Law School Expert » LSAT Prep

Taking the February LSAT? Don’t miss this interview!

Categories: LSAT Prep, LSAT; Rolling Admissions
Tags: February LSAT, February LSAT; LSAT Prep
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FREE PODCAST tomorrow (Wednesday, January 4th) where I’ll be interviewing Nathan Fox of Fox Test Prep, a UC Hastings Law Grad and author of Cheating the LSAT, about everything you need to do in the next month to be ready for the February LSAT. Listen in and find out how to win Nathan’s LSAT Prep books!

If you’ve never listened to one of my Blog Talk Radio shows, you are in the minority: the free podcasts are almost as popular as the Law School Expert blog!

All you have to do is listen live tomorrow online by going to Ann Levine – Blog Talk Radio at noon PST/3 pm EST – and if you listen live, you can use the chat room to ask questions and I try to incorporate your questions into the show. The show is 30 minutes. If you can’t make it live, you’ll be able to listen to it anytime, and even download it from iTunes if you’d like at absolutely no charge. And you can leave questions as comments here and I’ll try to get you answers during the podcast.

P.S. December LSAT scores will be out any minute now so if you’re contemplating a February re-take don’t miss the LSAT Tips in this Podcast!

Should you retake the LSAT in December?

Categories: Advice, Law School Admission Deadlines, Law School Admission Trends, Low LSAT, LSAT, LSAT Prep, LSAT; Rolling Admissions
Tags: December LSAT, Low LSAT, LSAT Scores, October LSAT score
26 Comments »

LSAT scores came out. Let the panic begin. Right now you’re exhausted, scouring the Internet for anything, ready to grasp the smallest, least credible piece of advice that tells you that your very low LSAT score WILL get you into the school of your dreams.

What is my advice? Sleep on it. Then, when you wake up, read these posts:

Before You Re-take the LSAT

The Post-LSAT Blues (by me, but on USNews.com)

Should You Re-Take the LSAT in December? (by me)

Should You Re-Take the LSAT in December (by MSS blog)

But to answer the easy questions:

1. NO – December is NOT too late to apply for Fall 2012 admission. Why? Because you will still be able to submit apps in early January. Because you’re better off having a higher LSAT score and applying in January than applying now with a lower LSAT score. Because applications are down 10% and this can only help you.

2. NO – You can’t significantly improve your practice exam scores in 5 weeks. If you suck at standardized tests, you’re not going to be able to teach yourself the test. To get a different result, you need to take different actions.

Happy to take questions! And would love your feedback on the new book, The Law School Decision Game:A Playbook for Prospective Lawyers.

Ann

10 Days Until the October LSAT: What Should You Be Doing?

Categories: Advice, LSAT, LSAT Prep, Uncategorized
Tags: Last minute LSAT tips, October LSAT
1 Comment »

Ten Days Until the LSAT: Everything You Need to Know

I feel like I’m giving a lot of LSAT advice right now, being asked:

Am I ready?
What do I do for the next 10 days?
How do I calm down?
Is December too late?
Should I withdraw?
How will I know whether to cancel my score?

I know the advice I always give in response to these questions. For example, just this week a client asked me:

“I’m still having trouble finishing on time, any tips on that? I read somewhere that on the day of the exam, the adrenaline rush takes over and people usually finish earlier than their prep tests?” I responded, “Just do the best you can on each question, knowing you might be sacrificing other questions for timing. Check through each section quickly and see which ones you think will be hardest to answer. But practice this strategy so you don’t get freaked out on test day.”

I always like to know what advice other people would give since I’m the Law School Expert, not the LSAT expert : ) So I consulted someone who I consider to be an LSAT expert, my friend Noah Teitelbaum of Manhattan LSAT. And after his great advice, below, I’ve included tips from some of my Facebook friends who responded to a call for last minute LSAT advice. Also, if you haven’t heard it before, you MUST spend 45 minutes in the next few days listening to my Blog Talk Radio show/podcast on last minute LSAT tips, featuring Noah on the panel of experts.

Without further ado, here is Noah:

It’s about 10 days until the October LSAT – 240 hours, 14,400 minutes, or 864,000 seconds – but let’s not spend our time counting! If you’re freaking out, here are some ideas to help keep you chugging along smoothly into a great LSAT score:

Now:

1. Focus on the main event. Right about now we see on our LSAT forums lots of questions about unimportant topics and students freaking out about the hardest LSAT questions in written history. Rare question and game types are rare! If you find them tough, that’s not a big deal. What is important is that you are able to get the easy and common ones correct without wasting too much time, leaving you enough time for the rare question or game. And, games are generally more consistent today than in days of yore, so don’t freak out if you think CD game or the Zephyr airlines game is hard – they were! Focus on capitalizing on your strengths, not trying to do an emergency patch-up of a minor weakness.

