Logic Games before Logical Reasoning?

John.Pruden

I know in the core curriculum, it's pretty heavily emphasised that you should do the logical reasoning curricula before moving on, but I have my LR scores in an okay place, whereas my logic games is consistently the weakest part of my scores. So I think it makes the most sense for me to jump in with Logic Games to get myself to the same level as I perform with LR, but would this be a mistake? Will I spend a lot more time than necessary on LG material without the LR core?

For context, on the Feb. 1997 prep-test I scored 18/25 on both LR sections, and 8/24 on LG. So I can stand to review LR obviously, but I want to start with what I have to improve the most on.

Climb_to_170

When do you plan to sit for the LSAT? If it's within 3 months, then by all means, work on LGs while you go through the CC. If you have longer than that, then you should absolutely do the LR CC before doing the LG curriculum.

You will get better at LGs by going through the LR curriculum. If I had to guess, I would bet the questions you miss most often during an LR section are the questions heavily dependent on strong logic skills/ diagramming. These are the skills that will help you improve on LGs, but you will often find yourself getting lost on the basics if you try to skip right to that part of the course.

John.Pruden

I'm planning to take the August exam, aiming to go from a ~160 to ~170. I took the exam last July, and I was hoping to get more studying done during the school year, but ended up overwhelmed by coursework and changing my major, and haven't really done much outside of breaks during the school year. However, I'm hoping to study abroad in the fall, so I want to be done with this exam by the time classes start back up. I'm also going to lose access to the course material around september, because I procrastinated way too much, so I don't want to pay a bunch in extensions if I don't need to.

sarahisk

Even if you don't go through the whole LR CC, I would recommend going through the 'introduction to logic' and 'advanced logic' portions thoroughly. The content in those lessons lay out the basics of logic really well, which is key to acing more difficult LG questions. I don't think I'd be able to draw the necessary inferences as quickly as I do without the time that I put into those LR lessons.

And don't worry! You can definitely improve on LG before your exam. Speaking from experience, it's the easiest section to improve on as well. I went from -10+ per section to -1/-0 per section after going through the CC. You can do it!

caffeine powered human

I actually started my LSAT prep with the Powerscore logic games bible, so I did not have much LR exposure when I was going through LG. I do think that having a strong basis of logic would have helped, which I would have done differently. So I agree with sarahisk about going through the logic heavy LR lessons first. Conditional reasoning is very important in LG so you won’t be wasting any time. But I don’t regret the fact that I didn’t do LR before LG. LG is my strongest section with -0 to -2 in timed PTs.

If I were you, I would definitely quickly review the logic lessons and get my LG score up. 18/25 on your LR shows that you do know the foundations and I think that’s enough to tackle LG. Mastering LG first might even be a confidence booster for your overall LSAT prep. LG is by far the easiest/fastest for anyone to master so you will have plenty of time before August to thoroughly go through LR as well. Once you move on from LG to LR though, make sure you occasionally do LG to not forget the key concepts. I go through 4 logic games at the beginning of my daily study to warm up my brain.

Trusttheprocess

If I ever had to the CC again, I think it should be organized in the following manner:

1) LG ... reason being is that you can start on full-proofing earlier (you save time in the log run)
2) RC... but with a focus on "learning how to read in the manner that the LSAT wants".
3) LR ... there is a lot more tricks, patterns, approaches to LR that does not make sense focusing on earlier in your prep.