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I want to buy one of these two after hearing good stuff on them. I realize they're the same company, yet Manhattan is the newer book. Is it that much better and different?

Hi paulshortys10,

Great that you've been hearing good things about us!

Just to be clear. It's not that there are two companies operating out there, but rather Atlas LSAT just changed its name to Manhattan LSAT last week! We did this to better fit in with our sister companies Manhattan GMAT and Manhattan GRE. While all three companies are held to the same high standards, Manhattan LSAT is run independently and has developed the most innovative curriculum taught by the most experienced instructors.

We offer strategy guides for each of the sectional formats - LR, LG, and RC. We are constantly revising and updating the strategy guides. So for example the LG Strategy Guide just went through a revision and was released last week.

If you have any questions about the strategy guides or the Manhattan LSAT course options in general, feel free to ask here or pm me if you'd prefer.

Well how much different is the atlas LR versus the Manhattan le

There's no difference. If you have a copy of the Atlas LSAT LR strategy guide, you would not see any differences other than the company name and logo compared to if you were to purchase a copy of the Manhattan LSAT Strategy Guide today.

The strategy guides are frequently being revised and updated though. So that may not be true next year.

Hi paulshortys10,

Great that you've been hearing good things about us!

Just to be clear. It's not that there are two companies operating out there, but rather Atlas LSAT just changed its name to Manhattan LSAT last week! We did this to better fit in with our sister companies Manhattan GMAT and Manhattan GRE. While all three companies are held to the same high standards, Manhattan LSAT is run independently and has developed the most innovative curriculum taught by the most experienced instructors.

We offer strategy guides for each of the sectional formats - LR, LG, and RC. We are constantly revising and updating the strategy guides. So for example the LG Strategy Guide just went through a revision and was released last week.

If you have any questions about the strategy guides or the Manhattan LSAT course options in general, feel free to ask here or pm me if you'd prefer.

I want to buy your books and have them shipped to China if I retake. However, according to Amazon.com, the 2010 edition ships in 2-3 months (to anywhere). I'm not sure if this means it's not available yet, or if it really takes that long.

Which editions should I get for a possible December (or February if my score is too low) retake?

By the way, "Manhattan LSAT" is a much better name than "Atlas." Just the name makes it sound like a more reputable company, maybe because I liked "Manhattan Review" GMAT and interned at the "Manhattan Institute" one summer in UG.

"Atlas" reminds me too much of "Atlas Shrugged," a book I really disliked reading in UG.

niederbomb wrote:

Hi paulshortys10,

Great that you've been hearing good things about us!

Just to be clear. It's not that there are two companies operating out there, but rather Atlas LSAT just changed its name to Manhattan LSAT last week! We did this to better fit in with our sister companies Manhattan GMAT and Manhattan GRE. While all three companies are held to the same high standards, Manhattan LSAT is run independently and has developed the most innovative curriculum taught by the most experienced instructors.

We offer strategy guides for each of the sectional formats - LR, LG, and RC. We are constantly revising and updating the strategy guides. So for example the LG Strategy Guide just went through a revision and was released last week.

If you have any questions about the strategy guides or the Manhattan LSAT course options in general, feel free to ask here or pm me if you'd prefer.

I want to buy your books and have them shipped to China if I retake. However, according to Amazon.com, the 2010 edition ships in 2-3 months (to anywhere). I'm not sure if this means it's not available yet, or if it really takes that long.

Which editions should I get for a possible December (or February if my score is too low) retake?

By the way, "Manhattan LSAT" is a much better name than "Atlas." Just the name makes it sound like a more reputable company, maybe because I liked "Manhattan Review" GMAT and interned at the "Manhattan Institute" one summer in UG.

"Atlas" reminds me too much of "Atlas Shrugged," a book I really disliked reading in UG.

I also want to know this.

I already have Atlas LR book so I am only looking into LG and RC. (btw, I am glad there are not that much change in LR book from the newer version so that I don't have to buy the same book again). If there are major changes in Manhattan LG/RC books from the Atlas LG/RC books, I definitely want to buy the newer versions but I cannot wait until March 2011.

Matt's right - there's no difference in the LR and RC. We did bulk up one chapter of the LG a bit (on binary grouping we added some extra drill and tweaked the angle of the approach a bit). Definitely not worth replacing an Atlas book with a Manhattan LSAT book, but if you have the choice right now, you might as well get the Manhattan LSAT book off our site. They'll be available through Amazon in a few months.

And niederbomb, I'm glad the new name works for you and I apologize for any Rand flashbacks the old name might have provoked. I just heard a philosopher name that book as encompassing one of 3 or 4 major outlook on the world that are part of our culture. My goodness.

Personally, I miss having a name that is an almost anagram for "LSAT", but otherwise I'm psyched for the change.

