What's the best LSAT prep company? Forum

[gaud]

OP, you should add a poll to this

inb4 one company mysteriously garners 40 votes in one hour

lol, fair enough

Wait, what am I supposed to do with the 40 guys I picked up in front of the paint store, dropped off in this internet cafe, and had create TLS accounts. Jeez. Thanks.

Do I still tip?

Yes, you still give them a tip. Tell them not to play in a busy street.

[vanwinkle]

I'm sorry but nothing beats:

Powerscore Bibles
Tons of old LSAT tests
TLS for help / advice when random questions come up (which they will)

I second this. Don't waste your time and money on a big program that won't cater to your personal needs. You gotta put in the time.

A big program has nothing to do with whether you "put in the time" or not. In fact, it can help some people put in the necessary time by structuring their studying for them. People don't go to these classes without expecting to put a lot of time in, or at least they shouldn't. Especially for someone who's already joined the real world and is working 40+ hours a week, it's easier to have someone providing a study structure and supervision than trying to figure out the right way to do it yourself.

I'm not saying it's always better to take a class. But by calling these things a "waste of time" you're saying it's always better not to, and that's just not true.

[northwood]

I took a prep course( princeton Review). I enjoyed the matierals ( the ones you get when you enroll are actuall test questions allready grouped by categories. I had a pretty large class, and i found sometimes it went a bit too slow. But there was a bunch of TA's, so i was able to work ahead and work with them one on one when i found myself struggling. I also used those periods to help me explain why the other answers were wrong, and why the answer was right( a good practice to solidify the concepts). HOwever, as many have stated on here allready, the real variable is you, how you dedicate yourself to the class, and how you are able to grasp the material. Although a lot of posters on this site may make it seem as though it is really easy to learn, for a majority of test takers out there, they will not be able to score above a 153 on the actual test. SOme of it will be the result of not prepping adequately, others for just difficulty grasping the material.

I took a class because I liked how it forced me to adopt a study schedule and stick to it. It also gave me a sounding board for questions and helped me pace through the prep period. I also augmented the prep material with the powerscore tirlogy to help me get another perspective ( while the terminology is different, the basic concepts are the same, or very similar), but once i made the decision as to what method worked best for me, i stuck with it ( so i used some techniques from PR, others from powerscore)

in the end, prep how you learn best. If you learn best in a group or classroom type setting, or need structure, then go with a prep company that you feel most comfortable with. If you learn best on your own, get the powerscore trilogy books. Just make sure to devote a proper amount of time to this, and dont worry if it takes 6 months or so.

[freestallion]

I took Blueprint. It was awesome and I highly recommend it. They are very entertaining and actually make class fun, not boring. The instructors are hilarious, friendly, and the class is highly interactive. Also the examples they use are hilarious

However over that, I recommend self study with powerscore books and lots, and lots of practice tests. I regret spending my hard earned money b/c I'm pretty sure I would have gotten the same score w/o the blueprint class.

[ThreeRivers]

I'm sorry but nothing beats:

Powerscore Bibles
Tons of old LSAT tests
TLS for help / advice when random questions come up (which they will)

I second this. Don't waste your time and money on a big program that won't cater to your personal needs. You gotta put in the time.

A big program has nothing to do with whether you "put in the time" or not. In fact, it can help some people put in the necessary time by structuring their studying for them. People don't go to these classes without expecting to put a lot of time in, or at least they shouldn't. Especially for someone who's already joined the real world and is working 40+ hours a week, it's easier to have someone providing a study structure and supervision than trying to figure out the right way to do it yourself.

I'm not saying it's always better to take a class. But by calling these things a "waste of time" you're saying it's always better not to, and that's just not true.

I'll agree its worth the money if you need it force yourself to study..idk just seems insanely expensive way to "force" yourself to study, but if that is how you have to do its a wise move

[josh43299]

I took Blueprint. It was awesome and I highly recommend it. They are very entertaining and actually make class fun, not boring. The instructors are hilarious, friendly, and the class is highly interactive. Also the examples they use are hilarious

However over that, I recommend self study with powerscore books and lots, and lots of practice tests. I regret spending my hard earned money b/c I'm pretty sure I would have gotten the same score w/o the blueprint class.

I did Blueprint too, the online course. I didnt really have a whole lot of options, since I was working full time, living in the middle of no where (I think there might have been a Kaplan course like 50 miles away), and needed something that could be on demand and equivalent to a full course. Honestly, I am really glad that my options were limited, because I think that was the best course for me. I took the December '10 LSAT and scored a 159, after studying lightly for a month or so. I decided to try to seriously study and by the end of the BP course, my PTs were in the 172-178 range. BUT, I studied my fucking ass off. I don't think most people do all of the homework, but I did (I studied for about 6 months, 2 months intensively). By the end of the course, the homework would be like 113 LR Question Mix, 5 LR Sections, 2 LG Sections, 2 RC Sections, RC Mix, LG Mix... I did all of the additional PT's they provided. They also had video or audio explanations for pretty much every questions. They also reshaped the student home page where you can grade your homework and it will spit out a ton of data for you to assess yourself with (with PT's too).

