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So, I worked through the Manhattan LSAT RC book (2010 edition) and redid 6 PT's 44-49 and ended up with -5 RC between all of them doing 30-minute sections (proctored by a computer program that says "Put your pencils down, bitches!" after 30 minutes).

I was pretty happy, until I did PT 50 for the first time today and went -6 RC.

So, I'm wondering why you guys only use PT's from the early 2000s in your RC book because I don't think it focuses enough on the analogy and inference questions that appear on recent exams. I think a book using Willa Cather, Riddled Basins, Fractals, and Talk Story would be most helpful.

Do your courses focus more on recent materials?

I got another question for the Manhattan
are you guys and the altas merged?
when will you 2011 edition guide book come out

niederbomb wrote:So, I worked through the Manhattan LSAT RC book (2010 edition) and redid 6 PT's 44-49 and ended up with -5 RC between all of them doing 30-minute sections (proctored by a computer program that says "Put your pencils down, bitches!" after 30 minutes).

I was pretty happy, until I did PT 50 for the first time today and went -6 RC.

So, I'm wondering why you guys only use PT's from the early 2000s in your RC book because I don't think it focuses enough on the analogy and inference questions that appear on recent exams. I think a book using Willa Cather, Riddled Basins, Fractals, and Talk Story would be most helpful.

Do your courses focus more on recent materials?

I'd only like to suggest that if you really want to hear back from them, you could post your question on their forum http://www.manhattanlsat.com/question-explanations.cfm (The forum is focused on answers to lsat questions, but there are also forums about their curriculum, books, study tips etc. Bottom left corner of the page.) In my experience they reply quite quickly. Good luck.

niederbomb wrote:So, I worked through the Manhattan LSAT RC book (2010 edition) and redid 6 PT's 44-49 and ended up with -5 RC between all of them doing 30-minute sections (proctored by a computer program that says "Put your pencils down, bitches!" after 30 minutes).

I was pretty happy, until I did PT 50 for the first time today and went -6 RC.

So, I'm wondering why you guys only use PT's from the early 2000s in your RC book because I don't think it focuses enough on the analogy and inference questions that appear on recent exams. I think a book using Willa Cather, Riddled Basins, Fractals, and Talk Story would be most helpful.

Do your courses focus more on recent materials?

Have you considered that you did well on 44-49 because you admittedly REDID them and were familiar with the material?

The reading sections now are incredibly similar to the sections all the way back to PT 20, which is as far as I've gone at least, with the exception of the comparative passage which is usually easier. Those difficult passages you mentioned are the exception, not the rule.

2014 wrote:

Have you considered that you did well on 44-49 because you admittedly REDID them and were familiar with the material?

The reading sections now are incredibly similar to the sections all the way back to PT 20, which is as far as I've gone at least, with the exception of the comparative passage which is usually easier. Those difficult passages you mentioned are the exception, not the rule.

On some of those tests, I only did the logic games previously, not the RC, and on the ones I did do before, I did at least 1 month ago. Either way, it made little difference.

I really think the passages MLSAT picks for the guide are too easy compared to what tends to appear on the actual LSAT these days, and I'm wondering if their course materials deal with more recent passages.

Thanks for the questions. While it's nice to have some chatter about us here, as someone mentioned above, we do have a public forum where students and random visitors ask our teachers questions - and we try to respond quickly and thoroughly. But, to tie up this thread:

As for the Atlas - Manhattan LSAT issue, we changed our name right after the October LSAT. Atlas was an outgrowth of Manhattan GMAT, and once Manhattan GRE was started, it seemed silly to have one branch of the company have a different name. It seemed to indicate some lack of love in the family -- it was confusing, especially since we have a lot of JD/MBA students who want help with both the GMAT and LSAT.

Anywho, niederbomb, thanks for your RC question and feedback. We do pay close attention to trends (for example, our LG book now includes examples of rule equivalency questions), but I haven't noticed any severe RC shift that requires a new approach. I'm sure there are other LSAT geeks who will disagree (perhaps even some of my colleagues). However, our books focus quite a bit on how to read for the LSAT, the idea being that a strong read makes the questions easy to attack, no matter what curves are thrown. That said, there are some changes that are worth noting, the obvious one being the comparative passages and the questions that those tend to use (and the new wrong answer choice characteristics that correspond to those).

To more specifically answer your question, our course doesn't use any of the passages used in our RC book, and we have some lessons that use, what we consider, to be pretty tough passages (the genentically-modified bacteria for agriculture passage, for example - I can't recall the PT # off the top of my head). However, we try to not "corrupt" too many recent exams, as we want our students to use those for practice.

Now that I've danced around this question for a few paragraphs, we'll definitely look at what you're talking about and see whether we need to tweak things for the next edition of the RC book.

A last minute plug: I'm teaching a free live online workshop this evening that reviews the Oct. LSAT, and my colleague will be reviewing the RC comp. passage. If anyone is interested, they can pm me for the link to sign up.

- Noah