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

[09042014]

LSAT correlation data is from a time period before LSAT studying was commonplace. Even today, only a small fraction of test takers study anywhere near as much as people on this forum.

Does a TLSer who PTs from 155 to 169, really deserve a 169? Will they, on average, do as well in law school as a real 169?

What say you.

[Nova]

How could we ever know?

[d cooper]

Do you think if you had studied longer for your 176 that you would not have graded onto biglaw?

[dowu]

How could we ever know?

[rpupkin]

I vaguely remember seeing some data on how retakers fared in law school relative to students who took the LSAT just once. The question was whether applicants who scored, say, a 170 on the first try got better 1L grades than applicants who scored a 170 on their third try. I remember that the answer was "yes," but I can't find the data/study after 30 seconds of internet research. That's not exactly the same thing as what DF is asking, but it's related.

[victory]

Does a TLSer who PTs from 155 to 169, really deserve a 169?

Yes, they deserve their score.

Will their success in law school be impacted?

How could we ever know?

[phillywc]

I hope so, but probably not.

[09042014]

How could we ever know?

LSAC collects data about scores, how much people studied, and their grades. The math is trivial.

[Straw_Mandible]

LSAT correlation data is from a time period before LSAT studying was commonplace. Even today, only a small fraction of test takers study anywhere near as much as people on this forum.

Does a TLSer who PTs from 155 to 169, really deserve a 169? Will they, on average, do as well in law school as a real 169?

What say you.

Your language reveals the (totally absurd, IMO) assumption that learned ability is somehow qualitatively inferior to innate ability.

Here's what happened to the 'learned' 169 over the course of the study period: She transformed herself from a 155 scorer into a 169 scorer. By test day, she has the same ability level as the "real" 169.

That's why studying for the LSAT (for those of us who naturally suck at it) is such hard work. We're not spending our time learning gimmicks or tricks to somehow game our way into a false badge of superior intellect. We're making fundamental (and lasting) changes to the structure of our brains. I don't think anyone who studies their way into a top score should have any shred of impostor syndrome about it.

I see it like this:

I'm in pretty decent shape. I can throw on my shoes, jog over to the track, and bust out a sub-5:00 mile.
My roommate is a little heavyset, and he doesn't run much. But one day he decides that he would give anything to be able to run a sub-5:00 mile. He trains like crazy every day for 6 months, cuts all of his excess weight, and gets into sub-5:00 shape. We go to the track at the end of his training period, and we race each other. He nudges me out across the finish line, 2 seconds ahead. Does the fact that he ran 8:00 six months ago give him some kind of badge of inferiority? Of course not. We have the same ability level.

[09042014]

LSAT correlation data is from a time period before LSAT studying was commonplace. Even today, only a small fraction of test takers study anywhere near as much as people on this forum.

Does a TLSer who PTs from 155 to 169, really deserve a 169? Will they, on average, do as well in law school as a real 169?

What say you.

Your language reveals the (totally absurd, IMO) assumption that learned ability is somehow qualitatively inferior to innate ability.

Here's what happened to the 'learned' 169 over the course of the study period: She transformed herself from a 155 scorer into a 169 scorer. By test day, she has the same ability level as the "real" 169.

That's why studying for the LSAT (for those of us who naturally suck at it) is such hard work. We're not spending our time learning gimmicks or tricks to somehow game our way into a false badge of superior intellect. We're making fundamental (and lasting) changes to the structure of our brains. I don't think anyone who studies their way into a top score should have any shred of imposter syndrome about it.

I see it like this:

I'm in pretty decent shape. I can throw on my shoes, jog over to the track, and bust out a sub-5:00 mile.
My roommate is a little heavyset, and he doesn't run much. But one day he decides that he would give anything to be able to run a sub-5:00 mile. He trains like crazy every day for 6 months, cuts all of his excess weight, and gets into sub-5:00 shape. We go to the track at the end of his training period, and we race each other. We both finish within a few seconds of each other. Does the fact that he ran 8:00 six months ago give him some kind of badge of inferiority? Of course not. We have the same ability level.

You assume that learning how to LSAT is itself laudable. It isn't. These people aren't learning how to be more logical, they are learning how to game the test. It's basically like learning how to solve a rubicks cube.

The runner gets stronger, more in shape. The LSAT taker just learns strategies that are really only useful in LSAT land.

[Straw_Mandible]

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.

[09042014]

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.

[rpupkin]

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.

165

[Straw_Mandible]

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.

