going back to core curriculum?

kimste17

I took the LSAT twice (cancelled one, kept one) and I'm planning on taking it one last time (fingers crossed!) in February. I didn't finish the core curriculum before taking either test, but I'm wondering if it's worth going back and trying to get through everything in full if I already have a pretty decent understanding of the basics, plus the extra experience of 2 real tests. Is there a good way to approach this so I don't have to start completely from the beginning?

Cant Get Right

Really hard to say. There are probably some places where you could benefit and others where you wouldn't. If you're scoring below the 160's, then improving your fundamentals is likely a good focus, and a return to the CC may very well be a great way to target the relevant fundamentals. Even in this score range, though, it kinda depends. If you're consistently BR'ing in the high 170's, then even in relatively lower score ranges, fundamentals are not the problem and a return to the CC is unlikely to be beneficial.

Your BR is a good starting point to assess though. Generally, I interpret a student's BR score as an approximate representation of the proficiency on the fundamentals. If that number is below your target score, attacking those fundamentals will be critical to improving. If your BR is consistently above your target score, then your returns on fundamentals will likely be smaller. Even this has its exceptions though. For students with timed tests in the mid 160's-low 170's, there is usually some work to be done to take certain fundamentals from proficiency to mastery. This work often goes beyond the CC, but there's a still a lot of stuff where the CC is the best place to start even where you may already be proficient.

So I guess the short answer is that it really depends!