Approximately how long should one study for the LSAT? Forum

[Turd Furgeson]

I know it's an ambiguous question, but I have about 4 months to study for the LSAT (october). Is this enough time or should I study longer?

[thecaseman805]

Four months is definitely a sufficient time period to study for the LSAT. You should first take a practice test (you probably have) and then establish some kind of realistic goal - hopefully not more than 20 points higher than your score.

If you are not talented at Logic Games initially, don’t worry – practice makes perfect on this section. Other sections are more difficult to learn.

Do you plan to take a class in this time-frame? What kind of study materials do you plan to use? Have you explored some of the prepared study regimens TLS has to offer?

[LSAT All Star]

I know it's an ambiguous question, but I have about 4 months to study for the LSAT (october). Is this enough time or should I study longer?

Four months is plenty of time to accomplish anything LSAT-wise. But, that is not the real issue. The question is how many hours are you going to spend? Four hours a week? Four hours a day? The LSAT is very much about practice. The more you practice, the better you will do. The max a person could ever use would be about 300 - 350 hours (50 - 100 hours learning the basics and 250 hours worth of practice exams and review - 50 exams X 5 hours/exam).

[mcds]

I agree. I've been studying for about a week now, and I've done maybe 100 LG questions. At first I was hopeless, and now I can get them all right without too much hassle.

Its really learnable. You just have to work at it. I've put in maybe 30 hours so far because I'm just getting intense about it, but if you put in as much time as you can (and do the right things while you're doing it) you'll be more than fine for 4 months.

I would suggest buying the Bibles and then buying a Barrons or Kaplan book with fake questions. Save the real questions for later. What I did was go through LG and with each question type I learned, went through my Barrons book and found corresponding questions. I'm doing the same for the other two sections and then taking a Testmasters class.

For me, so far so good. You might be different. But either way, as long as you're starting now, you'll be in a great position.

[hous]

I agree. I've been studying for about a week now, and I've done maybe 100 LG questions. At first I was hopeless, and now I can get them all right without too much hassle.

Its really learnable. You just have to work at it. I've put in maybe 30 hours so far because I'm just getting intense about it, but if you put in as much time as you can (and do the right things while you're doing it) you'll be more than fine for 4 months.

I would suggest buying the Bibles and then buying a Barrons or Kaplan book with fake questions. Save the real questions for later. What I did was go through LG and with each question type I learned, went through my Barrons book and found corresponding questions. I'm doing the same for the other two sections and then taking a Testmasters class.

For me, so far so good. You might be different. But either way, as long as you're starting now, you'll be in a great position.

Whats this Barrons book you speak of? Hmmm?

[mcds]

Its the Barrons LSAT book. It has 80 or 100 practice questions of each type and then 5 Fake exams, in addition to 2 real ones.

I think its a great way to practice without using up good test material. The questions are pretty inferior, but its good for starting out.

I just wouldn't read too much into the explanations for the logic games. They make no sense.

[hous]

Its the Barrons LSAT book. It has 80 or 100 practice questions of each type and then 5 Fake exams, in addition to 2 real ones.

I think its a great way to practice without using up good test material. The questions are pretty inferior, but its good for starting out.

I just wouldn't read too much into the explanations for the logic games. They make no sense.

Im going to Amazon it, tell me your address so I can send you the bill if I dont like it.

[pkpop]

.
Is taking a formal logic class before starting to study for the LSAT (in particular- LG sections) recommended? I've taken philosophy classes before that have dealt with reasoning but nothing really focused on propositional logic.

[yagrish]

Its the Barrons LSAT book. It has 80 or 100 practice questions of each type and then 5 Fake exams, in addition to 2 real ones.

I think its a great way to practice without using up good test material. The questions are pretty inferior, but its good for starting out.

I just wouldn't read too much into the explanations for the logic games. They make no sense.

