Intelligent, but just can't seem to score high on LSAT Forum

[Wily]

The LSAT is a different beast from aptitude tests. I was also in "gifted" classes as a kid, scored a 1600 on the SAT in 10th grade, went to HYP, and got a 176 my first taking of the LSAT back in '06 without prepping. But, that was all when I was younger. Now, 6 years after my first taking, I only got a 165 and 168 on my takings in the fall, and am hoping just to break 170 now in the June exam. The LSAT is NOT a straight test of general intelligence. It tests for the specific skills of dissecting arguments, critical reading, and logical manipulation, and also a quite a bit of stamina and concentration abilities.

It's also quite study-able, to the extent that people who start off with 140's can hit 160's to 170's with enough time. Inversely, those who didn't study enough (like me) can find their scores dropping from from 170's to 160's over time, especially if their stamina and focus decline like mine did because of my "advanced" age. Point is, study your ass off like the good people in his forum can show you how to, and you'll markedly improve. Don't, and it's a huge crapshoot, and most likely you'll lose.

You serious?

What happened to you during the 6 years? What did you do?

Aged. I think the LSAT is for younguns

Well what kind of stuff did you do during the 6 years off though?

A bit of this, a bit of that. Founded a startup, worked for a social network, and of course huffed lots of gasoline. One thing I didn't do was study much for the LSAT. Just assumed I'd do well in October and December. A big Borat *NOT* to that.

But I'm also serious about declining LSAT-abilities over age. When I took it for the first time at 21, I spent $15 on a Kaplan book, got ~175 on my first few PT's, and that was all the studying I evidently needed at the time. Retaking at 27, I PT'ed at only about 170, and somehow my nerves were MUCH worse: I froze a lot more, wasn't able to focus, and slowed down unnecessarily a lot, at least in my first two times retaking. I felt a lot better this June, though, mainly because I'm already accepted at some schools and it doesn't officially "count" unless I want to sit out and reapply. Anyway, I'm not a good example of how to do the LSAT, since people should be studying a lot more than I did before taking even for their first time.

[afnaidel]

I really dont have anything to prove here. Obvious that trolls would get angry. Who cares whether or not i am smart. Like lol @ ppl trying to put me down. Glad to know you care that much to try to get a quick boost in self esteem under the justification to teach me a lesson. Point is, what do you recommend to an individual who DOES have a high mental capacity but is struggling with the exam? Courtesy isnt given to people who dont show respect. Appreciate responses from people who are trying to help or provide insight.

When I was talking about courtesy, I wasn't just referring to the "piss off" part. Now, using the kind of logic LSAT requires, I'll demonstrate what you have done wrong.

Your post could be summarized as "I believe I'm intelligent, so I should be able to get a good LSAT score. But I don't, so please tell me what I should do."
Let's take a close look at the main argument, "I believe I'm intelligent, so I should be able to get a good LSAT score."

Your unstated assumption in that argument is that "An intelligent person should be able to get a good LSAT score."
You know that we can rewrite A -> B as not B -> not A, right?

So Intelligent -> Good LSAT score can be rewrote as No Good LSAT score -> Not intelligent.
This is where you lacked courtesy from the beginning. You implied that if someone didn't get a good LSAT score, then that person is not intelligent.

For the February LSAT, I only got the 90th percentile score (I re-took the test yesterday and am expecting to get a much better score). Does that mean I'm not intelligent?
Well, I have an I.Q. of 146 and graduated my UG college with two Bachelor degrees and Phi Beta Kappa, which is one of the highest honor you can get, without "putting too much effort." So I don't think anyone can say that I'm not intelligent.

You should have written your original post more carefully so it can't be inferred that not having a good LSAT score means that you're not smart.


And here's the second part. You said that you "Appreciate responses from people who are trying to help or provide insight."
I'm going to demonstrate, again using the LSAT logic, that the responses you label as "trolling" are actually insightful responses.

Let's look at the main argument again: "I believe I'm intelligent, so I should be able to get a good LSAT score."
The reason why "I should be able to get a good LSAT score" is not happening can be characterized mainly in two ways.

