I had done ~23-50, with about 5 of those being done as half tests.

6) What would you change if you were to do it again?

Nothing. This sounds arrogant I guess but it's true. 177 is a good score, and I wouldn't want to change that. That I did not get 180 is not because of a failing during my preparation time but because of two misreads and a question I found just plain hard.

7) Any other misc comments/suggestions.

+ TAKE A BREAK! In the middle of my ~11 week preparation period I took a week-long break where I did almost nothing LSAT-wise. My score improved *dramatically* following this break, jumping from 171-175 to 177-180 (179 on my first practice test after the break). It stayed there over the next 6 tests with one exception and on the actual.
+ PRACTICE TESTS ARE KEY! Unless you're picking up 180's left and right, I feel you should take at least 20 full-length, timed, no-cheating practice tests before the real deal. There is no excuse not to, 4 35-minute sections is not that much of a time sink for something that will profoundly affect the remainder of your professional life.
+ SERIOUSLY COMMIT! Don't waste your time and money taking the test if you aren't 100% ready. You'll end up having to retake anyway. To this end, don't spend the 11-12 week period leading up to the test studying 2-3 times a week for 1-2 hours a day. While I think a break in the middle is great and useful, when you aren't on a break you should be hitting the books *hard*.
+ HAVE A PLAN! Don't jump around. Pinpoint your weak sections and drill yourself on them every day. If you're good at a certain question type don't bother with it as much until after you are as good with the sections you suck at as you are with that section. This will pay off especially well if you're in the high 150s and low 160s. *Always* redo the problems you got wrong on a practice test (don't just copy the answer key either) after you grade it, and identify where your logic went awry.
+ STAY CONFIDENT! You'll fail if you doubt yourself. Improvement *will* come, even if slowly. Look for trends over time to gauge your performance rather than individual tests. Graph things in excel to watch your progress, it can be fun and rewarding (keeping you motivated)!

1) What score did you get?
179 (Feb '07)

2) What books did you use? (Kaplan, Powerscore LRB, Powerscore LGB, etc)
Only book I used (other than preptests) was the Kaplan logic games book... I thought it was really useful, though I've never seen the LG Bible so I can't compare the two.

3) What prep courses did you take (if any)? Full length, weekend?
No prep course

4) How long did you study for, and under what conditions? (during school, during the summer, etc)
I took my first blind practice LSAT in mid-Nov '06 and got a 167... didn't really start studying hardcore until mid-January, when I quit the graduate program I'd been in. At that point I was unemployed and had nothing to do but study for the LSAT, which was nice.

5) How many preptests did you do?
I think I did about 15-17 preptests in total: one of the LSAC 10-test books, plus whatever free ones I could find online.

6) What would you change if you were to do it again?
Nothing that I can think of, though I probably would have started earlier. My 179 was kind of a fluke; I'd been testing at around 173, with only one outlier at 178.

7) Any other misc comments/suggestions.
What seemed to work well for me was doing a practice test every morning at 9:00am for the two weeks leading up to the test. When test day finally came, I didn't really feel any stress; it just felt like I was going through the motions of taking a preptest like I'd done each morning for the past two weeks.

1) What score did you get?
178

2) What books did you use? (Kaplan, Powerscore LRB, Powerscore LGB, etc)
The twin bibles, Kaplan 180, and all the tests I could get my hands on.

3) What prep courses did you take (if any)? Full length, weekend?
None.

4) How long did you study for, and under what conditions? (during school, during the summer, etc)
I prepared for 2 months during school, but I studied very obsessively the month leading up to.

5) How many preptests did you do?
A lot.

6) What would you change if you were to do it again?
Nothing.

7) Any other misc comments/suggestions.
A few: 1) Don't bother timing yourself until you're throughly in sync with the material. Once the light bulb clicks, your timing will improve significantly without even trying. 2) Don't take a prep course until you're throughly familiar with the test and have done some self-study. Otherwise, you'll gain very little in your 14 sessions. 3) Systematically examine the questions you're getting wrong and don't be satisfied until you understand your mistake thoroughly.

how are people taking 80 logical reasoning tests etc..

besides the preptests where are all these extra questions coming from and is it a good source?