Here is the final reason I recommend them: 3 weeks or so before the October LSAT, they were able to work something out with LSAC and put up the June 2011 LSAT to download and had video explanations for every question. I thought that was pretty amazing and it really made me feel much more confident going in last Saturday. To me, that demonstrated that they really cared about their students. They could have been like, "Hey we have the June 2011 LSAT for you to download for $20."

I know this sounds like I work for them or something and I have not posted on here a lot, but I just really like this company and they helped me a lot. It was well worth the money for me.

[suspicious android]

I know this sounds like I work for them or something and I have not posted on here a lot, but I just really like this company and they helped me a lot. It was well worth the money for me.

Not to pick on you specifically, but I always notice in these threads people say "I took company XYZ, they do PQR, which is awesome" where attributes PQR are common to pretty much every major company. As far as i know, every company that licenses LSAC materials got access to the June 2011 test sometime in August, when it was published.

A lot of companies have online written and video explanations, though to be fair, I don't know which company has more of them. Same thing with the statistical analysis, this is a pretty cool feature, but it's actually pretty easy to do, since they get a record of how people do on their prep tests, then they record that and get all sorts of interesting statistical analysis (You chose B, which 42% of people chose, etc.).

The basic problem with these threads is that the vast majority of people who have taken a prep course take only one, and so have little basis for comparison. And to be blunt, people who take multiple prep courses are generally . . . atypical students.

[josh43299]

I know this sounds like I work for them or something and I have not posted on here a lot, but I just really like this company and they helped me a lot. It was well worth the money for me.

Not to pick on you specifically, but I always notice in these threads people say "I took company XYZ, they do PQR, which is awesome" where attributes PQR are common to pretty much every major company. As far as i know, every company that licenses LSAC materials got access to the June 2011 test sometime in August, when it was published.

A lot of companies have online written and video explanations, though to be fair, I don't know which company has more of them. Same thing with the statistical analysis, this is a pretty cool feature, but it's actually pretty easy to do, since they get a record of how people do on their prep tests, then they record that and get all sorts of interesting statistical analysis (You chose B, which 42% of people chose, etc.).

The basic problem with these threads is that the vast majority of people who have taken a prep course take only one, and so have little basis for comparison. And to be blunt, people who take multiple prep courses are generally . . . atypical students.

Good points. I suppose that you could take my post to then reflect that, within the largely uniform practices of top LSAT preparation companies and given my admittedly one-sided assessment of a particular company, my experiences were good and yielded impressive results, at least on my PT's.

When I was researching which company to go with, Blueprint seemed to have the most exhaustive, online course that was still on demand (I believe their price was the best at the time as well). This was largely the reason for my choice, given my constraints. The other elements were ancillary and appreciated after the fact. I don't think there is anything wrong with these naturally subjective evaluations, assuming the original poster reads various threads and comes to their own conclusions. It is their job to find out what is unique to the individual companies. If the major companies (Testmasters, Powerscore, Blueprint) are as similar as you indicate, I would say that the original poster is safe with any of them, as the techniques and methods are going to be nearly identical.

[houng89]

I will just share what I did which I thought was helpful take it for what it is.

I started off taking a class from a private county in Orange County called ScoreItUp. I wouldn't recommend the program just bc it went WAY too slow.

LSAT 159

After this experience I started off with all the PS bibles which I recommend. The logic games and logical reasoning bibles I thought were especially helpful, while the RC one was about average.

LSAT 167

After having pretty good fundamentals, I started to hit a ceiling with LR and had a hard time getting consistently under -3 for each section. For this, I asked the help of a private tutor from Manhattan LSAT. This helped me see intricacies in the logical reasoning sections I never would have obtained from self study just because I was not trained in formal logic. And some of the most difficult LSAT questions had formal logic complexities never covered in the bibles or any other prep book.