I understand you don't believe that. But as a natural-born 99th percentile scorer (well, hey, let's just call it like it is: a natural-born genius), you don't have the experience to comment meaningfully on that transformation. There are a lot of people around here who know first-hand what it feels like to get better at this test. Granted, I don't know what it feels like to be a natural-born genius, but I can guarantee you this: My mind feels hundreds of times sharper, clearer, faster, and stronger than it did six months ago. When I was scoring in the 150s, my brain was a flabby, sweaty, spacey, acne-ridden couch potato. Today, it's a competitive athlete. The training is real.

[bizzike]

You could make the same argument about law school vs. practice. The top 1% by IQ doesn't correlate to the top 1% in monetary success or personal satisfaction. I'm not sure what you're paradigm you're trying to validate here.

[d cooper]

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?

[quijotesca1011]

I see it like this:

I'm in pretty decent shape. I can throw on my shoes, jog over to the track, and bust out a sub-5:00 mile.
My roommate is a little heavyset, and he doesn't run much. But one day he decides that he would give anything to be able to run a sub-5:00 mile. He trains like crazy every day for 6 months, cuts all of his excess weight, and gets into sub-5:00 shape. We go to the track at the end of his training period, and we race each other. He nudges me out across the finish line, 2 seconds ahead. Does the fact that he ran 8:00 six months ago give him some kind of badge of inferiority? Of course not. We have the same ability level.

I think the question that still does remain relevant is what does this training and 'shorterm' result (LSAT score) have to do with longterm performance (law school grades). I'm not coming down on one side or the other, but for the sake of playing devil's advocate…

During law school, are you and your hypothetical roommate (in this metaphor) going to be able to maintain equal performance? Or are you (the natural scorer) going to have an advantage? You say that these changes are "lasting", but do you have evidence of that? I'm not saying it's impossible, but without some form of maintenance, how do we know? (you could say that law school is maintenance, but if someone's intellect left undergrad "slow, bloated, and flabby" (I'm quoting an earlier post there ), what's to say it wouldn't revert that direction in law school (under your metaphor). Law school isn't the equivalent of undergrad, but I would argue that in terms of "maintenance" in "brain agility", it would be easier to better to compare law school to undergrad (as both are based on regular cycles of tests and exams, which are largely material based and very different than a standardized test) than to compare law school to the actual LSAT itself (as far as I've heard law school exams are nothing like the LSAT).

What's more, I think there's something to be said for the fact that the test is trying to approximate skills that are useful in law school but isn't testing them directly. It's testing those skills in a roundabout way. Answering logic games is not the same as writing an exam essay, it's just assumed the if you can answer logic games, you have a degree of logical reasoning that would help you to reason your way through an exam essay question. However, since people do learn and implement strategies to beat parts of the test like logic games, I think it can be argued that some of the test's predictive value is lost. Once you start using strategies, it's not 100% a matter of just sharpening your brain.

I neither was a natural high-scorer nor did I super study, so I can't really contribute with personal experience. But I think there's something to be said for the fact that extreme self-studying does skew the predictive value of the test.

That said, I reserve that for extreme self-studying. I think that for people whose first score was in a certain range (let's say 160s-170s) their law school outcomes have the potential to be similar. And there, self-studiers might even do better because they have a proven track record of discipline. But when we are talking about people who started scoring in the 140s/150s and dedicated months to full-time studying and jumped 20 points, there I wonder if the predictive value gets more questionable (not that that person couldn't be on the top of the class, I just think it's reasonable to think that a truly predictive score would lie somewhere in between their two attempts).

[09042014]

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.

I understand you don't believe that. But as a natural-born 99th percentile scorer (well, hey, let's just call it like it is: a natural-born genius), you don't have the experience to comment meaningfully on that transformation. There are a lot of people around here who know first-hand what it feels like to get better at this test. Granted, I don't know what it feels like to be a natural-born genius, but I can guarantee you this: My mind feels hundreds of times sharper, clearer, faster, and stronger than it did six months ago. When I was scoring in the 150s, my brain was a flabby, sweaty, spacey, acne-ridden couch potato. Today, it's a competitive athlete. The training is real.

But do these skills you are building have any relevance to the real world? People who get really good at Forza, can't drive a racecar.

[09042014]

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?

Law school exams are games of a sort. They don't really translate well into reality either. However, they are far less easily gamed than LSAT is. The LSAT has virtually unlimited study materials. In law school you might get a few practice exams, but usually the professor switches it up every semester. Though I had a class where the professor basically gave the same test over and over and over. That test was easily gamed.