Why does the Atlas/Manhattan logical reasoning book not distinguish sufficient assumption questions from necessary assumption questions?

We dig deeply into that in our classes, but not the books. Frankly, we decided about 6 months ago that we were not happy with the disconnect, so the next edition will have a much more involved discussion of the distinction (coming out in a few months), but still preserving our focus on approaching the test more intuitively.

Kurst wrote:Why does the Atlas/Manhattan logical reasoning book not distinguish sufficient assumption questions from necessary assumption questions?

Woha, this is a huge oversight. Assumption questions constitute the bulk of the LR section. I feel that such a distinction is quite basic. I'm sad that they havent put this in their books yet.

AverageTutoring wrote:

Kurst wrote:Why does the Atlas/Manhattan logical reasoning book not distinguish sufficient assumption questions from necessary assumption questions?

Woha, this is a huge oversight. Assumption questions constitute the bulk of the LR section. I feel that such a distinction is quite basic. I'm sad that they havent put this in their books yet.

Read the post above you. They just mentioned they're rewriting their book. However, they do go over this in Lesson 3 or 4 for a lengthy amount of time.

This isn't a distinction that the LRB makes either, so it's not as though its something to throw the book out for not including. I do think the Atlas LG book beats out the hallowed PS LGB. (However they managed to do it, they did)

Glad the new edition will cover it, Noah.

Here's some info to help folks tell apart Necessary Assumption questions from Sufficient Assumption questions.

Here something I wrote recently about Sufficient Assumption questions: http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 5#p3473123

Yeah, the distinction is good to know, and it's a good way for students to refine their thinking. The interesting thing is that, at least from our research, it seems that people who are scoring in the top percentiles don't bother much with the distinction during the exam. There are two places it comes into play: when the question asks for a necc. assumption and there's a sufficient answer, and recognizing that necc. assumptions can feel ridiculous (when they eliminate an alternative, for example).

One thing we're trying to do is stay away from over-dichotomizing the LSAT to infinite pieces and mislead students into thinking they can memorize their way to a top score. But, clearly we are OK with teaching the necc. and suff. distinction, and will discuss it in future LR editions. What's interesting to me as a teacher (and book editor) is how to teach issues like this without having students obsess about them and sacrifice their focus on larger issues. It's the sort of thing that I'm-going-to-crack-the-lsat-once-I-just-find-the-right-diagram students get lost in.

typ3 wrote:

AverageTutoring wrote:

Kurst wrote:Why does the Atlas/Manhattan logical reasoning book not distinguish sufficient assumption questions from necessary assumption questions?

Woha, this is a huge oversight. Assumption questions constitute the bulk of the LR section. I feel that such a distinction is quite basic. I'm sad that they havent put this in their books yet.

Read the post above you. They just mentioned they're rewriting their book. However, they do go over this in Lesson 3 or 4 for a lengthy amount of time.

This isn't a distinction that the LRB makes either, so it's not as though its something to throw the book out for not including. I do think the Atlas LG book beats out the hallowed PS LGB. (However they managed to do it, they did)

I did read the post above mine. Note what I said: "havent included this in their books yet" Any LR book worth its salt should make this distinction. The LRB does distinguish between the two though. I'm looking at the pages right now

Manhattan LSAT Noah wrote:Yeah, the distinction is good to know, and it's a good way for students to refine their thinking. The interesting thing is that, at least from our research, it seems that people who are scoring in the top percentiles don't bother much with the distinction during the exam. There are two places it comes into play: when the question asks for a necc. assumption and there's a sufficient answer, and recognizing that necc. assumptions can feel ridiculous (when they eliminate an alternative, for example).

One thing we're trying to do is stay away from over-dichotomizing the LSAT to infinite pieces and mislead students into thinking they can memorize their way to a top score. But, clearly we are OK with teaching the necc. and suff. distinction, and will discuss it in future LR editions. What's interesting to me as a teacher (and book editor) is how to teach issues like this without having students obsess about them and sacrifice their focus on larger issues. It's the sort of thing that I'm-going-to-crack-the-lsat-once-I-just-find-the-right-diagram students get lost in.

Of course top scorers don't work their way through each question thinking "okay...this is a justify question, oh this is a paradox question, this is a...etc" they just chug along like nothings wrong. That said distinguishing between the two during prep can be a fundamental stepping stone in getting to the point where you don’t need to think about it.

It follows the same principle as argument diffusion. On the test we aren’t going to diffuse each argument line by line, writing how everything relates to the argument as a whole. But we still practice and teach this technique when preparing for the LSAT because the hope is, come game day it will have been engrained so much into your head that it is second nature. Same thing for differentiating between sufficient/necessary assumption questions.

BTW, I was a fan of the name Atlas...I thought it was genius. I am sad to see it go