2. Clean up your act. Time to switch to O’Doul’s for the next 10 days, and start exercising (exercise has been linked to neural growth). And, create a schedule for yourself. Most people should be doing just 2-3 more practice LSATs in the last 10 days, though there are some strange people who do better doing an LSAT every day until test day. Think about what generally makes you stay on the top of your mental game, write out a schedule, and execute. For most people, this means a steady diet of 2 section practice sets, deep review, replay of tough questions, and a full, 5-section practice LSAT sprinkled in here or there.

3. Go mental. Before an Olympic diver takes a dive, she imagines the whole process, from start to finish. That way, the dive is simply an execution of a plan, not something that’s being invented at that moment. Same thing for you. Consider how you’ll take this test – what you’ll do when you face a tough question, what you’ll do if the proctor screws up. Practice envisioning this before each practice test. Then, do the same thing on test day morning.

On test day:

4. Keep it real. There’s something magically disastrous that happens on test day for many people. Let’s say two people are both getting 160-164 on their practice LSATs. When Mr. Proctor says begin, Mr. 164 now is possessed with the idea that he might be able to get a 180. This is a problem. The truth is that Mr. and Ms. 164 will NOT GET A 180. Ms. 164 does a better job of controlling her passions: she aims for a 164, knowing she can get about 18 questions wrong. When she comes across a ridiculously tough question, she makes an educated guess and moves on, saving time for other questions that are tough, but doable with a bit more time. Mr. 164 instead spends 2.5 minutes on the first impossible question he faces, still gets it wrong, and is now trying to catch up. In short, go in there and know how many you want to get wrong, and get them wrong.

5. Admit it, it is hard. Unless you’re scoring well-below the national median, chances are that if you think a question is hard, most everyone else in the nation does too. There are always some geeks out there who won’t, but if we stick to thinking about the mortal population, let’s keep a cool head. It’s a tough question, lots of people will get it wrong, the question is whether you’ll get it wrong and waste a lot of time on it. Notice that this is the same advice as #1?

6. Warm-up with a warm-up, not section 1. Your brain is a muscle, and it probably isn’t used to working on Saturday morning, so bring a tough game that you’ve mastered, maybe an LR question or RC passage, read it outside the LSAT center as you sip your usual morning beverage (don’t over caffeinate!) and then crumble it up as you walk in and toss it triumphantly. Better that than using the first section as your warm-up…

7. Even if you’re going to cancel, take the test like you won’t. Keep on trucking through that LSAT. It’s always good to get the practice, and perhaps that section you bombed was an experimental one. . . And what if everyone in the nation thought that the third RC passage was completely baffling – maybe your feeble performance was better than most people’s. Give yourself the time to think things through after the LSAT – you have several days to cancel.

After test day:

8. Remember your application. Ann knows a lot more about this topic, but is everything else ready to roll? Better to focus on that then hitting refresh on Gmail, waiting for your score report.

9. Geek out. We’ll review this LSAT on Wed. October 26th – so if you’d like to use the LSAT as an opportunity to learn something for the December LSAT. Join us <http://www.manhattanlsat.com/EventShow.cfm?EID=3&eventID=634> .

THANKS SO MUCH, Noah!!!! I always love to share your tips with my readers. Below is advice from some of my Facebook friends, who have been where you are and are now very LSAT-wise:

Cat Don’t drink 9 million cups of coffee – it will only wind you up. know that there will be someone doing something annoying in your test – practice so it doesn’t phase you. breathe – in about a year you likely wont remember your score anyway.

Nick A great way to train for taking a test in a slightly noisy environment (there is always SOME sort of mumbling, fidgeting, etc. going on) when you are at home is to do practice tests with talk radio quietly on in the background. You learn/get used to tuning out background sounds.

Eva I actually completely agree with the coffee comment. If you’re the type of person who gets excessively nervous, I would actually not drink coffee at all. It makes your heart rate go up and that makes you feel more nervous than you already are. Also remember that a bad LSAT score is not the end of the world – it’s just a test.