Im going to Amazon it, tell me your address so I can send you the bill if I dont like it.

just a word of caution - don't buy the Barron's book - it is just awful. In addition to making many mistakes in their LG answers/explanation (the writers invariably miss one of the conditions and arrive at a wrong answer), it is not helpful with LR as well - you're better off just doing all real LSAT tests and then figuring out the test for yourself and analyzing your strengths/weaknesses without the help from a crappy book

[LSAT All Star]

Its the Barrons LSAT book. It has 80 or 100 practice questions of each type and then 5 Fake exams, in addition to 2 real ones.

I think its a great way to practice without using up good test material. The questions are pretty inferior, but its good for starting out.

I just wouldn't read too much into the explanations for the logic games. They make no sense.

Im going to Amazon it, tell me your address so I can send you the bill if I dont like it.

just a word of caution - don't buy the Barron's book - it is just awful. In addition to making many mistakes in their LG answers/explanation (the writers invariably miss one of the conditions and arrive at a wrong answer), it is not helpful with LR as well - you're better off just doing all real LSAT tests and then figuring out the test for yourself and analyzing your strengths/weaknesses without the help from a crappy book

Fake questions are notoriously very bad. The writers just do not get the intricacies of actual LSAT questions. There is no need to use fake questions. LSAC has over 50 released exams available. That is around 5000 questions. You could take a test every other day from now until October and have enough practice material.

The issue people raise is that the questions are somewhat different on the older tests. That is okay. Those questions are still better than the fake ones. They test the same fallacies. They do it the same way. It is just that the forms of the actual questions do not fit the templates that are more common today. They happen to be very good for learning how to think because they do not fit the modern formulas. (That is true especially for LG and LR).

You will want to do the oldest PTs first and use the latest as your exam approaches. Figure out how many practice tests you are going to need and count backward so you know where to start. You do not need any other questions. There are none as good or better.

[Fowler]

Four months is definitely a sufficient time period to study for the LSAT. You should first take a practice test (you probably have) and then establish some kind of realistic goal - hopefully not more than 20 points higher than your score.

If you are not talented at Logic Games initially, don’t worry – practice makes perfect on this section. Other sections are more difficult to learn.

Do you plan to take a class in this time-frame? What kind of study materials do you plan to use? Have you explored some of the prepared study regimens TLS has to offer?

Could someone elaborate on this please? Besides the various poster-specific threads, am I missing something?

Thanks

[thecaseman805]

No, I was referring to study plans I've seen in the past months. I don't think there is anything official on here.

[akajdisshady]

Four months is definitely a sufficient time period to study for the LSAT. You should first take a practice test (you probably have) and then establish some kind of realistic goal - hopefully not more than 20 points higher than your score.

If you are not talented at Logic Games initially, don’t worry – practice makes perfect on this section. Other sections are more difficult to learn.

Do you plan to take a class in this time-frame? What kind of study materials do you plan to use? Have you explored some of the prepared study regimens TLS has to offer?

Could someone elaborate on this please? Besides the various poster-specific threads, am I missing something?

Thanks

I like this one:

http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 4760#72527

[akajdisshady]

Its the Barrons LSAT book. It has 80 or 100 practice questions of each type and then 5 Fake exams, in addition to 2 real ones.

I think its a great way to practice without using up good test material. The questions are pretty inferior, but its good for starting out.

I just wouldn't read too much into the explanations for the logic games. They make no sense.

There's something like 55 preptests available to get your hands on, that's plenty to break into sections and still save 16-20 newer onces to fine tune with down the stretch. I wouldn't worry about "using up questions." In fact, it is more important to practice on the real questions right now, that way you can actually learn for explanations and wrong answers. Get the Kaplan Mastery Practice book. It's $15-$20 on craigslist/amazon/ebay. Begin your practice there, then move into the newer preptests when you have a good handle on the strategies you learned in the Bibles. I'd like to meet somebody on here that took every preptest. I gather that most break down at least part of them in sections and save the newer ones for full tests.