I earned a top LSAT score (98th percentile), attended Georgetown Law School as a Dean's Scholar, and taught the LSAT for a national test-prep company for many years. As an experienced educator, I specialize in tailoring my material to your specific needs. Whether you are feeling overwhelmed and don't know where to start or are looking for a tutor to help you break into the 170+ score range, I can help you develop a deep understanding of the LSAT so that you can maximize your score on test day.
When you work with me, you will:
* Master Logical Reasoning by breaking down complex arguments, predicting answers to improve accuracy, and learning specific strategies for each question type.
* Excel at Reading Comprehension by developing active reading techniques, improving your ability to identify structure, and learning to avoid common wrong answer traps.
* Navigate the test efficiently by learning to recognize patterns that appear over and over on the LSAT.
* Develop a study plan tailored to your specific strengths and weaknesses.
What makes my approach unique is my teaching style: I am an experienced educator who is patient, adaptive, flexible, and responsive to different learning needs and styles. The LSAT can feel intimidating, but with the right strategies and support, you can walk into test day confident, prepared, and ready to perform your best. Whether you’re aiming for a major score jump or just need those last few points to reach your goal, I would love to help you succeed.
Discussions
How long is your initial read-through? You should be reading the passage in about 2 minutes and leaving yourself the rest of the time to re-read carefully only where necessary to answer questions. Are you focusing that initial read-through on big picture - ie, topic, scope, purpose, and main idea? These are the only things that should be getting your attention on that first read. The challenge for most students isn't learning how to read faster, it's learning which words to focus on when they read. The words you need to focus on are key words that show relationships between ideas; words that indicate viewpoint; and words/phrases that help you break down the structure of the passage. Everything else is detail and will be there to refer back to when (and if) you encounter a question about it. Hope this is helpful - best of luck with your studying!
Wow, great job! This is a huge accomplishment. Are you signed up to take the test? If not, this would be a good time to sign up - you want to take the official test around the time you are peaking in your performance (kind of like an athlete training for a big event). I'm sure you are doing this already, but keep doing deep, purposeful review of every mistake you make, specifically focusing on identifying your reasoning error. I would also suggest continuing to take weekly full length tests until your test date, and devoting two days per week to high difficulty work (one day each for LR and RC). Best of luck to you - and congratulations on seeing your hard work pay off!
I'm sorry you're experiencing this - it's a frustrating (but not uncommon) situation with the LSAT. The fact that you are scoring so well on untimed work is encouraging, as that shows your mastery of the material. Give yourself credit for the progress you've made so far!
Translating untimed accuracy into timed practice can require a few things:
1) Familiarity and pattern recognition. Speed on the LSAT comes from realizing that the test asks the same questions over and over (different words, same reasoning). To some extent this happens naturally over time and with more practice, but you can also start to look for those patterns. Think back to other questions you've seen. Try to be purposeful in spotting similarities.
2) Purposeful section management. On logical reasoning, aim for about 10 minutes for the first ten questions. As you move through the section, make sure you capture the "low hanging fruit" first - skip strategically so that high difficulty questions don't become time traps. When you flag questions, jot a note on your scratch paper to keep track of which questions you want to prioritize returning to.
3) Time awareness. Watching the clock closely can really hijack your brain - it's easy to get distracted enough by the countdown that you can't give your full concentration to the questions. Start doing more timed practice so that you get a better feel for what 1 minute or 2 minutes feels like. As you get more adept at pacing, you may find it's easier to give your full attention to the questions.
Hope this is helpful - best of luck with your studying!
That is a frustrating experience, but (as you know) not uncommon. I think one thing to examine is WHY you are falling for trap answers. For example, in reading comprehension, trap answers often look appealing because they use language from the passage, so they "sound" right. The correct answer is often hidden under a layer of convoluted language that doesn't match the language in the passage. If you are falling for this type of trap answer, remind yourself that you are looking for the answer choices that matches the idea in the passage, not necessarily the language. The other thing I wonder is whether you are changing your answers as you go through the answer choices, or are these on flagged questions that you go back to? Sometimes students go back to questions, second-guess their initial answer, and change their answer (usually to the wrong answer!). In this case, I would suggest only returning to questions that you have flagged, and only flagging questions if you weren't able to predict an answer, were stuck between two answers, or didn't have enough time to fully attempt the question. You will probably need to do a deeper dive into those questions where you did switch your answer - think about what made you question the right answer, and what made you choose the wrong answer. Hope this is helpful - best of luck with your studying!
@megpalm you are very welcome!