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im wondering if i should take a kaplan course, either online or classroom (which is better?) or save my parents some money and me the trouble of having to drive out to class in the evening three times a week by doing this regimen for the december exam. i have put in a decent, albeit unstructured, amount of work (mostly just PTs with an avg in the 160s). i kind of bombed the oct exam for some unbeknownst reason. does this seem suitable prep for the dec exam:
this would be on rotation:
Day 1-PT (with experimental section)
Day 2-review pt/ look at areas missed/ review sections for missed concepts/ do problem sets in issue areas
Day 3-review ps LG/ work on 33 min LG sections/ LG drills
Day 4-review ps LR/ work on 33 min LR sections/ LR problem sets
Day 5-review ps RC bible. work on LG drills, LR problems.
and start it back up again.

thoughts? suggestions? what worked for you?

Kaplan is worthless. If you're going to go the prep course route, go with Powerscore, Testmasters, or Manhattan LSAT.

If you're not going the prep course route, have a look at pithypike's prep guide (it's very solid) http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... =6&t=41657

If you're concerned about money and know that you can be diligent about studying without the course, then self-study is great and can be extremely effective. But courses provide structure that is very helpful to some students.

cortnf wrote:Kaplan is worthless. If you're going to go the prep course route, go with Powerscore, Testmasters, or Manhattan LSAT.

If you're not going the prep course route, have a look at pithypike's prep guide (it's very solid) http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... =6&t=41657

If you're concerned about money and know that you can be diligent about studying without the course, then self-study is great and can be extremely effective. But courses provide structure that is very helpful to some students.

people have told me that which is why im somewhat apprehensive about following my rents advice and doing it. sorry i should have provided more background info. i edited the original post. basically i have read all the ps bibles and have been mostly doing PTs prior to oct exam. idk what happened but i bommbbbeedd the oct exam. dec is my last chance to apply for law schools for this year so i want to make it count by doing well and improving my pt avg. i dk if i have time to do that guys prep given im still in school, i work, and i have two months.

cortnf wrote:Kaplan is worthless.

Disagree... it helped me tons.

cortnf wrote:Kaplan is worthless.

I haven't taken the course, but I did buy the the mastery book online. It was full of typos and errors...make your own judgment.

shanemahsa wrote:

cortnf wrote:Kaplan is worthless.

Disagree... it helped me tons.

I took PowerScore, went up 15 points from diag to actual, ended up at 172.

My roommate took Kaplan, is languishing in the 150s.

Take that for what it is.

shanemahsa wrote:

cortnf wrote:Kaplan is worthless.

Disagree... it helped me tons.

In my opinion Kaplan is useless, the book at least, don't know about the course. The Oxford course is great for LR and good for LG, but not RC.

I took the course and I must say you can learn everything Kaplan teaches from the PowerScore bibles. I basically use my Kaplan books just for practice and PTs but I derive most of my strategies from the bibles. However, I must say that it doesn't hurt to know both strategies and just see which one you would prefer since everyone is different. But of course, $1200 vs. $50 is something to consider...

I took a Kaplan classroom and Online course, (clasroom course was free b/c of high score guarantee) but the online was awful for me, it was hard to focus, there was always freezing and delays w/ audio and video... I would for sure recommend a classroom course, the methods they taught actually work if you honestly put the effort (3-4 hours of studying)... For LG&LR they helped me a lot... My instructor was awesome, he scored a 180 on his LSAT, and knew what he was talking about.

IMHO, any course is good, the thing is YOU have to put the time and effort, just like anything else you want to be good at, it all requires practice, practice, practice...

shanemahsa wrote:

cortnf wrote:Kaplan is worthless.

Disagree... it helped me tons.

+1

But I really think your experience depends on the instructor.

I saw that you said you read the bibles. This might be a problem. You should DO the bibles at different levels on a couple different passes.

Also I used Kaplan books my first go through and powers ore this time. 157 to 172。

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calilaw wrote:

shanemahsa wrote:

cortnf wrote:Kaplan is worthless.

Disagree... it helped me tons.

+1

But I really think your experience depends on the instructor.

Totes

cortnf wrote:

shanemahsa wrote:

cortnf wrote:Kaplan is worthless.