1.) Score: 177; 97/100; 99.7th %-tile

2.) Books: None.

3.) Courses: None.

4.) Study: Two weeks; averaged over 2 PrepTests per day.

5.) PrepTests: 17 timed.

6.) I would have paid more attention to LR.

7.) Miscellaneous comments:

- I don't diagram rules and inferences on games. I use hypos on grouping, ordering, and assignment games.

- I start out every game by immediately answering the first question using simple elimination. This is possible for the vast majority of games.

- Never pick the least flawed answer on LR or RC. The credited response is never flawed. If you think there are two possible answers on a LG question, you have misread or misunderstood one of the rules.

- On RC, choose conservative responses for questions asking about tone and attitude.

- Build mental stamina by taking PrepTests consecutively. I completed 3 timed PrepTests consecutively twice during my preparations.

- I never did any untimed PrepTests.

1) What score did you get?

172

2) What books did you use? (Kaplan, Powerscore LRB, Powerscore LGB, etc)

LRB, LGB, LSATs

3) What prep courses did you take (if any)? Full length, weekend?

0


4) How long did you study for, and under what conditions? (during school, during the summer, etc)

Took Feb LSAT, started over Winter Break and through the resuming of school.


5) How many preptests did you do?

30+

6) What would you change if you were to do it again?

Not have taken so many tests a week before, I burned out. Not have ended with the Riddled Basins RC, it freaked me out.

7) Any other misc comments/suggestions.

RC sucks.

I didn't read all posts on the four pages here, but if someone hasn't addressed it, they don't allow silent timers anymore. Just "analog wrist watches". I've been practising with a timer, and I'm going to switch to using a watch.

...

1) What score did you get? 174

2) What books did you use? (Kaplan, Powerscore LRB, Powerscore LGB, etc) I started using Kaplan, but then I realized that their review material is not worth studying when you can just use practice tests. Just do as many full length practice tests as possible - way better than using any of these with their lsat tips and lsat tricks - waste of time and money except for the actual practice tests they give you.

3) What prep courses did you take (if any)? Full length, weekend?

None

4) How long did you study for, and under what conditions? (during school, during the summer, etc)

Started near the end of school - last month and a half since I got out around the beginning of May - all the way up until the June test day. So around 3 months or so. (half out of school/half in)

5) How many preptests did you do?

I did 18 or 19 full-length lsat prep tests. The practice lsat tests are key. If you do them honestly without taking any extra time and have them independently timed by someone you know - it will significantly help you when it comes time to do the real thing.

I really did not have any person that was willing to sacrifice their time to help proctor my practice tests - so I used this virtual proctor that I found. It comes on dvd, and you can watch that independently times you while you take your practice tests. (Here's the link. http://www.lsatproctor.com/) That along with practicing with an analog watch while doing all those full length practice tests made doing the actual lsat on test day way less stressful.

6) What would you change if you were to do it again?

I might have done a few more full length practice tests just under as close to real test conditions as possible because I know that the more I did under those conditions would have given me maybe a one or two point boost in score.

7) Any other misc comments/suggestions.

Definitely get some help with your practice tests. Having someone help you get better at using your watch and making your practice test almost as stressful as the real thing will make the real lsat seem much less stressful. Repetition is key. That virtual proctor really helped me out and I would suggest using it because it is going to be more reliable than a friend or family member that you are trying to coerce into timing you for almost 4 hours let alone multiple times a week. 15 bucks isn't too bad an investment either.

Good luck with all your lsat prep.

For those of you who took no prep course, would you definitely recommend this route for people who are totally new to the LSAT? I am putting together a quick presentation on the LSAT, and am basically saying that the prep course is a good thing, but not enough and you need to go above and beyond this course. Would you agree or disagree with this?

I took a prep course too and thought it wasn't good (especially the logic games part), but it did have some utility in the sense that it got me completely familiar with question types, especially on LR.

