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I have posted on TLS a number of times in order to try and vent my frustrations with the LSAT, and so I posed a question in the past asking what makes people good at standardized testing. I took a long break from the LSAT, but I am happy to say I have made the first noticeable improvements since I my first month of studying (I am nine months in).

I started working with a company that helps people learn basic cognitive skills, and I have been reading for a long time about this topic, and although I am not a psychologist, or a neurologist, my experiences has lead me to believe that there is a way to make huge leaps on this exam.

For those people that are struggling I hope this can be of some assistance. Most people have heard that typical IQ tests measure several different types of intelligence. I have heard a few people allude to the fact the LSAT tests verbal intelligence and processing speed.

I was someone who did quite well on a traditional IQ test and was curious why I had a hell of time trying to get in the high 150's or above on the LSAT. The one area where I perform average to below average in is processing speed, furthermore I am/was bad at what some psychologists call executive processing speed. This is the ability to look at a list of data and quickly extract what is important. When look at this from an every day perspective, I am the type of person that can't decided what to take with me on vacation, so I pack several bags. I over think everything.

Typically when studying for the LSAT, I was advised to learn how to do it right first and then work on speed. I believe it is the exact opposite for many people. My improvements started coming when I used distraction, and began to work on the LSAT with extreme speed. I tried to finish LR 10 questions with distraction at 9 minutes. At first this was completely overwhelming, but it got easier with time.

In my opinion, the LSAT focuses on four of the seven areas typically tested when assessing IQ. These are in order of importance (Processing speed, Logic and Reasoning, Linguistic/verbal intelligence, and general knowledge)

Most people who I know have taken the LSAT are killed by the rapidity that is required. For some a lot of people on TLS this is not a problem, and again I am not an expert, but figuring this out has helped me make gains again, and I appreciate the insight from this bored, so hopefully this helps anyone having trouble.

Everyone is different. I'm taking an approach more like you are than the standard TLS line. While others say, as you said, that you should get accuracy as close to 100% as you can first and then work on speed, I prefer to always work under the time constraints and improve my accuracy from there.

2014 wrote:Everyone is different. I'm taking an approach more like you are than the standard TLS line. While others say, as you said, that you should get accuracy as close to 100% as you can first and then work on speed, I prefer to always work under the time constraints and improve my accuracy from there.

They only say that thing about accuracy for LG.

LR it differs between people. RC no one practices for accuracy.

2014 wrote:Everyone is different. I'm taking an approach more like you are than the standard TLS line. While others say, as you said, that you should get accuracy as close to 100% as you can first and then work on speed, I prefer to always work under the time constraints and improve my accuracy from there.

Yeah everyone has cognitive strengths and weaknesses, some people are excellent readers, but suck at math/logic, they will have other needs. However, the idea that processing speed is the real culprit is not mentioned as often on this site. The experts seem to believe that processing speed is a fairly difficult thing to learn, but for the people that are beating themselves up over learning lsat material, they may be approaching this problem the wrong way. Thanks for the reply!

I think the processing speed may have some merit to it. However I think it would be restricted to reading comprehension, and perhaps logic games as it is abstract. I do not think processing speed Is as much as a critical factor for lr as one can learn the question types, answers given. It's hard to explain but I can only say with alot of practice you start seeing the nuances in the test. I went from 35 min sections to having at least 5 minutes after a section. Anyways whatever the case good luck and keep at it!