Disagree... it helped me tons.

I took PowerScore, went up 15 points from diag to actual, ended up at 172.

My roommate took Kaplan, is languishing in the 150s.

Take that for what it is.

I took Kaplan -- 158->176

Take that for what it is. But seriously, I agree with the above poster about it depending on the instructor. However, I'd add that it is also the case with other courses.

Took 3 different courses, one of which was Kaplan. Kaplan was by far the worst.

1. Turn away from Kaplan and run
2. Follow Pithypike's guide
3. ???
4. Profit

NU_Jet55 wrote:Took 3 different courses, one of which was Kaplan. Kaplan was by far the worst.

1. Turn away from Kaplan and run
2. Follow Pithypike's guide
3. ???
4. Profit

1)Student A took 3 different prep courses for his LSAT. Of those three, he has determined Kaplan to be the worst. He has concluded that everyone should turn and run from Kaplan because it will be terrible for them as well.

Find the flaw in his reasoning:

A) He is poorly endowed.
B) His experience is not representative of all potential students.
C) Gobble Gobble- Student A is a turkey.
D) Student A dropped the soap.


Use Pithypike's guide to solve that one

NU_Jet55 wrote:Took 3 different courses, one of which was Kaplan. Kaplan was by far the worst.

1. Turn away from Kaplan and run
2. Follow Pithypike's guide
3. ???
4. Profit

Hahahaha there's no arguing with that.

I love 0L's.

NU_Jet55 wrote:I love 0L's.

We love you too!!!

cortnf wrote:

NU_Jet55 wrote:I love 0L's.

We love you too!!!

Not all of us.

I've heard the Kaplan courses are better than the books, but I can't imagine how they could be worse. The books are awful. They are filled with typos and misguided approaches. The explanations for the real LSAT preptests are completely bogus. Like, they had an answer key and the explanations are just hammered in to fit that, but you can tell by their explanations that, for the truly difficult questions, their explanations are just pure BS, they don't understand why the right answer is right, and if they took the test they'd have gotten it wrong themselves. This doesn't stop them from writing with an absurdly pretentious tone though.

My last PT was 56 and I got a 178. For the questions that I got wrong, I consulted the Kaplan materials, and they just gave predictably lame and pretentious explanations. Like every single one is written in a way like "... so as you can clearly see, A is the only possible correct answer." The only thing they left out is "...you fucking idiot," and they also left out an explanation that was actually insightful as well. There isn't any evidence that they truly understand the most difficult questions.

Look, if you just want to scrape by and make a few minor improvements, then maybe Kaplan will help. The one girl I knew that took the course had a cold diagnostic of 147, claims she took 40 full prep-tests, and on test day got a 155. Which she was perfectly OK with. If you are serious about this, tell your parents to shut the fuck up and leave you alone. Go to the library and don't come out until you know what the fuck you are doing on these tests. Self study, bring a notebook and write a paragraph on the real reason you got every single question wrong. Explore your weaknesses. If you're serious, it will take commitment, if you just want a band-aid, then Kaplan is great for you.

It depends on the instructor and location. Some Kaplan centers suck, others are amazing. It also depends on the individual I would think, as their study time and their own efforts really reflect the results they will get.

.

SchopenhauerFTW wrote:

savagedm wrote:It depends on the instructor and location. Some Kaplan centers suck, others are amazing. It also depends on the individual I would think, as their study time and their own efforts really reflect the results they will get.

Even with a great instructor and a lot of independent study, I was still doing poorly for a long time. I did not drastically improve until I started checking out multiple methods. Personally, I think the Kaplan method on its own is a bit weak.

It really depends on the topic I feel. Logic games, some of the methods are just plain unnecessary, others work really well. It also depends on how you innately approach problems/organize information in your mind. This is obviously something you cannot change and is subjective to every person, but the fact that this is a consideration means that not everyone will do well from Kaplan and they unfortunately had a fail program for too many years to pull off a complete 180 with their new approaches.

i took kaplan extreme and got a 168 after a 158 diagnostic. i feel like it helped, esp. because i was PTing higher and really messed up on games on test day, got -4 on LG when i was consistently getting -0.