Do people who over study for the LSAT do worse in law school Forum

[Nulli Secundus]

I agree that LSAT is a bad predictor.

Back when I was applying, I started with the official guide and I got a 175 from my first ever PT (PT A of the official guide) after reading once through the official guide (not entirely cold but not a whole lot of studying either)

But after seeing the exam answer DF posted, I realize I would have sucked at law school because I hate memorization, I have a bad memory and I would, in all likelihood, forget 2 items out of every 4-5 item checklist for such an exam consistently. Which I guess would put me in C-grade territory, at best.

[5618715218781]

It doesn't matter how "laudable" it is. The LSAT tests real skills, which are tangible, transferable, and extremely difficult to develop. If it were just about "gaming" the test, it wouldn't take this much training and deliberate practice.

People who study their way from 150 - 170 are very literally getting themselves into shape. They're turning their slow, bloated, flabby intellects into well-tuned reading and reasoning machines. Everyone in this community knows that. The tricks don't help. It takes real, honest, dedicated training to make a measurable difference in your score.

Great Words!

[09042014]

I agree that LSAT is a bad predictor.

Back when I was applying, I started with the official guide and I got a 175 from my first ever PT (PT A of the official guide) after reading once through the official guide (not entirely cold but not a whole lot of studying either)

But after seeing the exam answer DF posted, I realize I would have sucked at law school because I hate memorization, I have a bad memory and I would, in all likelihood, forget 2 items out of every 4-5 item checklist for such an exam consistently. Which I guess would put me in C-grade territory, at best.

You are normally allowed an outline.

[5618715218781]

Idk how much the LSAT prepped me for law school but it REALLY prepped me for arguing online with strangers.

hahahahahahaha

[WilliamDeWrites]

It the risk of confusing things, how about some data, as opposed to just opinions.

http://psychcentral.com/news/2012/08/24 ... 43665.html

[Lord Randolph McDuff]

It doesn't matter how "laudable" it is. The LSAT tests real skills, which are tangible, transferable, and extremely difficult to develop. If it were just about "gaming" the test, it wouldn't take this much training and deliberate practice.

People who study their way from 150 - 170 are very literally getting themselves into shape. They're turning their slow, bloated, flabby intellects into well-tuned reading and reasoning machines. Everyone in this community knows that. The tricks don't help. It takes real, honest, dedicated training to make a measurable difference in your score.

The LSAT attempts to test real skills, but I think the gaming people do erases that. I don't believe these people are actually getting better, I think they are learning the patterns of the test. That it's hard to game doesn't at all suggest it's not actually gaming it.

Aren't law school tests hard games, too? Isn't everything, really?

Bingo.

LSAT freaks who move from 150 to 175 earn it.

LS gunners deserve fed clerk/big law.

Hard work blows dick but it pays off.


Fox your first LSAT was 99th percentile? Your mind was already in tip top form before you started, and has gears most of our minds likely do not.

I went from 155 to 168, and definitely put in some work. I started out an exceptionally depressed and lazy thinker, worked up to a decent score and called it good.

[094320]

..

[WilliamStrong]

I only read the first page of the discussion so I am not sure whether if the point that I am raising has already been addressed.
I am here referring to the "extreme studying" where, after 1-2 years of intense preparation, a person who scored in the 140s in his/her first test, ended up scoring in the 170s in the real test. The point is raised in the first page that the final LSAT score (in the 170s) will be less predictable for law school academic performance. I, however, believe the opposite.
I think this argument is based on a questionable assumption that the innate ability that the LSAT is created to measure is the only significant factor in determining future law school performance. Other factors such as endurance, discipline, determination, and hard work, all would be necessary for a person to spend 1-2 years to study the test intensively, possibly doing all the available official released LSAT questions twice or three times over before getting the 20-30 points jump, all would be vital for a person's academic success, are ignored by this assumption. I would argue, however, that a person's dogged determination and discipline in achieving a challenging goal, such as boosting 20-30 points in LSAT, can be much more predictable for a person's success in law school than the innate ability to score high in LSAT, since the innate ability can only tell us that a person has the capability to succeed in law school, and nothing about whether if this capability will manifest itself. Moreover, because the person studying for 1-2 years and achieved the jump of 20-30 points already has his/her determination/discipline/endurance/hard working tested, this person is much more likely to be successful in law school. I concede, however, that in this case, the 20-30 points jump after 1-2 years of studying is the predicting factor, and not exactly the final score. While the questions of whether if LSAT really measures skills that makes one successful academically in law schools and whether if the difference in less than 4-5 points is statistically significant are still being debated, the undeniable truth of hard work and determination behind a 20-30 points jump would therefore make a person more likely to succeed in law school than a person who innately scores in that same level.

[NYSprague]

Why are you assuming innate ability test takers aren't workaholic strivers?

