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I have an extremely busy semester, and I'm already kind of struggling to keep up with my LSAT prep. I was thinking about buying the Mastery book, but I would rather not. So my question is whether this book is truly that great? I know this book isn't as essential as the Bibles, but would you still consider it tremendously helpful? I mean could I get along without it, or would I likely be risking couple LSAT points? Thanks

I have a white with lime green and blue lettering Kaplan Mastery Homework book - should I use this to supplement my PT's and bibles?

My opinion is that you would do fine with the bibles+ as many PT's as possible. The mastery book takes PT sections and groups them and sorts them by difficulty (and explains them). I can see some benefit to that, but for me it has been more useful to do full PT's.

BrightLine wrote:My opinion is that you would do fine with the bibles+ as many PT's as possible. The mastery book takes PT sections and groups them and sorts them by difficulty (and explains them). I can see some benefit to that, but for me it has been more useful to do full PT's.

So what you're saying is that if you're doing bad with a particular question type, Kaplan Mastery is not going to magically and significantly improve your ability to answer those questions?

People like it b/c it breaks LR questions down by type and b/c the Pithypike guide recommends it. Not b/c of the explanations.

The Pithypike guide was written before the Traciela books came along. Look up the Grouped by Question Type book on Amazon. It performs a similar function.

FreeGuy wrote:People like it b/c it breaks LR questions down by type and b/c the Pithypike guide recommends it. Not b/c of the explanations.

The Pithypike guide was written before the Traciela books came along. Look up the Grouped by Question Type book on Amazon. It performs a similar function.

I see. The main reason I was planning on buying it was not so much because it categorizes questions by type, but rather I thought the explanations would be helpful.

honestabe84 wrote:

BrightLine wrote:My opinion is that you would do fine with the bibles+ as many PT's as possible. The mastery book takes PT sections and groups them and sorts them by difficulty (and explains them). I can see some benefit to that, but for me it has been more useful to do full PT's.

So what you're saying is that if you're doing bad with a particular question type, Kaplan Mastery is not going to magically and significantly improve your ability to answer those questions?

Magically, no. Significantly, maybe. If you have a weakness, doing multiple questions of the same type will quickly expose it. You will begin to notice a pattern of wrong answers, which, with hard work and practice, you can correct.

I bought a used copy mainly for the LR section. I needed questions grouped by type for my study plan, and I appreciate that there are explanations--however halfassed they may be--for each question. I could have gone with Traciela or Cambridge grouped books, but a) the Mastery book was cheaper and b) I don't think the other two have explanations. Even if they suck overall, the Kaplan explanations at least get me thinking in the right direction about why I missed a question, and I then write out a little paragraph about why my answer was wrong and why the right one is right.

http://lsatblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/ka ... -book.html

LSAT Blog did a review of the Kaplan Mastery Book. He didn't seem to think it was THAT great.

That review was off on the actual PT's that the mastery book uses.

However, one thing the LSAT blog does make note of and it's something both kaplan and pscore lack is the difference in categorization between assumption questions and necessary and sufficient assumption questions. That doesn't warrant giving the grouping book +1 in my mind. To each their own. I think Kap Mast is pretty close to the grouping books though, except you get RC and difficulty ratings in kaplan.

honestabe84 wrote:So my question is whether this book is truly that great? I know this book isn't as essential as the Bibles, but would you still consider it tremendously helpful? I mean could I get along without it, or would I likely be risking couple LSAT points? Thanks

Everyone raves about Kaplan Mastery because until recently there were no other books that grouped actual, official LSAT questions by type. I think many will agree that it is very possible for your score to increase by a couple of points as a result of going through Kaplan Mastery (or any other books that group questions by type). Like autarkh said, it won't magically improve your score, but if you put in the effort of learning and drilling a particular question type, you will likely see significant improvements. It's all up to you and how much effort you put in.

typ3 wrote:That review was off on the actual PT's that the mastery book uses.

typ3, out of curiousity, which PrepTests does Kaplan Mastery actually use?

typ3 wrote:I think Kap Mast is pretty close to the grouping books though, except you get RC and difficulty ratings in kaplan.

Our GROUPED by Passage Type book (Reading Comprehension passages sorted by type) will be available on Amazon.com and BN.com at the end of this month.