LSAT course & classes Forum

[Shea]

Hey guys! I'm new to this forum so sorry I I post in the wrong place or anything But I wold like some opinions - I'm taking blueprint LSAT prep this summer & taking the Sept LSAT. How many classes is the max I should take with the LSAT prep course? Over the summer portion I'm only taking OChem 2, but in the fall I'm taking around 18-19 hours of upper div bio & chem courses + labs. But I could push some back if need be. How many hours do you guys normally take while taking an LSAT course? Thanks!!

[1Lin2015]

Depends entirely on your goal and how committed you are to that goal.

[TLSanders]

What's the timeline in terms of duration of your LSAT class, when your fall classes start and how close to your LSAT test date you'll be at that point?

If the overlap is only a couple of weeks, chances are that you'll have done the largest part of the work before your fall semester starts and just be fine-tuning and keeping skills fresh by the time your schedule becomes an issue.

[Jeffort]

OChem and upper division biochem classes are very demanding and challenging, making them difficult frequently confusing subjects that typically require a lot more study time for most people to really understand well enough to get good grades in those classes. As you're probably already or should be aware, those classes are frequently GPA killers for many people due to the complexity of the subjects and huge amount of HW/study time required to learn the stuff well enough to get good grades compared to classes for most other majors/subjects.

Anyway, with that in mind, if your 18-19 hour upper division schedule of classes begins a few weeks before the September LSAT, it could create a problem if you aren't already prepped enough and already hitting or really close to hitting your target score on properly timed fresh PTs by then since you won't have much time for LSAT prep once those classes begin without sacrificing your grades in those classes. Keeping up with those upper division classes in order to ensure getting good grades will probably entail a lot of outside of class HW time between classes right from the start, meaning they'll likely be demanding from day one in a way that makes it really really hard to catch up and get good grades if you slack on the HW for those classes the first few weeks of the semester to prioritize using your time for final stage of LSAT prep right up to test day.

How long before the September LSAT do the 18-19 hours upper div classes begin? What LSAT score are you shooting for? Have you done any LSAT prep yet or taken a PT to get an idea of your current general score range? or are you waiting for the BP class to start to begin prepping? Will the BP class schedule overlap much with your UG classes? Will the BP class still be going when your upper division fall classes start? Depending on the answers to those questions, you very well could be putting yourself into a situation with more things you need to study than you have time to devote to in order to ensure best grades and best LSAT score.

Have you talked to other students at your school to get an idea of the workload demands, pace and difficulty of those upper div classes to get an idea of how much HW it takes to keep up with them? You should look into that to figure out how much time keeping up with those classes to ensure good grades will impact/lower how much time you'll have available for LSAT prep leading up to the September test.

It's never a good idea to put yourself in a situation where you have to sacrifice study time for either LSAT or UG grades in order to favor one over the other to stick to an artificially imposed timeline you want everything to happen and be done within. You should never risk/sacrifice UG GPA to prep for the LSAT and you should never sacrifice UG study time needed to ensure top grade/sacrifice GPA points to rush into taking a particular LSAT administration that fits your desired time line to apply early or for whatever other reasons you want to get the LSAT over with on a certain administration date rather than a later one when you could be better prepped.

In short, it sounds like you might be putting yourself into a schedule situation where due to limited hours per day to devote to several competing academic demands, it may not be humanly possible for you to study enough for both to fully maximize your GPA and achieve your highest potential LSAT score by September due to just not having enough study time to master everything with all the subjects/stuff to achieve best possible results with both within that limited timeline. Rate of LSAT improvement varies a lot from person to person and some people need to put in a lot more prep time over much longer time frames than others to achieve target score.

If you haven't started doing any LSAT prep yet or tried taking a PT to really experience the difficulty of the test and enormous challenges involved in achieving a high score, you probably don't yet have a good understanding of how much time and work it takes to significantly improve a score and achieve something in the 160s or how especially difficult it is to break 170. Most people highly underestimate the LSAT and what it really takes to end up achieving a high score on test day before getting into the thick of actively prepping.

Whatever you do, don't let your grades/GPA slide for any reason! You get three shots at the LSAT, but no mulligans with your GPA. If maintaining high GPA by making sure you get As in those upper div classes means altering your timeline plan and taking the LSAT later, so be it. Cutting down your fall class schedule is also an option.

You can try to juggle both with your planned classes, but if you notice that trying to fit in LSAT prep time is hurting you in your UG classes in ways that could lead to lower grades than you would get with full commitment to the classes, maintaining GPA/top grades should take priority, you should push back LSAT test date to a later administration when you'll have enough time to be fully prepared, prioritize putting in enough HW time for to insure top grades in your classes and only use free time not needed for class HW to work on LSAT prep.

If you're just going for a mediocre LSAT score good enough to get into a lower tier/low-mid ranked LS rather than T1, then this stuff doesn't matter nearly as much, especially if you are the type that can cram and pull out reasonable/not totally crappy grades/test scores under pressure with short blasts of cramming due to being a fast learner with discipline to really buckle down, cut out all social life/distractions to live a life of nothing but classes and HW 24/7 for several months straight without a social life/time wasted 'having a life' and friends and such. But, that's not a formula for best possible results or a balanced healthy method/lifestyle.

Anyway, if your current UG demands are going to be really time consuming, the LSAT can wait. Don't risk getting crappy grades and lowering your GPA to rush into taking an earlier LSAT administration than you'll be able to be fully prepared for so that you can apply super early in the cycle, and don't sit for an LSAT administration when you aren't as fully prepared to do your best as you could be with more/better prep hoping to 'get lucky' on test day unless you aren't shooting for/don't need a really good/high score for your goals.

Also, when will you graduate and when are you planning to apply?

Since you're going to take a full length in person class (I'm assuming not the online video, work at your own pace one), you should take it when you will have plenty of available time outside of class to do the HW after each class session to keep up with the class and get the most out of it. People that go to live prep classes and attend the class sessions but don't keep up with the HW between sessions to practice applying the concepts to make sure they really understand whatever was taught in the prior lesson don't get much out of the class and see much improvement. This is because the classes are designed to be an intense building process with a lot of related logical concepts where being able to understand and use the higher level more advanced stuff in the later lessons requires having understood and practiced the more basic building blocks concepts and techniques/thought processes from prior lessons. If you just attend sessions but don't keep up by putting in lots of HW and review time to improve LSAT knowledge and skills as the class progresses, it just ends up being wasted timed and $$. If your UG class load is soo big that it will severely limit the amount of HW/study time you're able to put in between LSAT class sessions to keep up with it, it would make taking the class at that time a waste.

When taking a full length LSAT prep course, to get the most out of it count on putting in AT LEAST 20 hours a week of HW/study time outside of the class sessions.

You need to figure out a balanced schedule and timeline that allows enough study time for you to excel with both your UG class grades and your ultimate LSAT score. Finding that balance ends up requiring many people to change their initial 'ideal' timeline they want the next few years of life to follow into something more realistic that requires a longer timeline than initially hoped for.