LSAT- waiting on Oct 2011 scores

[Yeshia90]

I took Testmasters, and went from a 166 cold diag to a 174 on test day. I'd been PTing in the upper 170s the last few weeks, so I feel that TM helped me max out my potential. For me, though, it was a matter of accountability. I'm a pretty lazy guy (hence: splitter), and knowing that I had 8 hours of LSAT work a week helped keep me on track, as did the unassigned "homework" between classes. I was, by far, the quickest learner in my class, and often found myself doing something else while a game was broken down further for the less apt, and I think the repetition, not the explanation, helped. That said, I did have a very small class (took it in two locations, one had 7 and the other 15 students), and had I needed more than a cursory explanation of questions, I'm sure I would've got them. I mean, I would probably have done just as well, if marginally worse, through self-study, but I don't know if I'd have been able to keep myself on track. Or that I'd have been able to structure the lessons as well.

HTH.

[LSAT Blog]

I know this sounds like I work for them or something and I have not posted on here a lot, but I just really like this company and they helped me a lot. It was well worth the money for me.

Not to pick on you specifically, but I always notice in these threads people say "I took company XYZ, they do PQR, which is awesome" where attributes PQR are common to pretty much every major company. As far as i know, every company that licenses LSAC materials got access to the June 2011 test sometime in August, when it was published.

A lot of companies have online written and video explanations, though to be fair, I don't know which company has more of them. Same thing with the statistical analysis, this is a pretty cool feature, but it's actually pretty easy to do, since they get a record of how people do on their prep tests, then they record that and get all sorts of interesting statistical analysis (You chose B, which 42% of people chose, etc.).

The basic problem with these threads is that the vast majority of people who have taken a prep course take only one, and so have little basis for comparison. And to be blunt, people who take multiple prep courses are generally . . . atypical students.

+1

By the way, LSAC actually provided the June exam to those who license it on July 8th.

(They usually provide the licensable exams to licensees within a week or two of the score release date for that exam.)

[Tiago Splitter]

I took Testmasters, and went from a 166 cold diag to a 174 on test day. I'd been PTing in the upper 170s the last few weeks, so I feel that TM helped me max out my potential. For me, though, it was a matter of accountability. I'm a pretty lazy guy (hence: splitter), and knowing that I had 8 hours of LSAT work a week helped keep me on track, as did the unassigned "homework" between classes. I was, by far, the quickest learner in my class, and often found myself doing something else while a game was broken down further for the less apt, and I think the repetition, not the explanation, helped. That said, I did have a very small class (took it in two locations, one had 7 and the other 15 students), and had I needed more than a cursory explanation of questions, I'm sure I would've got them. I mean, I would probably have done just as well, if marginally worse, through self-study, but I don't know if I'd have been able to keep myself on track. Or that I'd have been able to structure the lessons as well.

HTH.

I had a very similar experience with Testmasters. The accountability of a live class was the main reason I went that route.

[emkay625]

This (or 98th percentile, at least) is true of every major test prep company's instructors (with some occasional exceptions for short classes).

I don't think this is true of Kaplan. Pretty sure they only require LSAT instructors to get 90th or 95th percentile. And I've heard that they can do this on a Kaplan proctored exam.

So theoretically, your Kaplan instructor may have never taken an actual LSAT.

Correct me if I'm wrong though.

You're wrong - it's 97th percentile on an actual exam (169 or up) and 99th percentile (171 and up) on a Kaplan proctored test, and it must be the most recently released PT if you do it that way.

[suspicious android]

You're wrong - it's 97th percentile on an actual exam (169 or up) and 99th percentile (171 and up) on a Kaplan proctored test, and it must be the most recently released PT if you do it that way.

You're wrong. Kaplan's standards vary a bit from place to place, due to market conditions (market conditions here means that since their pay is so much lower than the competition, they often have trouble attracting high scoring applicants). Also from class to class. For their most popular courses ("LSAT Advantage"), they don't even guarantee 95th percentile scores. They only time they guarantee a 99th percentile instructor is for the limited entry classes (158 diagnostic or above) which only run in the largest markets. They do have standards for their Kaplan "Extreme" course (free Mountain Dew at the beginning of each class?), for which they guarantee a 95th percentile score, though not necessarily on an actual LSAT. For their tutors, they claim they have all scored in the "top percentiles". I challenge you to read that without snickering.

Now, in many locations the hiring standards will be higher, because they might not be desperate for instructors. So perhaps at whatever locations you were at that was their standard, but it's not policy. As soon as they have trouble getting an instructor scoring 170+ they're free to drop their standards. Of course all this is irrelevant since regardless of the instructor you're getting The Kaplan Method.

I'm not saying every class or every instructor for Kaplan sucks, I know people who have had good experiences. I'm just saying that moreso than with any other company, you really gotta make sure you know what you're getting. Also, you gotta wonder why their instructors aren't working for one of the half dozen companies who pay much, much higher wages.

[suspicious android]

Good points. I suppose that you could take my post to then reflect that, within the largely uniform practices of top LSAT preparation companies and given my admittedly one-sided assessment of a particular company, my experiences were good and yielded impressive results, at least on my PT's.

