Top Law Schools

Hello my fellow LSAT takers,
It is nice to know all of you are motivated to start your legal education. I am planning to take LSAT again this December. Last December I took LSAT after about three months of studying while I was a senior in college. However, the efforts proved to be not enough. I got 156 and I was disappointed. I know I can do better but through my experience, I realized my biggest issue isn't failing to understand the material but smoothly reading through the stimulus or answer choices. (especially answer choices take me a large chunk of time to evaluate)
English is not my first language; however I don't know if that is the real issue since I don't have problems with vocabulary or comprehension ; I get tense in time crunching situation and it really affects my performance. My goal is 165 and I recently started doing practice tests again but I haven't seen significant improvement in speed by just repeating the tests. I would like to know if there is any alternative to actually make a difference. Now I work full time in DC but thankfully my job is pretty chill so I have two hours per day for LSAT on average at work and another two hours in the evening. So now I can probably devote about 20-25 hrs to LSAT per week.
Any suggestions will be appreciated.

I would start reading an interesting & somewhat difficult-to-understand novel. You should probably dissect every question on those PTs you've taken to the point of neurosis. Pretty basic, but HTH. Basically, just maximize familiarity with the language and the test

JohnZ wrote:Hello my fellow LSAT takers,
It is nice to know all of you are motivated to start your legal education. I am planning to take LSAT again this December. Last December I took LSAT after about three months of studying while I was a senior in college. However, the efforts proved to be not enough. I got 156 and I was disappointed. I know I can do better but through my experience, I realized my biggest issue isn't failing to understand the material but smoothly reading through the stimulus or answer choices. (especially answer choices take me a large chunk of time to evaluate)
English is not my first language; however I don't know if that is the real issue since I don't have problems with vocabulary or comprehension ; I get tense in time crunching situation and it really affects my performance. My goal is 165 and I recently started doing practice tests again but I haven't seen significant improvement in speed by just repeating the tests. I would like to know if there is any alternative to actually make a difference. Now I work full time in DC but thankfully my job is pretty chill so I have two hours per day for LSAT on average at work and another two hours in the evening. So now I can probably devote about 20-25 hrs to LSAT per week.
Any suggestions will be appreciated.

Reading ability is really crucial to this test. In addition to your LSAT prep, I'd recommend just spending as much time reading as you can. Try to pick things that are challenging or new for you, like magazines in particular subjects that you're not used to. I'd second recommending a novel, as that can be entertaining and won't feel like work while it'll still be challenging. This is a pretty solid list if you're looking for ideas: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/ ... es.fiction

If you want to improve your speed, there are some strategies you can adopt. Have you set benchmarks for LR? As in, trying to consistently get the first 10 questions done in 10 minutes? This will leave more time for the later, more difficult questions. The key is to do so without sacrificing accuracy - you want to also consistently get those 10 right. If you keep practicing this, it will eventually become second nature, and give you a sense of the pace that you need to move to ace LR.

For Logic Games, keep track of any games that are difficult or take a lot of time (10 minutes or above especially). You'll want to redo these in a week or two, to make sure you still remember how to arrive at those inferences, and track your speed on them.

For Reading Comp, it's mostly a matter of practicing continuously. Just make sure your approach is focused on analyzing the passage as you're reading it. Don't rush through it - think about how each paragraph contributes to the overall argument after you've read it, and piece together your understanding as you move along. After you finish reading the passage, quickly review what the main point, author's attitude, and different perspectives are. These are the focal points of the passage, which you should always be on the lookout for. They will come up in the questions, and if you have a solid understanding of them, then you know the passage pretty well!

Hope that helps!

JohnZ wrote:Hello my fellow LSAT takers,
It is nice to know all of you are motivated to start your legal education. I am planning to take LSAT again this December. Last December I took LSAT after about three months of studying while I was a senior in college. However, the efforts proved to be not enough. I got 156 and I was disappointed. I know I can do better but through my experience, I realized my biggest issue isn't failing to understand the material but smoothly reading through the stimulus or answer choices. (especially answer choices take me a large chunk of time to evaluate)
English is not my first language; however I don't know if that is the real issue since I don't have problems with vocabulary or comprehension ; I get tense in time crunching situation and it really affects my performance. My goal is 165 and I recently started doing practice tests again but I haven't seen significant improvement in speed by just repeating the tests. I would like to know if there is any alternative to actually make a difference. Now I work full time in DC but thankfully my job is pretty chill so I have two hours per day for LSAT on average at work and another two hours in the evening. So now I can probably devote about 20-25 hrs to LSAT per week.
Any suggestions will be appreciated.

for $9.99 you can get unlimited kindle on your iphone or ipad or android and read a lot of books there and novels in different field, every week read a novel. I sometimes read 2 books at the same time! They have audio-books that you can read and listen to at the same time. Other said choose a field that is strange to you, yeah that is a good advice, but leave that to magazine articles, for the novels, read in a genre you love. They have harry potter there all 7 books and other books not all of them are bad, many are interesting, the sci-fi genre will be interesting because it is different from the others. You can get old editions of the economists, the Atlantic and scientific american magazines from your public library, and better yet, you can borrow novels from there. Read read read! Also, my public library now allow us to download eBooks using overdrive app or kindle app, so you can borrow books online and read them before sleeping or while you are at work(For Free).


Secondly, I doubt that the book you used to get 156 adequately prepared you; I suggest you get new books and start all over again especially in the areas you struggle the most with. because you are re-doing things this time, and since you already have a job why hurry things, you can take the June test
a year of preparing by using lsat books, pts and drilling, reading novels and logic books will make you 10 times better in English and better prepared for the LSAT.


Last advice, if you gonna aim, you better aim higher.

I mean if you are aiming to get 165, chances are you gonna get 163
if you aim to get 175, after a lot of hours of hard work, you might get 172

Don't make it easy on yourself!

Thank you all so much. I have been enjoying reading news every day on Washington Post and Associated Press. Now I think novels may deserve a try although in college reading novels wasn't my favourite. I usually have 3-6 questions left on LR or RC but I believe what take me longer time are answer choices because I wrestle a lot within a couple of choices and that was really time-consuming.
I have used powerscore and in general, I felt it brought me a better understanding of the test. However, I am open to other guide books that you may think more helpful than powerscore series.