This is an excellent forum! Sorry if i am interrupting someone else's post (I am not good at navigating these websites)

I am a rising senior at Georgetown University with a 3.8 G.P.A. Prior to my first diagnostic, I was fairly ambitious about where I wanted to go to law school, however my diagnostic score with about 2 weeks of prep is a 153, which has me out of contention for all top-tier schools.

I score fine on the Arguments and RC sections, my problem is games. On a timed test, I am lucky if I can get 6 or 7 answers correct. I am taking a princeton review course, and the games section seems learnable to me, but I am just not making progress fast enough (my test date is Sept. 29th). My situation is worsened by the fact that I work a part-time job, and have classes starting next week. What I need to find out is the following:
1) Is it advisable to push the test-date back to February? Will more time=more progress, or will devoting more than 3-4 months to preparation simply burn me out?
2) Is it advisable to take the test once I am out of college (working full-time at my current job as a paraelegal)? I only ask because I have a very busy schedule at school with both academics and my job, and I feel I could focus better once I am out of school and working. Are there any disadvantages to this, i.e- do law schools look more favorably on applicants who took the test as undergrads?
3) A lot of you have raved about the Logic Games Bible. I ordered a copy online, but it hasn't yet arrived. Is the LGB approach drastically different than the Princeton Review Approach? If so, how would you rate the two in comparison to each other? Should I perhaps try to unlearn the PR approach if I find the LGB works better for me?

I am very sorry that this thread is so long-winded, but this test is VERY important to me, and while I don't expect to score anywhere near where some of you guys have scored (considerable props), I would really love to see a 10 point increase.

thanks again.

1) Been taking prep tests for about two weeks, scores have been 162, 166, 163, 171, 167, 171, 173, 168, 173, 174

2) Real LSAT's. Other books actually make me score lower.

3) No prep courses, it's just cramming and jamming here.

4) So far 2 weeks, maybe 3 hrs a day. I'm a bum, literally

5) 10 so far.

6) N/A

7) Practicing reading is very helpful. Read a newspaper, and best of luck

Blah.

1) What score did you get?
Real Test - 173.
Timed Practice Tests Average - 175
Timed Practice Test High - 180 (on weekend before the real LSATs, I think I psyched myself out a bit w/ that).

2) What books did you use? (Kaplan, Powerscore LRB, Powerscore LGB, etc)
Princeton Review. Took the course, so I was using thier collection of like 6 books.

3) What prep courses did you take (if any)? Full length, weekend?
Princeton Review Hyperlearning.

4) How long did you study for, and under what conditions? (during school, during the summer, etc)
Over the summer, and then kept doing 1 practice test a week before October test date. So, nothing extra on top of the class while it was going on, then when classes ended I took 1 full timed test (4 hours?) per week, so again, not all that much.

5) How many preptests did you do?
Ooof. 15-20 in total? It was over a 4 month span though, so it didn't seem too bad.

6) What would you change if you were to do it again?
Nothing. The score was lower than my average, but higher than what I got before the classes. Pretty satisfied overall.

7) Any other misc comments/suggestions.
I took the test in my sophomore year, fall. (So, third semester of college). I have no idea why everyone waits until thier junior/senior year to take this test. From what I've experienced and seen in college, you LOSE brain cells, not gain them. Thus, earlier is better if you know you're not taking more than a year off... plus, you're taking easier courses early on. The LSAT doesn't test for knowledge, what're you waiting for? So long as you don't plan on taking 3+ years off after college, sophomore year is a perfect time.

Also, I suggest everyone take a Critical Thinking course + a Symbolic Logic course before studying for the test... it really helps with the games, even if you can't figure out how to use it for the arguments section.

I heard Princeton Review didn't know what they were doing. Guess I was wrong. How much improvement are we talking here? You only mention you did better after taking the course.