Rebecca Play upbeat music that you like to sing along with on the way to the test. If you’re singing then you aren’t obsessing about the test or winding yourself up.

Jeff ‎1) take two days off of studying before the test. you don’t want to burn yourself out. 2) only study for maybe 4 or 5 hours a day MAX. after that you’ll start to lose focus… which leads to you feeling like you don’t get it… which leads to a decline in attitude… which leads to a worse score. 3) the day before the test be SURE not to sleep in. you need to be sure that you’ll be able to fall asleep the night before the test (that was my mistake the first time…) 4) read the newspaper the morning before the test to a) take your mind off the test and b) get your brain into reading mode.

Eli Remember this important thing: It’s not even close to as bad as the CA bar exam. Just keep telling yourself “hey, I can do this, at least it’s not something crazy like the bar” and then when you actually get to that time, you are allowed to freak out… just a bit.

Self-Study Strategies for LSAT Takers

Categories: LSAT Prep, Multiple LSAT scores
Tags: LSAT self study plan, LSAT self study program, Manhattan LSAT, Manhattan LSAT tutor, self study for LSAT
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If you are getting ready for the October LSAT and studying on your own – without help from a tutor or prep course – you need to make sure you’re following a strategy and not wandering aimlessly. I asked Noah Teitelbaum from Manhattan LSAT to share some tips for how to know whether you’re self-studying the right way. His suggestions follow:

Some people choose to go it alone with their LSAT prep. Understandable – if you can be successful studying on your own, why not? If you’re going this route, here are some ideas to help guide you.

1. LSATs are not enough for the LSAT
Every LSAT season we see a few poor souls wander into our door a few weeks before the LSAT with some version of this sad tale: “I have done every single LSAT ever released in the entire history of human existence, and I’ve been stuck at a 150 for the last 3 months.” Unfortunately, the truth is that there’s not much to do to help these particular folks. What they should have done – and what you should do – is a comprehensive program. This includes a) learning some strategies – from a book (we like our guides), b) practice them using sets of questions that are broken up by type, and c) doing full preptests. If you want to get serious, do deep review of your work. Here are some ideas on how to review your work .
2. Get a map
Somewhat less sad than the soul described above is the LSAT prepper that buys some books and some LSATs and then just starts reading. For some folks – particularly those who have a knack with standardized tests – this is just fine. But for us mere mortals, it’s great to have a more organized plan. There are a few free self study plans out there (e-mail us <mailto:info@manhattanlsat.com> and we’ll send you one). The idea is to attack the question types in an organized manner, and push yourself to keep to a schedule. If you want some serious structure, you can buy a self-study program and follow the videos and other resources – that can be an inexpensive way to benefit from the wisdom of LSAT geeks.

3. Have an escape plan
Not everyone can find success with a self study plan but it can be hard to know that until you’ve given it a try. So set some benchmarks that will help you decide if it’s working. For example: “I need to have improved 5 points by August 20th.” If you miss your goals, start up your other prep options (join a class, get a tutor, go to med school instead, etc.). Don’t corner yourself by waiting until the last month to reach out for some help.

4. Be mean
There are plenty of horror stories of folks who end up scoring 5-10 points worse on the real LSAT than their incredible preptests. Why? Nerves is one explanation. But, there are also a lot of students don’t take realistic practice exams. Even though the published LSATs have 4 sections, the real ones you take on test day have 5 (there’s an extra experimental section thrown in an undisclosed location in your exam). So, make your practice tests real – here’s an online proctor <http://www.manhattanlsat.com/LSAT-proctor.cfm> to keep you honest. Turn off that cell phone, don’t drink water except for during your one measly break, and don’t check your answers between sections!

5. Be nice
If you haven’t taken a practice LSAT yet, you’re probably in for a surprise, it’s a tough test! Don’t freak out if you’re used to acing every test – this one is set at a higher level of difficulty than the SATs and other tests you might have taken. This allows law schools to differentiate between lots of really smart candidates (let’s face it, a lot of brainiacs become lawyers). To keep your sanity, be sure to set realistic goals – baby steps. If you score 2 points higher on a practice test, awesome! That’s how people generally improve on the LSAT, a sprinkling of points at a time. So, set your sights a few feet ahead of you, and celebrate each time you hit a slightly higher score (and expect a few dips along the way).

Good luck with your self-study program! Reach out if we can be helpful – info@manhattanlsat.com – we have self-study programs , and we host some online self-study groups (yes, that seems very much like an oxymoron).