Being able to brute force the LSAT doesn't really make it possible to brute force law school.

[Straw_Mandible]

But do these skills you are building have any relevance to the real world? People who get really good at Forza, can't drive a racecar.

Yes. People who get really good at reading and reasoning (in the context of preparing for the LSAT), are able to read and reason in other contexts as well. Say, when they sit down with their morning newspaper, or when they start studying their casebooks.

In response to the question about the longer term implications of getting into LSAT "shape": I think it's reasonable to assume that when people learn new skills, they will continue to apply them in their daily lives. That's evidenced by the fact that people can take long breaks from studying, and come back to the test scoring in the same range (and sometimes even higher). We don't fall out of shape because we use our reasoning and reading skills constantly. You won't suddenly forget how to identify the core of an argument or the structure of an article just because you learned those skills on flimsier paper.

[09042014]

But do these skills you are building have any relevance to the real world? People who get really good at Forza, can't drive a racecar.

Yes. People who get really good at reading and reasoning (in the context of preparing for the LSAT), are able to read and reason in other contexts as well. Say, when they sit down with their morning newspaper, or when they start studying their casebooks.

In response to the question about the longer term implications of getting into LSAT "shape": I think it's reasonable to assume that when people learn new skills, they will continue to apply them in their daily lives. That's evidenced by the fact that people can take long breaks from studying, and come back to the test scoring in the same range (and sometimes even higher). We don't fall out of shape because we use our reasoning and reading skills constantly. You won't suddenly forget how to identify the core of an argument or the structure of an article just because you learned those skills on flimsier paper.

If they actually get better at reasoning, sure, I'd believe that it would have a real impact. I still doubt that is what is occurring.

[rad lulz]

If you brought up your 165 to a 170 then i don't see a lot of difference

Maybe if you brought up a 142 to a 170 over 2 yrs of studying

LSAT is not relevant to law school

[njdevils2626]

I've occasionally thought about my own personal situation in this light, but never felt prompted to ask. Now that someone raised a relevant point, however, I feel a little compelled. I was a natural at the LSAT, scored a 170 on my diagnostic a week before writing the test and scored a 172 on the day of. That's all great, but it lies in stark contrast to my UGPA, which is sub-3.0. Sure, there are qualifying factors for that GPA (Three namely: McGill's strong reputation for grade-deflation, graduating in three years while spending the first in Neuroscience and hating it, and suffering a heart attack just before finals my second year).

While I plan on fully dedicating myself to my studies and doing everything I possibly can to succeed in law school, I'm slightly worried that my UGPA will be more indicative of my law school performance than the LSAT, which I never really had to try for. I don't really know what I'm asking for here, but I guess I just want to know if my worry is founded in some truth or if being a natural at the LSAT is a good indicator or something like that. I know there really isn't much I can do other than read as many guides and such as I can on this forum and simply just give it everything I've got to do well, but some reassurance wouldn't hurt I guess haha.

[Freyer92]

Here's my take on the LSAT:

I think it's a mix between seeing how well people can read/deconstruct language, and how hard people can work. Getting a high score on the LSAT indicates either that you have a good bit of intelligence, or you've worked your ass off (or both). Both situations seem that they could be indicative of doing well in Law School. Beyond that though I don't think this "Logic Games teaches you how to apply fact patterns to a certain case.." kind of stuff is all that true.

I don't know how over studying for something could hurt you, though. Once your in law school you just adapt to what you have to do. I think we all to an extent do this in undergraduate courses. Granted, Law schools going to be different, harder, etc. but seems a little far-fetched OP.

[09042014]

Here's my take on the LSAT:

I think it's a mix between seeing how well people can read/deconstruct language, and how hard people can work. Getting a high score on the LSAT indicates either that you have a good bit of intelligence, or you've worked your ass off (or both). Both situations seem that they could be indicative of doing well in Law School. Beyond that though I don't think this "Logic Games teaches you how to apply fact patterns to a certain case.." kind of stuff is all that true.

I don't know how over studying for something could hurt you, though. Once your in law school you just adapt to what you have to do. I think we all to an extent do this in undergraduate courses. Granted, Law schools going to be different, harder, etc. but seems a little far-fetched OP.

Example 1:

This poster probably gets nearly 0 RC wrong, yet missed the argument of this thread.

Gunning the LSAT won't make you worse, it'll just give you an LSAT score above your actual worth, meaning you will under perform in law school because you went to a better law school than you should have. Of course this on average, an individual LSAT doesn't mean shit.