Those Who Scored 170+ Forum

[Csupo]

So scores have just come out for the June '17 exam. My questions for those who scored 170+...

What prep materials did you use?
How long did you study for?
How did you do it? Any tips for the rest of us? Biggest piece of advice?

Share your knowledge and wisdom!

[Jack_Kelly]

160-171 here.

PowerScore games bible
7sage games tutorials
Just Google PT questions outside the games you don't get tbh.

3-4 weeks, couple hours a day. But I was only really working on one section, so probably longer for many.

[lebongenre]

180.
Blueprint in-person class.
2 months, baseline PT 155.

General advice: Position yourself so that studying can be your priority. I worked at a job for a couple years and developed a good reputation/had people willing to go to bat for me, so when the time came to "slack off" and focus on the LSAT, no one gave me grief. I also took the 2 weeks before the exam off, which I highly recommend. And if you have the resources, I think Blueprint class + one-on-one tutoring would have gotten me where I wanted to be faster/with less anxiety than the class alone (I.e., things would've "clicked" faster and I might not have plateaued leading up to test day, where the adrenaline drove it all home). One weird/high maintenance tip: Pick a testing center at a hotel and stay there overnight. And take a friend, SO, parent, etc. to distract you and generally hang out the night before. It makes test day so much smoother and less stressful so that you can get your head in the game! All this sounds/is expensive, but imo it's absolutely worth it to take time off to save up to make an investment like this to develop a highly learnable skill that could save you literally six figures down the line.

Oh yeah, one more: Don't study the day and a half before. You can do practice problems to warm up, but keep them on the easier end and don't check the answers. I spent the night before in the hotel and wandering around the neighborhood. I had stopped studying at midday the day before that, went to a music festival, and even had a beer

[AJordan]

five months, about an hour or two a day with a full test on Saturdays and Sundays off. Used a commercially available online program. In the final two months I probably ranged toward the higher end of the scale. It was tough to do with a full time job and taking classes as well. If you have a spouse it can be pretty difficult.

[viscacatalunya]

176, took time off and studied for one month. All I used was powerscore - bought the bibles for LG LR RC and just worked through them for five hours every day. In the last week or two I was doing a practice test a day.

[Future Ex-Engineer]

Self-study. Used PS LG and LR Bible, followed by LSAT Trainer (highly recommend for LR/RC).

I studied seriously for 3 months while working full time (so 50 hour work weeks, spent about 2-3 hours after work for around 100 days doing drills/PTs).

Started cold 164, scored 171 on June (probably could have done 173 - I missed 2 LG questions, and I've never missed 2 LG questions on a single test before. Average misses per section of LG is 0.1). Honestly for me, the big thing was learning to attack LR questions. Once I understood the questions better (recommend the Trainer for this), with practice I was able to parse out the important parts of the questions and nuke the unimportant parts mentally very quickly. I got to the point where I could do 25 Qs in 27 minutes with 24/25 accuracy. That extra time to be able to devote to hard questions/review allowed me to increase my game day accuracy immensely (Looking back at my answer sheet, I saved myself 4 points by reviewing difficult questions and changing answers).

I also think my study habits helped me immensely. I would study after a long/mentally taxing day at work (in very distracting environments), and still take full timed PTs. On test day I was super fresh, so even though it's stressful/not always ideal scenarios, I was still in a much better mental state than during my practice. I also had a 173 average over 15 tests going into the real thing, so I felt very confident in my ability to perform.

Good luck!

[Slippin' Jimmy]

Cold Diagnostic was 153 in January, scored 171 on June test. Not as high as some others on here but an 18 point increase is still pretty big.

I started out with The LSAT Trainer following one of the schedules from the Trainer website. This was a good start for me because I really didn't know what I was doing and the schedule gave me some structure, and there is a good mix of book work, drills and full PTs in the schedule. I ended up ditching the schedule and LG from the trainer about halfway through, but I continued with the book's LR and RC sections. For LG I primarily just drilled games over and over again and would watch the free 7sage video for every game I did. I started out doing single games untimed and progressed to untimed sections, then timed sections. I also worked through about 75% of the Powerscore LG Bible and while it was good to work additional games, I really didn't like the style of the book or the methods taught. With a couple weeks left I still felt a little shaky on LR and RC so I bought the 7sage starter package solely for the LR/RC lessons. While I wish I had done this much earlier, just getting a different perspective on how to solve specific question types was immensely helpful, I reviewed the lessons on all of my problem LR types and watched a few "read throughs" of RC passages. The 7sage videos really helped me perform more consistently.

For actual LSAT materials used I did question type/timed sections from PTs 52-61 and full timed PTs from 62-80 + C2. I also did every game at least once in some form (PT, Set, Individual) from PTs 29-80 and I did about half of the ones before 29. LR and RC pre PT 52 I used as experimentals, for drilling problem LR types and warmups. I probably ended up doing about half of the RC/LR material from PTs 29-51. If I were doing everything over again I wouldn't have drilled from 52-61 and would have instead used older tests, but I burned through these following the Trainer schedule. I would have liked to use at least half of these as full PTs. If you do get the Trainer and follow one of the schedules I highly recommend emailing Mike Kim for one of the retired schedules he has since they utilize older PTs for early drills.

Hope that helps!

[dm1683]

Diagnostic at 160, scored 173.
Studied for 5.5 months in total (Jan-Jun) with intensive studying from april onward. Weak point was LG (-13 on diag) so I drilled the shit out of that for the first few months, using Powerscore LG Bible and the two Powerscore LG workbooks (games by type from pts 1-40). Mastering games took me until about march, then I started drilling individual sections from the early "10 Actual" books (pts 20-50 mostly). In April I started taking PTs, beginning with early ones and working my way forward. I think I took about 22. 47-51, 62-71, and 74-80. My PT average was 173, with a low of 168 and a high of 179. Test day I hit my pt average, which is all you can ask for.

[conker]

180.
Blueprint in-person class.
2 months, baseline PT 155.

General advice: Position yourself so that studying can be your priority. I worked at a job for a couple years and developed a good reputation/had people willing to go to bat for me, so when the time came to "slack off" and focus on the LSAT, no one gave me grief. I also took the 2 weeks before the exam off, which I highly recommend. And if you have the resources, I think Blueprint class + one-on-one tutoring would have gotten me where I wanted to be faster/with less anxiety than the class alone (I.e., things would've "clicked" faster and I might not have plateaued leading up to test day, where the adrenaline drove it all home). One weird/high maintenance tip: Pick a testing center at a hotel and stay there overnight. And take a friend, SO, parent, etc. to distract you and generally hang out the night before. It makes test day so much smoother and less stressful so that you can get your head in the game! All this sounds/is expensive, but imo it's absolutely worth it to take time off to save up to make an investment like this to develop a highly learnable skill that could save you literally six figures down the line.

Oh yeah, one more: Don't study the day and a half before. You can do practice problems to warm up, but keep them on the easier end and don't check the answers. I spent the night before in the hotel and wandering around the neighborhood. I had stopped studying at midday the day before that, went to a music festival, and even had a beer

155–180 in two months? So you're a natural genius who had never been introduced to logic before the LSAT? : P

[lebongenre]

180.
Blueprint in-person class.
2 months, baseline PT 155.

155–180 in two months? So you're a natural genius who had never been introduced to logic before the LSAT? : P

Haha good point. I had taken a formal logic course in college a couple years before blueprint. My prof said it probably wouldn't translate neatly to the LSAT, but in hindsight that was totally wrong. I remember taking blueprint and thinking "damn, I should've done this right after taking that class."