The Power of Your LSAT Score Report

Categories: LSAT, LSAT Prep

No Comments yet, your thoughts are welcome!

The following is a guest post by Douglas Groene, an attorney who earned his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center. He has been tutoring students preparing for the ACT, SAT, LSAT, GRE, and GMAT for over a decade, and still takes a limited number of private students on Long Island. He is also the founder of http://www.pencilnerd.com a blog about standardized tests, featuring test prep news, commentary, tips, and product reviews.

Very early in my tutoring career, I realized the power of the score report. It’s probably the single best weapon in the big test prep companies’ arsenal. The major companies can give you instant feedback on every detail of your practice test performance. How did you do on matching games? What percent of parallel reasoning argument questions did you get right? Is your performance on assumption questions improving?

Score reports allow you to constantly improve your technique based on feedback, and to sharply focus your study time on the areas that need the most work. Because I wanted to bring this powerful tool to every student and tutor, I created the SCORE MY LSAT page.

Just enter your answers to an LSAT preptest (the real, past LSAT tests published by LSAC), and the program will instantly generate a detailed score report, similar to one you would get from BigPrep. Right now the program goes up to Preptest 38, and I will be adding the rest of the preptests in the coming weeks.

In addition to giving your raw and scaled scores and section stats, the score reports produce attractive bar graphs that depict your performance on each question type within games, arguments, and reading comprehension.

Of course, the score reports are not official and depend on my own categorization of the questions. In some cases, questions are hard to pigeonhole into a single type. For example, a question might ask “which one of the following principles lends the greatest support to the argument?” Is it a principle question or a strengthen question?

In many cases it’s a judgment call, but I tried to be as consistent as possible. I am sure there are a few errors, but luckily about 90% of LSAT questions fit unambiguously into a single category. With feedback for each question type, students can monitor their progress from test to test and allocate their study time accordingly. I hope that students (and tutors) will use the scoring program to get the most out of their LSAT preptests.

When to Start Thinking About the October LSAT

Categories: LSAT, LSAT Prep
Tags: Blueprint, blueprint prep, Blueprint the movie, June LSAT, October LSAT
10 Comments »

June LSAT scores were released within the last hour (just to contradict my prediction that they would be released last Friday). For those of you now focused on the October LSAT, Guest blogger Jodi Triplett of Blueprint LSAT Preparation gives some advice on the best way to prepare for the October LSAT.

Prepping for the LSAT tends to come in three varieties. Á la Goldilocks and the Three Bears, LSAT study, like porridge, can be too little, too much, or just right.

We’re all familiar with people in the “too little” category. This includes the guy who buys concert tickets from scalpers at the event, writes his term paper the night before it’s due, and studies for the LSAT two weeks before the test. Don’t be this person. First, he’s annoying and second, the LSAT is not a test for which you can cram.

You may also be familiar with the “too much” category. This is the type-A girl who reads the books before class begins, plans her vacations nine months in advance, and thinks that she needs to study for the LSAT for an entire year to be prepared. Don’t be this person, either. In fact, we’ve observed from our students that studying for the LSAT to great excess can actually result in a lower score.

So which LSAT study plan is just right? At Blueprint LSAT Preparation, we believe in typical cases that 200 to 300 hours is the magic number for study time. This equates to approximately two-three months of intensive LSAT immersion. If you put in that much work, and you’re using an effective methodology, you’re almost certainly going to see results.

For the upcoming October LSAT, you should begin your program of study some time between late June and late July. If you’re taking a class, enroll in one that begins in that time frame. Alternatively, develop a self-study schedule that begins some time during those months.

Don’t forget that you’ll need to put in consistent effort throughout this study period if you intend to see optimal results. If you’re taking a class, your lessons and homework should be spaced appropriately already. If you’re studying on your own, be sure to pace your sessions so you don’t wind up studying too little early on, then cramming a month before the LSAT.

In the beginning of your study, devote your time to learning the best way to approach every question type without worrying about your speed. As you get better at the concepts, you’ll naturally speed up in taking the exam. Be sure to reserve at least the last two weeks of study for review. We recommend studying until the Wednesday or Thursday before the test, then taking a break so you’ll go into the LSAT rested and alert.

The LSAT is a lot of work, but if you put in consistent effort and build upon a solid methodology, you’ll have a great foundation to sit in the right chair, eat the right porridge, sleep in the right bed, and get your fairytale LSAT score.