First, there is a chance that your premise is wrong. Second, there is a chance that your assumption is wrong.
Those who give you an "insightful comment" about how intelligence does not necessarily correlate with LSAT and that you have to practice more or find a way is showing that your assumption ("An intelligent person should be able to get a good LSAT score.") is not necessarily true, which is the second case.

Those who "troll" that you might not be as intelligent as you think is referring to the first case that your premise ("I believe I am intelligent") is wrong.

So both are valid points that "provide insight."

[hereyago]

A bit of this, a bit of that. Founded a startup, worked for a social network, and of course huffed lots of gasoline. One thing I didn't do was study much for the LSAT. Just assumed I'd do well in October and December. A big Borat *NOT* to that.

But I'm also serious about declining LSAT-abilities over age. When I took it for the first time at 21, I spent $15 on a Kaplan book, got ~175 on my first few PT's, and that was all the studying I evidently needed at the time. Retaking at 27, I PT'ed at only about 170, and somehow my nerves were MUCH worse: I froze a lot more, wasn't able to focus, and slowed down unnecessarily a lot, at least in my first two times retaking. I felt a lot better this June, though, mainly because I'm already accepted at some schools and it doesn't officially "count" unless I want to sit out and reapply. Anyway, I'm not a good example of how to do the LSAT, since people should be studying a lot more than I did before taking even for their first time.

Did you make any good $ during those years?

If you got a 175, which schools are you planning on applying to?

[Glaucon]

I really dont have anything to prove here. Obvious that trolls would get angry. Who cares whether or not i am smart. Like lol @ ppl trying to put me down. Glad to know you care that much to try to get a quick boost in self esteem under the justification to teach me a lesson. Point is, what do you recommend to an individual who DOES have a high mental capacity but is struggling with the exam? Courtesy isnt given to people who dont show respect. Appreciate responses from people who are trying to help or provide insight.

When I was talking about courtesy, I wasn't just referring to the "piss off" part. Now, using the kind of logic LSAT requires, I'll demonstrate what you have done wrong. Your post could be summarized as "I believe I'm intelligent, so I should be able to get a good LSAT score. But I don't, so please tell me what I should do." Let's take a close look at the main argument, "I believe I'm intelligent, so I should be able to get a good LSAT score." Your unstated assumption in that argument is that "An intelligent person should be able to get a good LSAT score." You know that we can rewrite A -> B as not B -> not A, right? So Intelligent -> Good LSAT score can be rewrote as No Good LSAT score -> Not intelligent. This is where you lacked courtesy from the beginning. You implied that if someone didn't get a good LSAT score, then that person is not intelligent. For the February LSAT, I only got the 90th percentile score (I re-took the test yesterday and am expecting to get a much better score). Does that mean I'm not intelligent? Well, I have an I.Q. of 146 and graduated my UG college with two Bachelor degrees and Phi Beta Kappa, which is one of the highest honor you can get, without "putting too much effort." So I don't think anyone can say that I'm not intelligent. You should have written your original post more carefully so it can't be inferred that not having a good LSAT score means that you're not smart. And here's the second part. You said that you "Appreciate responses from people who are trying to help or provide insight." I'm going to demonstrate, again using the LSAT logic, that the responses you label as "trolling" are actually insightful responses. Let's look at the main argument again: "I believe I'm intelligent, so I should be able to get a good LSAT score." The reason why "I should be able to get a good LSAT score" is not happening can be characterized mainly in two ways. First, there is a chance that your premise is wrong. Second, there is a chance that your assumption is wrong. Those who give you an "insightful comment" about how intelligence does not necessarily correlate with LSAT and that you have to practice more or find a way is showing that your assumption ("An intelligent person should be able to get a good LSAT score.") is not necessarily true, which is the second case. Those who "troll" that you might not be as intelligent as you think is referring to the first case that your premise ("I believe I am intelligent") is wrong. So both are valid points that "provide insight."