Yeah, you weren't saying anything egregious or anything, mostly that you had a good experience with Blueprint, which is helpful information for people considering a course. Just wanted to get in my complaint about this issue.

By the way, LSAC actually provided the June exam to those who license it on July 8th.

Wow, didn't know it was so early.

[FooJ]

I took Mark Sacks's scoreitup course in Orange County, which really helped me. Books were useful, but they only got me to a certain point. Taking his course really helped me focus my studies and understand the logic behind every question and how to break them down. Especially when it came to logic games, he really simplified the whole approach into an easy to follow formula.

- FooJ

[D10]

I will just share what I did which I thought was helpful take it for what it is.

I started off taking a class from a private county in Orange County called ScoreItUp. I wouldn't recommend the program just bc it went WAY too slow.

LSAT 159

After this experience I started off with all the PS bibles which I recommend. The logic games and logical reasoning bibles I thought were especially helpful, while the RC one was about average.

LSAT 167

After having pretty good fundamentals, I started to hit a ceiling with LR and had a hard time getting consistently under -3 for each section. For this, I asked the help of a private tutor from Manhattan LSAT. This helped me see intricacies in the logical reasoning sections I never would have obtained from self study just because I was not trained in formal logic. And some of the most difficult LSAT questions had formal logic complexities never covered in the bibles or any other prep book.

LSAT- waiting on Oct 2011 scores

I also took the Scoreitup course this pat summer in Irvine and I thought it was great. Definitely a lot better than Powerscore. It really helped me to understand the concepts behind each of the sections, particularly logic games, which I had found very difficult prior to taking the course. There was a lot of emphasis on taking timed sections in class, which was very, very important for my own pacing (and how to improve upon it) and the types of questions that show up in each section.

I had taken Powerscore last year (also in Irvine) and I definitely don’t think it was anywhere near as comprehensive as the Scoreitup course in terms of the amount of material covered and the thoroughness of the explanations for each question. Value-wise, Scoreitup was also a lot cheaper than Powerscore and I really wish that I had known about it last year.

That said, I also used the Logic Games and LR Bibles on my own and found that they were very helpful for my own study. Regardless of whichever course you take, the most important factor will be the time you take to study at home.

[rachelst]

To anybody looking to receive tutoring from Get Prepped: DO NOT UTILIZE THEIR SERVICES! Their refund policy (or lack thereof) is terrible. I received the same score after paying $1200 for private tutoring and was screwed over when I asked for a partial refund. Other companies have clearly outlined their financial compensation or classroom compensation for not receiving a higher score, but their policy for tutoring is basically "TBD." I don't want to throw my tutor under the bus because he was very helpful and my practice scores improved by around 12 points, but if you're looking to get LSAT tutoring, GO WITH ANOTHER TEST PREP COMPANY!

[Leojames26]

Hey Michelle, there are several great LSAT prep companies that you might want to consider. Kaplan and Princeton Review are two of the most popular, offering both classes and one-on-one tutoring. Another strong contender is Manhattan Prep, known for its in-depth strategies and experienced instructors. If you're looking for something more flexible, consider online options like 7Sage, which offers a comprehensive and affordable self-paced course. Ultimately, the best choice depends on your learning style and budget. Have you tried any of these before?

[mglawyersca]

Hey Michelle,

Totally get where you're coming from — self-studying with books is a solid start, but having a structured class or tutor can really level things up, especially if you’re hitting a plateau or need accountability.

Here are some options depending on your style and budget:

1. _7Sage_** – Best for self-paced learners**
Their video explanations and logic game strategies are top-notch. Super affordable too compared to others. The community forums are active, and the curriculum is very comprehensive. Great if you're disciplined and like learning at your own pace.

2. _PowerScore_** – Best for Logic Games**
Their LG Bible is famous for a reason. They also offer full courses, and their instructors tend to be really solid. If you’ve been struggling with games, they break them down in a super digestible way.

3. _Blueprint_** – Best for visual learners**
If you want engaging videos and a more fun learning style, Blueprint's got it. Their analytics tools help track your weaknesses, and the course feels really modern and interactive.

4. _LSATMax or Manhattan Prep_** – Best for tutoring**
Both have great tutors, especially if you're aiming for a high 160s/170s score. It’s pricier, but if you're looking for customized feedback and a tailored study plan, tutoring might be worth it.

TL;DR:

Budget & self-paced: 7Sage

Struggling with LG? PowerScore

Want fun, interactive lessons? Blueprint

Need a tutor? LSATMax or Manhattan Prep

Hope this helps! Feel free to share your target score and timeline — I (and others here) can suggest something more tailored.

Good luck — you’ve got this!