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So I have 4 months and I plan to dedicate between 500-600 hours to LSAT prep.
My first diagnostic is 152 at the moment, and my highest score was in logic games (21/23 correct)
Weakest was english. I am wondering how I should go about studying, I took the powerscore class but skipped half the classes but I have the books. So in the next two weeks im gonna go through the books/homeworks and master the course. After that do you guys recommend any books/ways to study. I'm thinking of getting the powerscore bibles and also taking a prep test every saturday maybe tuesday sometimes too, I want to get 16-20 practice tests done by october. Also I will be reading alot, Newyork times every morning and about 3 good books this summer to improve reading.

Honestly, my goal is 175.. Idk how realistic this is since I have only 500-600 hrs to practice and I heard most people spend 1 year on the test. But what do you guys think? How should I go about this. Also, Is it wise to retake in december and hold off your application? I have a 3.5 gpa from a top 50 Public School in NYC, amazing W/E and Community Service, and can get 4 amazing letters of Recs. I will work really hard on my Personal Statment as well. I'm shooting for Columbia ED, is it wise to hold off and retake december if i dont hit 175? Thank you guys for the input!!!

Maserati91 wrote:So I have 4 months and I plan to dedicate between 500-600 hours to LSAT prep.
My first diagnostic is 152 at the moment, and my highest score was in logic games (21/23 correct)
Weakest was english. I am wondering how I should go about studying, I took the powerscore class but skipped half the classes but I have the books. So in the next two weeks im gonna go through the books/homeworks and master the course. After that do you guys recommend any books/ways to study. I'm thinking of getting the powerscore bibles and also taking a prep test every saturday maybe tuesday sometimes too, I want to get 16-20 practice tests done by october. Also I will be reading alot, The Economist and Scientific American every morning and about 3 good books this summer to improve reading.

Honestly, my goal is 175.. Idk how realistic this is since I have only 500-600 hrs to practice and I heard most people spend 1 year on the test. But what do you guys think? How should I go about this. Also, Is it wise to retake in december and hold off your application? I have a 3.5 gpa from a top 50 Public School in NYC, amazing W/E and Community Service, and can get 4 amazing letters of Recs. I will work really hard on my Personal Statment as well. I'm shooting for Columbia ED, is it wise to hold off and retake december if i dont hit 175? Thank you guys for the input!!!

Read the bolded instead. Also, your "amazing LORs and community service are most likely just good or stellar as far as boosting your attractiveness to the adcomms. Unless your W/E is post grad, it's not really to kind of W/E that separates an applcant from mediocre to good grades. I would go ahead and ED at Columbia if you hit their median LSAT. Otherwise, it might help to wait a year and retake in June. This is all mere speculation though, because we don't have a preliminary LSAT score to consider

If you haven't seen PithyPike's Study Guide, check it out. It is tailored for someone who has approximately three months to prepare, but you can stretch it out. People have followed his guide with less than three months to study, and have significantly improved their diagnostic score. Although obviously not everyone has the same amount of ability, four months of regular study should be more than enough time for you to improve.

Frankly, and I know I'm basing this observation on your message board grammar, your English may not be where it should be (e.g. "Newyork times"), and that may be causing a low reading comprehension score (I think that's what you meant by "Weakest was english").

If you aren't busy this summer, you should perhaps consider a remedial English course at a local community college. Although stellar English skills may not be vital for the analytical and logical reasoning sections (debatable), they certainly are necessary if you want to do well on the reading comprehension section.


As far as recommended materials, see the PithyPike thread.

You have plenty of time to study, whoever told you that people spend 1 year on the test was exaggerating.

First, your law school questions. Forget about the amazing w/e, community service, letters of rec, and personal statement. That's about 10% of what law schools admissions looks at when they look at a candidate. The other 90% is your gpa and LSAT, about equally important. 3.5 and 175 is realistic for Columbia (check out this site: http://www.lawschoolpredictor.com/?page_id=11). So should you hold off until Dec.? If you think that you're not ready by October and feel that 6 more weeks is going to make a difference then that might be a good reason to hold off. However, although you'll still be able to apply for the fall of the following year, due to rolling admissions you'll be in a more difficult position. If you don't plan on applying for the fall of '12 then that's not an issue.

Ok, now the LSAT. The basic thing that this exam tests is your reasoning ability (verbal and analytical) and to prepare for it you have to train like you would train any other ability - intelligent practice. What that essentially means is figuring out/learning the best approach for each of the different question types, practicing the approaches until they become second nature and you can do the questions with reasonable accuracy, and then doing practice tests under test conditions. There's more to it than that but those are the essentials. And it takes time. 500 - 600 hours should be enough time.

As for preparing for the test, in general the surest way to get results is to get a private tutor (full disclosure: I'm a tutor and have my own tutoring company). The next surest is a prep course, and finally self-study. That's in general. There are plenty of people who did extremely well without tutors or prep courses, it all depends on your study habits and your abilities. I understood your post to imply that you want to study on your own and are looking for some sort of rough guidance. Generally speaking, by the end of these four months you should have gone through every LSAT out there. Use the first 30 tests or so to practice the approaches to the different question types and the last 30 tests to practice taking full exams under test conditions. Check out the sample schedule on my site for more details. The powerscore books and approach are quite good. The only thing that I would add is that I don't particularly like their approach to logic games, I recommend taking a look at a book called "The Big Fat Genius Guide to Logic Games" which has a completely different approach. Although, since you scored quite well on your diag in the games section then that might not be an issue. You said english was your weakest, that's not a section type as far as I know, you may have meant reading comprehension. Powerscore has an ok approach to reading comp, but in addition to directly practicing that section you should also train yourself to read and comprehend dense material. Your plan to read the Times etc is good in spirit but I don't recommend the Times or magazines like that because they're designed to be read for content. The reading comprehension section needs to be read for structure, so you need to read stuff that's more abstract and/or technical. I recommend my students read philosophy textbooks like the Blackwell or Routledge companion guides. The one I recommend the most is the Blackwell Companion to Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory.

Ok, hope that helps.

Thanks so much guys for everything. I looked at that study guide as well, I think I will use it for 3 months, then just do practice tests the other month.

I'm in a similar situation. English is my weakness because I'm not a native English speaker, and my highest score was in LG (-2). I'm gonna start working on LR since it's half of my LSAT score, then I'm gonna work need to really work hard on RC.