You've got too much spare time on your hands to post a redundant post like that, especially since it basically summarizes the sentiments of those who responded to his post. lol The kid's not THAT stupid to not have realized what he did wrong.

[Aequitas_]

More or less the plan is to work my ass off and just let the chips fall where they may. But i do think im capable of achieving a high score. Hence why i wrote this. Intelligence + hard work is what i was getting at. So yea, i dont think im special. At least in the sense that i can do well on this without much effort. That much is apparent from my pt scores. We'll see how it goes tho.

[afnaidel]

I really dont have anything to prove here. Obvious that trolls would get angry. Who cares whether or not i am smart. Like lol @ ppl trying to put me down. Glad to know you care that much to try to get a quick boost in self esteem under the justification to teach me a lesson. Point is, what do you recommend to an individual who DOES have a high mental capacity but is struggling with the exam? Courtesy isnt given to people who dont show respect. Appreciate responses from people who are trying to help or provide insight.

When I was talking about courtesy, I wasn't just referring to the "piss off" part. Now, using the kind of logic LSAT requires, I'll demonstrate what you have done wrong. Your post could be summarized as "I believe I'm intelligent, so I should be able to get a good LSAT score. But I don't, so please tell me what I should do." Let's take a close look at the main argument, "I believe I'm intelligent, so I should be able to get a good LSAT score." Your unstated assumption in that argument is that "An intelligent person should be able to get a good LSAT score." You know that we can rewrite A -> B as not B -> not A, right? So Intelligent -> Good LSAT score can be rewrote as No Good LSAT score -> Not intelligent. This is where you lacked courtesy from the beginning. You implied that if someone didn't get a good LSAT score, then that person is not intelligent. For the February LSAT, I only got the 90th percentile score (I re-took the test yesterday and am expecting to get a much better score). Does that mean I'm not intelligent? Well, I have an I.Q. of 146 and graduated my UG college with two Bachelor degrees and Phi Beta Kappa, which is one of the highest honor you can get, without "putting too much effort." So I don't think anyone can say that I'm not intelligent. You should have written your original post more carefully so it can't be inferred that not having a good LSAT score means that you're not smart. And here's the second part. You said that you "Appreciate responses from people who are trying to help or provide insight." I'm going to demonstrate, again using the LSAT logic, that the responses you label as "trolling" are actually insightful responses. Let's look at the main argument again: "I believe I'm intelligent, so I should be able to get a good LSAT score." The reason why "I should be able to get a good LSAT score" is not happening can be characterized mainly in two ways. First, there is a chance that your premise is wrong. Second, there is a chance that your assumption is wrong. Those who give you an "insightful comment" about how intelligence does not necessarily correlate with LSAT and that you have to practice more or find a way is showing that your assumption ("An intelligent person should be able to get a good LSAT score.") is not necessarily true, which is the second case. Those who "troll" that you might not be as intelligent as you think is referring to the first case that your premise ("I believe I am intelligent") is wrong. So both are valid points that "provide insight."

You've got too much spare time on your hands to post a redundant post like that, especially since it basically summarizes the sentiments of those who responded to his post. lol The kid's not THAT stupid to not have realized what he did wrong.

Haha, yes I do have too much spare time and that's precisely the reason why I constructed that long post. I just finished my undergraduate education, took my final LSAT yesterday, and have nothing to do. Constructing a post like that keeps my mind alive, so why not?

[Wily]

A bit of this, a bit of that. Founded a startup, worked for a social network, and of course huffed lots of gasoline. One thing I didn't do was study much for the LSAT. Just assumed I'd do well in October and December. A big Borat *NOT* to that.

But I'm also serious about declining LSAT-abilities over age. When I took it for the first time at 21, I spent $15 on a Kaplan book, got ~175 on my first few PT's, and that was all the studying I evidently needed at the time. Retaking at 27, I PT'ed at only about 170, and somehow my nerves were MUCH worse: I froze a lot more, wasn't able to focus, and slowed down unnecessarily a lot, at least in my first two times retaking. I felt a lot better this June, though, mainly because I'm already accepted at some schools and it doesn't officially "count" unless I want to sit out and reapply. Anyway, I'm not a good example of how to do the LSAT, since people should be studying a lot more than I did before taking even for their first time.