[Tanicius]

I only read the first page of the discussion so I am not sure whether if the point that I am raising has already been addressed.
I am here referring to the "extreme studying" where, after 1-2 years of intense preparation, a person who scored in the 140s in his/her first test, ended up scoring in the 170s in the real test. The point is raised in the first page that the final LSAT score (in the 170s) will be less predictable for law school academic performance. I, however, believe the opposite.
I think this argument is based on a questionable assumption that the innate ability that the LSAT is created to measure is the only significant factor in determining future law school performance. Other factors such as endurance, discipline, determination, and hard work, all would be necessary for a person to spend 1-2 years to study the test intensively, possibly doing all the available official released LSAT questions twice or three times over before getting the 20-30 points jump, all would be vital for a person's academic success, are ignored by this assumption. I would argue, however, that a person's dogged determination and discipline in achieving a challenging goal, such as boosting 20-30 points in LSAT, can be much more predictable for a person's success in law school than the innate ability to score high in LSAT, since the innate ability can only tell us that a person has the capability to succeed in law school, and nothing about whether if this capability will manifest itself. Moreover, because the person studying for 1-2 years and achieved the jump of 20-30 points already has his/her determination/discipline/endurance/hard working tested, this person is much more likely to be successful in law school. I concede, however, that in this case, the 20-30 points jump after 1-2 years of studying is the predicting factor, and not exactly the final score. While the questions of whether if LSAT really measures skills that makes one successful academically in law schools and whether if the difference in less than 4-5 points is statistically significant are still being debated, the undeniable truth of hard work and determination behind a 20-30 points jump would therefore make a person more likely to succeed in law school than a person who innately scores in that same level.

Yeah, if I understand you fully, then I disagree with you completely. The amount of work I put in to my LSAT studying was totally un-representative of the work I put towards most of my law school classes. What attracted me to study so hard for the LSAT was that it was a low-risk investment of just four months. It is far more difficult to perform well in law school because you are graded on a curve with similarly smart and hardworking people (roughly correlated to your LSAT score window, no less), and it tests a completely different skill: Patient, structured learning environments and slow, methodical memorization, in five-month increments, over and over and over again, for six semesters. The LSAT was easy; the true marathon of law school semesters kicked my ass.

[CardozoLaw09]

Why are you assuming innate ability test takers aren't workaholic strivers?

I don't think he is making that assumption.

He's just saying there's no way to know for sure whether these people will put in the effort whereas those that studied intensively for the LSAT have proven that they have all the intangible attributes that are necessary for success in a law school environment. His argument is predicated on which group has more "predictive value" for success in law school.

[redsox]

Speaking as someone who under studied for the LSAT (i.e., did 6 points worse on the actual test than on my diagnostic)...I sincerely hope that people who over studied will do worse. But I doubt it.

[5618715218781]

So based on what you're saying about law school exams, it seems that far and away the most important skill that determines a student's success is her ability to write clearly, quickly, and persuasively under timed pressure. Do you see how the LSAT and law school exams are testing radically different cognitive skills? Of course, in order to succeed on law school exams, a student must have "strong" reading and reasoning skills, in the broadest sense. But at the end of the day, it is the student's writing which is being evaluated. They are given an entire semester to read cases and master the material, and then they are asked to convey that mastery, in their own language, under timed conditions. The only place where the LSAT even comes close to evaluating that skill is in the writing portion--which is, ironically, the part that literally no one cares about.

This really isn't like the difference between Sudoku and another logic puzzle. This is like the difference between Sudoku and, say, parliamentary debate. Of course a person has to be "intelligent" in some sense in order to demonstrate natural ability in either of these activities. But it's perfectly reasonable to expect that a person could be naturally excellent at one, but not the other.

Hate to play the 0L card, but wait until you've taken a law school exam to talk about what cognitive skills they test. In no particular order:

-The more you look at model answers, the more you'll realize that many of the top scorers are actually terrible writers (though not all top scores end up becoming model answers). I had no idea how much some people hated paragraphs before I started doing sample exams.

-IME, most of what separates a good exam from a mediocre exam is knowing what kind of arguments a particular professor wants to hear. My lowest grade was Civ Pro and I just didn't really get that profs preferences, while others did. It's a learnable skill, but also something you can intuit. Being able to grasp this for one prof doesn't guarantee being able to grasp it for another.

-If I had to pick one most valuable "skill" w/r/t law school exams, it would be the ability to intellectually masturbate all over the page. And trust me, lots of your classmates will be naturals at this. Is this a skill tested by the LSAT? Not really, but there's probably some correlation between sitting cold for a high LSAT score and ability to make the kinds of actually-bullshit-but-plausible-on-their-face arguments that get points on an exam.

-An underrated component is being able to wade through a two-page fact pattern and figure out which issues are important and worth spending multiple paragraphs on, and which are easy, but will only merit a sentence or two to get full points for that issue. I wasn't a big LSAT studier but it does seem like this is a skill that crosses over with doing well on RC.

It does sound like exams at T6/T14 are different from those at T2/etc (much less the variation between schools within those bands, and between professors within the same school), so who knows. Maybe it's different elsewhere and there's certainly room for disagreement. But this has been pretty uniformly true so far at UofC. I'm not totally sure which way it cuts, but I am sure that lawl school exams test a different skill set than simple writing ability.

haha, it is hilarious~