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Question for all the wonderful previous LSAT takers on the forum...

Has anyone used just the LSAT Trainer 12 or 16 Week Trainer study schedule?
The one that uses PTs 62-71 specifically.

Did you end up scoring well?

Just looking for feedback on how it worked. I was following it for about 3 weeks and then went rogue. I started doing my own thing and going through the Powerscore Bibles and Manhattan LSAT books and drilling question types out of the Cambridge Packets. I feel like I am making improvements, but often wonder if I would have been better off sticking with just Mike Kim's approach.


Thoughts?

TYIA

You are better off working through the trainer quickly to get the basics and his general approach and then moving to more targeted drilling on your weaknesses and taking many more PTs. I used his book as an intro and then learned strategies from other resources to supplement. Spent about 16 weeks, and got upper 170s.

There's not many one size fits all approaches to the LSAT; but the trainer is really great on the fundamentals.

downbeat14 wrote:You are better off working through the trainer quickly to get the basics and his general approach and then moving to more targeted drilling on your weaknesses and taking many more PTs. I used his book as an intro and then learned strategies from other resources to supplement. Spent about 16 weeks, and got upper 170s.

There's not many one size fits all approaches to the LSAT; but the trainer is really great on the fundamentals.

+1, I don't think the Trainer is gonna be sufficient for the majority of people.

proteinshake wrote:

downbeat14 wrote:You are better off working through the trainer quickly to get the basics and his general approach and then moving to more targeted drilling on your weaknesses and taking many more PTs. I used his book as an intro and then learned strategies from other resources to supplement. Spent about 16 weeks, and got upper 170s.

There's not many one size fits all approaches to the LSAT; but the trainer is really great on the fundamentals.

+1, I don't think the Trainer is gonna be sufficient for the majority of people.

This is great news! I basically went through it in 3 weeks. Learned the fundamentals, and now I am reading MLSAT and drilling the corresponding packets from Cambridge. So I feel affirmed that I am on the right track. I think I just needed to hear I'm doing things right

I made a lot more progress when I ditched study materials and went into simulated practice tests with intense blind review. My progress was much more rapid. Then thing is you don't know your strengths and weaknesses really are until you have a fairly large data set of simulated timed sections (id say five practice tests) to analyze. You can input your answers into something like 7sage's LSAT analytics and it will show you the trends in what you are missing so you know what your weak question types are. For example, if over the course of several PT's you continuously miss sufficient/necessary condition LR questions, and blind review isn't elucidating your issues and you are confused, then I think that's the time to look into materials beyond the very basic fundamentals.

I'm not saying this applies to you what so ever, but sometimes I think people put off taking alot of practice tests as long as possible because they don't want to face the reality of where they are at score wise, and so they dive into prep books so their early scores are as high as possible. (this was me initially) Knowing specifically what you suck at and putting in smart and efficient effort was much better in my case. That's just my two cents and there are a lot of ways to skin the LSAT cat.

Barack O'Drama wrote:

proteinshake wrote:

downbeat14 wrote:You are better off working through the trainer quickly to get the basics and his general approach and then moving to more targeted drilling on your weaknesses and taking many more PTs. I used his book as an intro and then learned strategies from other resources to supplement. Spent about 16 weeks, and got upper 170s.

There's not many one size fits all approaches to the LSAT; but the trainer is really great on the fundamentals.

+1, I don't think the Trainer is gonna be sufficient for the majority of people.

This is great news! I basically went through it in 3 weeks. Learned the fundamentals, and now I am reading MLSAT and drilling the corresponding packets from Cambridge. So I feel affirmed that I am on the right track. I think I just needed to hear I'm doing things right

Sounds like you are. At this point, focus on getting games to -0 every time without undue time pressure, not missing more than one question per passage/letting RC timing get screwed up early in the section, and mastering the "fuck you" LR questions without burning the clock. The difference between low 170s and upper 170s (or getting into the 170s from 160s, whatever the case may be) is a handful of really hard questions, section management, brutal consistency with your methods, and reps reps reps. As others mentioned, you only get this by ripping timed sections and reviewing your mistakes and strategy errors with a lot of self awareness and not cutting yourself any slack. Good luck

Stardust84 wrote:I made a lot more progress when I ditched study materials and went into simulated practice tests with intense blind review. My progress was much more rapid. Then thing is you don't know your strengths and weaknesses really are until you have a fairly large data set of simulated timed sections (id say five practice tests) to analyze. You can input your answers into something like 7sage's LSAT analytics and it will show you the trends in what you are missing so you know what your weak question types are. For example, if over the course of several PT's you continuously miss sufficient/necessary condition LR questions, and blind review isn't elucidating your issues and you are confused, then I think that's the time to look into materials beyond the very basic fundamentals.

I'm not saying this applies to you what so ever, but sometimes I think people put off taking alot of practice tests as long as possible because they don't want to face the reality of where they are at score wise, and so they dive into prep books so their early scores are as high as possible. (this was me initially) Knowing specifically what you suck at and putting in smart and efficient effort was much better in my case. That's just my two cents and there are a lot of ways to skin the LSAT cat.

That kind of hits home for me. I haven't taken a timed practice test since my diagnostic (just timed sections), which wasn't very good, and I feel like part of it is not wanting to face reality. I am now trying to get to taking them ASAP. I really think I do need a good amount more focusing just on logic games. I missed more than than half the questions on my diagnostic test. Although I know plenty of people in which your approach yielded very high scores for I am going to go through my books and get my fundamentals more solid, then hit up some PTs.

Thanks for the kick back to reality

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