Did you make any good $ during those years?

If you got a 175, which schools are you planning on applying to?

I made some decent money, but only managed to save a moderate amount.
I'd be applying to UVA, GULC, and NU, the only T14's that'd accept my shit-tacular GPA. Preference on GULC.

[JCougar]

"On a separate note, 99th percentile IQ is not sufficient to get 98th percentile LSAT. 99th percentile IQ is about a 167, whereas 98th percentile LSAT is about 170." Ah, my mistake. I skimmed your response and mistook "99th percentile IQ" to have been correlated to an IQ SCORE of 167... Still, MENSA is the top 2% of IQ test-takers, not the top 1%. A LSAT score of 167 is about 95th percentile of LSAT test takers... MENSA assumes that LSAT test takers are more intelligent than the average person and so accepts the top 5% of those in that pool. However, I can't be certain how they came up with the top 5% figure..

Different populations take each test. IQ is administered and indexed to the population in general so that the mean, media, and mode score is 100.

LSAT is by default only administered to college graduates. So if you get a 96th %ile score on the LSAT, it's likely you're somewhat close to the top 1% of the population in IQ.

With that said, the LSAT is not an IQ test. IQ tests measure a far more broad variety of reasoning, and uses far more complex logic on its hardest questions.

[Ohiobumpkin]

I heard somewhere that people with very high and low intelligence tend to do poorly on the LSAT. This is not to say people who are very smart are damned to failing at the LSAT, but rather that there is a relationship present.

[Ohiobumpkin]

What IQ test was it anyway? Whechsler? Binet? Some IQ tests are better than others at testing higher IQs.

[afnaidel]

More or less the plan is to work my ass off and just let the chips fall where they may. But i do think im capable of achieving a high score. Hence why i wrote this. Intelligence + hard work is what i was getting at. So yea, i dont think im special. At least in the sense that i can do well on this without much effort. That much is apparent from my pt scores. We'll see how it goes tho.

Well, good luck. Although I constructed a long criticism to your post, I do understand where you're coming from since I also come from a similar background. With all the advises these people gave you, you should be fine and eventually do well.

[Glaucon]

I contacted some members of High IQ societies and other psychometricians who constructed their own brand of IQ testing... I wired money online to acquire the tests. I've hit between 137 to 145. I'm not sure if these tests were properly normed; I suspect they constructed the % score on the basis of members with known IQs scoring certain %. OR... i was duped out of my money..

[Glaucon]

Btw, nice seeing you again OhioPumpkin... We haven't spoken since after the DEC LSAT... how'd you find this june sitting?

[Aequitas_]

Ya lol. No worries. I wasnt offended in the least bit. I knew coming in how people would react to my pretentious post. Figured with persistence people would realize that im not a fckwit, but rather genuinely concerned.

[Mr. Pancakes]

I heard somewhere that people with very high and low intelligence tend to do poorly on the LSAT. This is not to say people who are very smart are damned to failing at the LSAT, but rather that there is a relationship present.

don't state shit without links.

[dingbat]

I contacted some members of High IQ societies and other psychometricians who constructed their own brand of IQ testing... I wired money online to acquire the tests. I've hit between 137 to 145. I'm not sure if these tests were properly normed; I suspect they constructed the % score on the basis of members with known IQs scoring certain %. OR... i was duped out of my money..

I took an online IQ test and paid $20 for a certificate...
(actually, I ignore those sites. Take the standard IQ tests, not some funky new metric)

[JCougar]

I have no idea why people on here get jealous when people post their IQs -- but posting LSAT or practice test scores is the norm. I would just ignore the trolling if I were you...it's a perfectly legitimate thing to be concerned and frustrated about. No one would ever accuse another of having to "get over him/herself" if they posted that they got a 176 on the LSAT.

