Powerscore Prep class starts tomorrow Forum

[Andrew the Wolverine]

I am retaking the LSAT in February, but this time I am taking the full length Powerscore prep class. It starts tomorrow. Anybody else taking this class? I was thinking a thread to track people's progress on the practice tests and how the classes are going would be nice.

What is your diagnostic score? What do you hope to achieve? Are the classes helping? Other thoughts on the class would be good, also.

[birdmann783]

it might be tough to squeeze everything in one month ...have seen the lsat before.....

im in testmasters right now, and ive been in the class for about a month now....

good luck

[3ThrowAway99]

...

[granger]

I am retaking the LSAT in February, but this time I am taking the full length Powerscore prep class. It starts tomorrow. Anybody else taking this class? I was thinking a thread to track people's progress on the practice tests and how the classes are going would be nice.

What is your diagnostic score? What do you hope to achieve? Are the classes helping? Other thoughts on the class would be good, also.

Does the class end prior to the Feb. test? Or are you taking the Feb. test while the class is still in progress?

[Andrew the Wolverine]

I am retaking the LSAT in February, but this time I am taking the full length Powerscore prep class. It starts tomorrow. Anybody else taking this class? I was thinking a thread to track people's progress on the practice tests and how the classes are going would be nice.

What is your diagnostic score? What do you hope to achieve? Are the classes helping? Other thoughts on the class would be good, also.

Does the class end prior to the Feb. test? Or are you taking the Feb. test while the class is still in progress?

The class ends a few days before the February test.

[Andrew the Wolverine]

If you are looking strictly for responses on this thread from people who are currently enrolled, then please disregard my following post. However, I thought that my experience may offer something useful to people currently signed up for the course or considering taking it, so here it is:

I took the full PowerScore course prior to the Dec. 2009 LSAT. I thought that taking the course would boost my score, but now I'm not sure that was the case. I had already studied a lot, so I think that for someone who hadn't done as much 'self-study' prior to the course it may have been more useful. My first in-class diagnostic yielded a score of 170. That was actually a real set-up to disappointment, as I scored much lower on the next three (low 160s). The 170 was the highest I had scored on a practice under strict timed conditions (though I had scored a 171 with relaxed timing once before, and scored a 172 once or twice at home after the diagnostic, though I'm not sure that my games timing was strict on these, and the tests were broken up by section).

The first in-class score really got my hopes up. I reasoned that if at the start of an intensive prep I scored a 170, I should certainly be able to score higher than that on the actual LSAT (and at least at first, the teacher helped encourage this notion). Unfortunately, I found out that it doesn't necessarily work that way. For someone coming into the course who has not studied before, I think that a 170 (or even 165) on the first diagnostic would be a very, very different story, and I imagine that such a person should be able to easily score in the 170s on the actual test (I started practicing a very long time ago and scored mid- to high- 150s on my first scored practices, and I don't think I even timed the games section).

I did attend a majority of the classes and took all the in-class practice tests, but I stopped attending some classes just to focus on personalized study. Some of the PowerScore methods actually seemed like a distraction to me (especially with the LR sections, where I was already fairly strong by using intuitive methods). The teacher did go out of her way to be helpful in a number of ways, and I do think I gained from the class (at least in terms of networking and in taking proctored 5-section practice tests). You may find yourself in a very different position with the class though, and I certainly don't mean to discourage you. If I had to do it again, I probably would have just stuck to intensive self-study that focused on strengthening my weaknesses (primarily games) by continuing to do many actual test sections and then reviewing what I got wrong. The Powerscore course does allow for and encourage this type of review though.

I think if I hadn't taken the course I would have always wondered if it would have improved my score, so for that reason alone it may have been worth taking it. It is also possible that I wouldn't have hit 166 on the actual test if I didn't take the course, so my critique here is hypothetical in nature. All of this is not to say that I was really disappointed with my Dec. 2009 score of 166 (though I was hoping for a 170+); I'm just not sure that the course helped me to score higher (or perhaps as high) than I would have if I hadn't taken the course and focused only on 'self-study'.

Yeah I see what you're saying. This is actually my third LSAT, and I self-studied the first two times and didn't improve much at all for the second test. This will be my last LSAT try, and I figured that taking a class couldn't hurt. If I don't get a significant jump in score, then it's no big deal. I have already been admitted to a pretty good school, but I am shooting a little bit higher hopefully with a boost in score.

[3ThrowAway99]

Good luck- the course may really help in your case. I definitely don't mean to be negative, I just think that getting high expectations can lead to discouragement- in your case it sounds like you already have a realistic contingency plan relating to your hopes and expectations though.

(One of the things that PowerScore really stresses is positive thinking. While I did find the advice about test mentality given in the virtual seminars online helpful, I think it is ironic that they use anecdotal evidence about test mentality and scores to suggest that the positive mentality caused the higher score or the poor attitude led to the lower score, when there could be a non-causal correlation between these factors. This mistaking a correlation for a causal relationship is the very type of logical error that certain LR questions prey on. Nevertheless, there does appear to be a correlation between mental attitude and performance which may in fact be at least partially causal in nature. Dave Killoran's discussion of the importance of mental attitude in the online seminars was, at the very least, encouraging to me).

[Close Diamond]

I've been studying on my own since September and am also starting a PowerScore course tomorrow for the February test. I'm not sure if it's going to be a big boost for me, but at the least it'll be very useful to have proctored tests administered in a classroom environment. I also appreciate the PS methods for both LR and LG and could certainly use the extra help on RC.

I'm excited and will check back here to see how it's going for everyone else.

[Andrew the Wolverine]

My diagnostic score and percentile rank were precisely the same as when I took the LSAT in September. I suppose this is good, since I haven't studied since then and I wasn't 100% interested in the exam I took today anyway.

[Close Diamond]

Test 1 (53)

Bombed RC, big time. You know that thing you get where you can't remember what you just read? That. It was painful to witness.

165. Perhaps this is my most honest score yet since it included the experimental section, was proctored by another person, and was done surrounded by other people's noises.

Anyone else?