1) What score did you get?
I scored a 177 back in 2002. I'm answering these questions based on my 2002 exam. I just took the test again on Sep 29, so we'll see how it goes. (edit: got a 177 again for Sep 2007)

2) What books did you use?
Kaplan course books

3) What prep courses did you take (if any)?
I taught Kaplan LSAT classes but never took a prep class as a student

4) How long did you study for, and under what conditions?
My study method isn't really realistic for others, but I primarily studied by teaching the class. My prep for each 3 hour class took about 6 hours. I had to know the questions in class well enough to anticipate and answer any questions about them. I also did private tutoring and would review questions with people one-on-one.

5) How many preptests did you do?

If you count sitting down under proctored conditions and taking a preptest, about 2. However, I did see questions and sections of dozens of real exams as part of teaching the course.

6) What would you change if you were to do it again?
Nothing.

7) Any other misc comments/suggestions.
Obviously preparing by teaching a Kaplan class isn't good general advice. So hopefully my misc comments will be more useful to people.

I don't think taking a class is necessary. If you have good study skills, just buy a general book and a whole lot of prep tests. If you have the money and need a little motivational boost to study, a class can be helpful. If you have a lot of money, private tutoring is nice especially if you are looking for a top score. If you have a lot of trouble forcing yourself to study, however, you are out of luck period. Taking a class by itself isn't going to improve your score if you don't do anything outside class. Any honest test-prep provider will tell you the same thing themselves.

I've seen a lot of people prepare. One of the biggest mistakes I see people make is just taking a class and then expecting it to magically raise their scores. But another big mistake is taking a ton of prep tests without critically reviewing the answers. You are only improving your test-taking stamina with that strategy. I want to strongly echo the advice given earlier in this thread of going through your missed questions and looking for patterns. If you aren't good at figuring out what was wrong after the fact, make sure you get a book with explanations or a smart friend who can help you out.

I think it's important to build a foundation of really knowing the question types, passage types, and game types. You can get this by taking a -lot- of prep tests and just slowly absorbing the similarities. You can also get this by reading any decent prep test book from the library or bookstore. If you don't like the strategies in the first book that you get after giving them an honest shot, try a different book.

This is a Kaplanism, but you don't need to sit down and take a full prep test every time you study. Different levels of practice serve different purposes. If you are working on a weakness, work on individual questions. You don't necessarily need to time them. If you are working on timing, take sections and time them strictly. If you are working on test-day stamina, take a full test and try to simulate proctored conditions as much as possible. If you buy a big Real LSAT book, save some tests for full-length practice and break up the other tests.

Finally, here are some things that Kaplan recommends (at least they did back when I was teaching) that I don't personally do while taking the LSAT:
1. I don't write out topics for reading passages or individual paragraphs. Sometimes I underline, but that's mostly just to keep myself focused.
I do, however, examine the passage text for detail and most inference questions.
2. I don't do the reading passages out of order. Since I always finish the reading section and don't have a strong preference for one passage type, I never saw the need (I would recommend it for some people). However, I do the logic games section out of order because I think IDing the games first and doing the easiest boosts my confidence.
3. I don't underline conclusions in LR questions that have conclusions. I do read the stem first, as I like having my brain know where it's headed as I read.
I've probably forgotten other stuff, if you are taking a Kaplan class and want to know my uncensored (now that I no longer teach) opinion of a particular strategy or suggestion that your teacher makes, feel free to PM me.

Edit: I was browsing the admission forum and remembered this post, so I updated with my scores from 2007.

Wow. Why did you take the exam again?

Well, I'm finally applying to law school now. I decided not to go back then. And my (June) 2002 scores are about to expire or have expired already, I'm not sure which. Even if they don't expire until the end of the year I want to show a more recent exam.

A lot of schools want scores from within the past 3 years.

Princeton Review (the organization) knows what they're doing in terms of stratagies. I've reviewed both TPR and KAP and I heavily favor the TPR stratagies, especially for the logic games section. But, this probobly differs with each person. In terms of organization, TPR is a complete mess... No idea how a business stays alive with thier poor management. In terms of quality of teachers, it's a mix bag. My arguments teacher was very competent in the classroom, but not particularly helpful on an individual level. My games teacher was amazing in every way. My RC teacher was mostly useless.