There's plenty of reasons why someone with high intelligence could flounder on the LSAT, but the two should be generally correlated. I find it really surprising that you're scoring so low with the IQ you have. One thing could just be nervousness. The LSAT is simple logic with a somewhat strict time constraint. If the time aspect of it is bothering you, it might be making you nervous, and you may not be able to concentrate as well as you need. A lot of very intelligent thinkers get flustered when they are rushed -- like with timed math tests (where you're given a sheet of 50 simple multiplication problems to finish in like 3 minutes). A lot of schools got rid of those tests because the advanced math students never did well on them, and they caused panic, etc.

You don't need to be very intelligent to practice law, however. Neither the LSAT nor law exams are designed to measure cognitive ability. They're more geared toward quick thinking and detail-oriented analysis...but the logic, concepts and cognitive problems aren't very complex at all.

I had a lot of similar problems. My advice is just to not overthink and make the questions harder than they are. I did pretty well on my diagnostic, then I came on here and psyched myself out doing dozens of practice tests, studied for 3 months, etc. and bombed during the real test, and even on my second take. But I did a third retake, and only studied for like 3 days...and almost walked out at the break because I had a terribly difficult experimental section as my first section that I didn't even finish...but I didn't know it was the experimental, so I figured I was completely screwed. I told some people during the break that I was about to just go home because I totally fucked it up, but they convinced me to stay...they were like "it can't hurt." I came back from the break, and pretty much didn't even give a flying fuck. Wasn't trying very hard and just wanted to get it over with. But I aced the last two sections and ended up with a great score. Mostly because I wasn't psyching myself out anymore.

It's nearly worthless to get all those LSAT study books, and even more worthless to do a class -- except for logic games. Those you can and should learn. Get the LG Bible, make sure you know how to do those, and forget about studying for the other sections, because those test raw ability rather than a lernable skill -- and there's a greater risk of psyching yourself out than there is of not learning logical reasoning.

[twenty]

No Kaplan. BP, TM, or Velocity.

The owner of Velocity got like, five 180's or something. //unapologetic trollflame.

[dresden doll]

I don't understand this notion that scoring high on the LSAT must mean you'd do just as well on a different standardized exam (and vice versa). I could never do half as well on any standardized exam out there as I did on the LSAT, which totally catered to my strengths.

[Ohiobumpkin]

I heard somewhere that people with very high and low intelligence tend to do poorly on the LSAT. This is not to say people who are very smart are damned to failing at the LSAT, but rather that there is a relationship present.

don't state shit without links.

lol, ok. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnfJFp1fIMQ . Enjoy. OP should look around 1:32-2:15.

[Ohiobumpkin]

Btw, nice seeing you again OhioPumpkin... We haven't spoken since after the DEC LSAT... how'd you find this june sitting?

I ended up just taking what I got on the Dec. 2011 LSAT (161). I took the LSAT with accommodations, so in the end the score didn't matter as much for me with regards to chances at admission. I got into OSU law school, and I am more than happy with that. I wouldn't have minded attending a t-14, but with my UGGPA and non-computed (into school ABA stats) accommodated score, I had no chance at that level. Beyond this, I wanted to stay in the Ohio market anyway, so OSU (being the top law school in the state) is more than enough for me.

[Glaucon]

That's great news, Ohio! I'm in Canada, took this June sitting hoping to improve on my 163 DEC 11 score. I don't really plan on leaving the country, nor my city of Toronto for that matter

[Glaucon]

Screw it, I don't give a **** about finding out my more exact IQ score; I was somewhat of a fanatic on the whole subject 2 years ago, but now I've got better things to spend my money on And, FYI, the tests I found cost around $60 each

[Crowing]

Screw it, I don't give a **** about finding out my more exact IQ score; I was somewhat of a fanatic on the whole subject 2 years ago, but now I've got better things to spend my money on And, FYI, the tests I found cost around $60 each

QFT

I scored 150 on the one my school gave me to test for the gifted program in 2nd grade and I can only assume it has tanked since then thanks to copious alcohol consumption. Why pay money just to be depressed?

[ben4847]

Well, I'm stupid as a deaf coyote, and I totally rocked the LSAT. So maybe it's an inverse relationship.