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In an effort to post one more "how much can I improve my LSAT score" thread, I was hoping to get some feedback on my unique situation. I am completing my senior year of undergrad right now and will begin a one year Masters program in August. I plan to sit for the LSAT in June '13. I have a very modest starting point of 150 on my diagnostic LSAT I took earlier this week, and I was curious what kind of advice / real-life truth TLSers could offer for improving my score. I'd like to know A) what score increase would be feasible if I devoted the majority of my free time from August til June studying for the LSAT? and B) if I am fairly disciplined when it comes to self-study, can I get away with doing self-study books and avoid shelling out $1500+ for review courses?

Some other information that may be helpful:
Undegrad GPA is a 3.84 (in Accounting, from a state school)
29 on the ACT

Any and all help would be greatly appreciated!

you really could have just searched the forums.. all of this has been answered over and over

if you want to be a lawyer dont get a masters is wont help with anything and is a waste of money or if its free its a waste of time

there is no ceiling on how much any one person can improve on the LSAT (except for 180)... nobody can answer this for you.. study, take practice tests, see what happens on the real thing

i dont see how this is unique at all

A) 1 year hard core studying? 170 is not off the table. ACT score is irrelevent to the LSAT. So is your GPA. I improved my score 18 points from ~150 with a year of studying.

B) Do not take a course. spend a few hundred dollars to get your hands on the PDFs (personal preference) or hard copies of all the previous PTs. Buy the LGB and LRB and Manhatten LG/LR/RC books

Your situation does not appear unique or special.

I agree with the above advice that Masters wont help you be a lawyer and will only put you in the hole further. Go work.

Thanks for the input and advice. Yeah I agree that a Masters is essentially useless and a year of work would serve my law school desires a bit better. But I have only recently decided to seriously pursue law school; and I must complete the MAcc program to be elligible to receive my CPA license. I will finish passing all the parts this summer and must get to 150 hours and one year of work experience before I receive my license (which I want to do before I begin law school). Also, I received a GTA position so it's a "free" degree (along with the CPA) to fall back on in case law school doesn't work out.

I agree with the advice on self studying and plan to go this route once I finish up the CPA this summer. I am optimistic that I can improve but the only hindrance I see is the RC section. I answered nearly all of the questions I got to correctly, but I had to guess on the last passage and a half. From everything I read on TLS it seems RC is the most difficult section to learn- any particular study materials people would recommend for improving one's speed in RC? Or is that a section that I simply should not count on improving very much?

Much thanks.

Masters then law school for CPA.

For RC, it helped me immensely just to become familiar with the passage and question patterns. Kaplan Mastery (which you can get off of Amazon) has a pretty large collection of old RC passages and questions ranked in order of difficulty.

I wouldn't worry about timing just yet. Focus on accuracy, and once you can become accurate, you can become faster.

Striderite3 wrote:Yeah I agree that a Masters is essentially useless and a year of work would serve my law school desires a bit better. But I have only recently decided to seriously pursue law school; and I must complete the MAcc program to be elligible to receive my CPA license.

This is one of the exceptions - if you have your CPA license, that's a huge plus in legal recruiting.

Other than that, everyone else has hit the major points. I've seen students go from the 150s (even a high 140) into the 170s. Make sure you study smart and you'll be fine.