The course is what you make of it. Like the Kaplan teacher said, your scores don't magically go up. You work for it. Could you do it without the course? If you have a really good work ethic and the uncanny ability to think objectively about how you think... then yes. Where the course/teacher helps you, is to identify how you think by listening to you and telling you why that's wrong, or how you can improve (shortcuts, etc). It's just not the same with a book, since the explanations there are non-dynamic, so oftentimes you don't REALLY understand the logical pattern they're trying to illuminate, even after reading thier explanations.

Further, not all people use all of the stratagies. Some of them don't help you, since everyone's different. I personally didn't use half of the princeton review stratagies for Arguments/RC since I found they only slowed me down without improving my accuracy. Others have had great success with them. But you'll never know until you try it the right way, in a classroom. I'm sure the other half of the stratagies helped me (in particular, I cut down my Games time by 7-8 minutes... which means I ended each games section with 5+ minutes of time to rest my mind; I cut down my Arguments time by 5 minutes, so I could actually finish all the questions; and I cut down my RC time by 10+ minutes, since I wasn't used to speedreading before this). It helps.

I started with an average of upper 160s, so the average improvement was about 7-8 points... and that's from upper 160s. Most people can expect at least 5+ points of improvement if they put thier mind to it. If you put your mind to it, you can improve; it's that simple. And yes, a class helps for the majority of people. Eventually, you'll probobly end up in the same place w/ a book and no teacher. But you'd have to put in 5x-10x more time imo... and have that magical accurate outside perspective on your own thought process.

Take a class. This is important. Don't skimp, even if you're poor. even a paltry +2 points on LSATs would more than make up for the 1k a class costs. And who knows, you could be one of those people that goes up 15-20 points under the proper guidance.

Well I think I just bombed the September test big time, but it would have been much worse if I hadn't used the PowerScore bibles. They aren't a miracle, but they are the best of any of the study books- believe me, I know.

1. I'm waiting for my score right now. My practice LSATs (previously released tests) were in the upper 160s to mid 170s.

2. I didn't bother with anything other than real LSATs.

3. None

4. During the summer, at least three sections each day under testing conditions. Then I reviewed my wrong answers very carefully.

5. Nearly 50

6. I would worry less about time in the beginning.

7. Don't waste money on gimmicks or books that try to categorize all of the questions (i.e. Princeton Review's logic puzzle book where they name the different types of puzzles... nearly all of the real puzzles are combinations anyway so they make you think the test is easier than it actually is).

my video on the materials I used to prep: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6yGwP3Mekg

and things I left out.

1. *Do* spend way too much time going over you wrong answers on practice tests until you completely understand why you got it wrong and why the correct answer is correct.

2. Every wrong answer is a learning opportunity--don't have a panic attack if your score drops on a practice test--it just gives you more material to work on your weaknesses.

2. Repeating logic games you've done before helps you identify patterns in the game and improves speed.

3. A positive attitude is essential. Stay calm, know that you're ready for it, and be your own coach. You have to practice this as you're studying in order for it to happen on test day. I'd say that positivity and the calm confidence that goes with it is what makes a person reach an all time high on test day instead of seeing their score drop 5-7 points.

I hope this is of use to someone. Happy studying!

Strongly agree with 1-3. Hoewever, going to the test site on a mission is the approach i prefered. Positivity and happiness may work, just do not go to that site scared!!!

I don't mean "yay, I'm taking the lsat! I couldn't be happier!" when I say positivity. What I mean is very much like what you say about being "on a mission."

What's going on in your head should be something like this: "I have studied my ass off, I know the material, I'm ready for this. The right answers are on the page and I know how to find them..." without letting a negative thought or doubt slip in.

And while practicing, allow yourself to gloat a little when you nail a game or a hard question because it builds confidence for test day.

That said, confidence only helps when you actually did study to the best of your ability. The point isn't to lie to yourself, but to know that you're capable of an awesome score and that you can push yourself to make it happen.