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Conversations with a178 LSAT scorer, debunking tips
lsatslayer-1
Member
I had a dinner with a law student who got a 178 on the lsat. He talked to me about how he prepared for it and I’m curious if these points resonate with other top scorers as well and share them with others. He studied by himself and said that he always tried to figure out the solutions once he finished the test without going online, he also told me to not worry about the LR question types, just focus on conclusion, premise and evidence. He also did all the preptests, 3 times each. He also read books with topics he was unfamiliar with. He broke down so unfortunate truths in which familiarity/expertise helped him in reading comp as well as how good you are at math helped with LG. Just curious of these tips/insights helped some of you as well. I know everyone is different im their approaches but there has to be some common insights right? For those scoring in low 160 what was that one habit that helped you get to 170s......??.
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@ttt2155 I just started consistently scoring in the low to mid 170's, and I did also study myself and do all PrepTests more than once for sure (except 1-18). Taking older tests opened me up to new ways that the writers used to phrase questions and things of that nature. Logic games I just somehow became a beast I don't know, but I was getting like five wrong then took a break from all LSAT then came back and started getting 100% on every single one I've taken so far and its been months now. I'm not particularly good at math, but the games section became second nature to me where I would know the setup right off the bat and when to make additional worlds. Usually, when I see a restrictive rule, I make some alternate game boards. I didn't read books or topics that I was unfamiliar with for RC help, I just did a lot of passages and started focusing on question stem subtleties. Some way or another, I started instinctually recognizing what was going to be important while reading passages and instinctively figuring out and sometimes notating authors POV, arguments, conditionals, support, etc. I think it just came from really focusing and doing a lot of passages. I have a terrible habit of taking a PrepTest every day, but that's only because I have the time and determination to really sit down, focus and understand everything so I'm not just doing it for the hell of it; I really learn something new every repeated or original PrepTest even if its something not that significant, it adds to the chain of LSAT logic I have stored in my head. Honestly everyone learns in different ways, I just figured the way that works for me and you should do the same. Experiment with different approaches and see what works for you. Once you have a basic understanding of the sections I would suggest to just self-learn by taking tests and reviewing them to strengthen correct reasoning. People always recommend taking breaks from the LSAT and I think thats something that significantly helps you improve and I'm planning on lower my testing frequency starting tomorrow.
I can't imagine anything worse than having to take 270 PTs. I would retire before getting into law school.
I am not scoring in the 170's but I am consistently getting between -0 and -2 for RC and I don't have much experience in most of the subject matter. I got a huge help from the RC section in The LSAT Trainer. I definitely think it is easier when you understand the subject matter but not impossible otherwise.
I would just add to his suggestions on LR question types that once you’ve become familiar with the LSAT after months of study you internalize the question types and just sort of naturally know what you need to answer the question. You should be focusing in on those things but you shouldn’t be using too much of your concentration worrying about the question type. I just read the stem for 2 seconds and figure out what the type is, then zero in on the conclusion and the support in the stimulus.
The scorer’s method of figuring the questions out on their own before checking online is mandatory for improvement and is similar to Blind Review taught here at 7Sage.
Also I never reached the high 170s, but I hit my goal score after taking about 30-35 PTs. Never did a PT more than once, I just did in depth BR. You should focus on quality over quantity, but at a certain point if you’ve taken 80+ PTs multiple times and reviewed them all this test must become second nature.
Did you take 30 of the most recent PTs or did you alternate between old and new tests?
@cooljon525
After the CC I began with some of the older PTs and skipped ahead to the more recent tests later in my prep. I did at least 1 or 2 PTs from the last couple of years before my first official take, and took mostly newer tests before June/July. Still have a lot of fresh material, but I was spending more time doing LR timing drills and breaking down RC passages than actual PTs. The only thing I did repetitively was fool proofing LG. Did LG from PTs 1-35 over and over again and added in each LG section from new PTs I had taken.
Yeah, most of this sounds about right to me except I don’t know what math has to do with LG at all. I’ve heard this a lot before, and it’s the kind of thing that immediately sounds plausible for some reason, but any time I’ve actually thought about it I have never figured out any tangible parallels. Does anyone actually know what math skills are relevant to LG? I’d be really curious to hear if anyone actually has any ideas on this.
Definitely figure stuff out on your own. That’s the only way to learn it. If JY could just Matrix the information into your brain, there’d be way more people scoring in the upper 170’s. Use the CC not as your way to learn the LSAT but as your way to learn how to learn the LSAT. If you want to score in the upper 170’s, you ultimately have to become your own authority and you can’t do that if you’re not deriving your answers from your own knowledge and abilities. Use resources and explanations primarily as a fallback for when you fail to find the understanding yourself—and be really stubborn in ever conceding failure.
The question types are important up to a point. I mean, you do need to know what the questions are asking you. What I suspect he really means here is that learning the question types is more of a preliminary task that you should move on from after completion. For the Flaw class question types, classification by flaw is really useful, but the best way is simply by the root of each question’s difficulty. Was it hard because it was a Necessary Assumption question? Then work on NA. But don’t work on NA just because you missed an NA question. Work on NA because you missed an NA question because it was an NA question. Otherwise, figure out what the real underlying issue is. Was it hard because of dense referential language? Then classify it by that. Was it hard because of a subtle term shift? Then classify it by that.
I’m a big fan of familiarization of subject matter in RC. Don’t read books though (I mean, do read books, just not as an LSAT study strategy.), just jump on YouTube and hop on some edutainment channels like Crash Course or Kurzgesagt and go down the rabbit hole.
wow, thank you for your responses! I appreciate them so much!
@DivineRaze has your score improved since you taking more breaks? It seems to do the opposite for me, I'm a full-time student and employee so perhaps too many things got in the way of my break, it's not a break. Thank you for your candid opinions on your strategies btw
@"Cant Get Right" there seems to be a trend towards math/econ in the LSAT questions within FLAW questions which I missed the majority. For example see lsat 85. 15. Flaw. Time to look up youtube videos on econ and math basics
Yeah, it’s mostly percentages. If you get that down, that’s the extent of it. Anything beyond that is so rare it’s probably better to just concede the point than to devote the study time to it.
To me, the comparison is not about the 'mathematics' in terms of integrals or parabolas or anything like that. Rather, it's the application of general rules to specific circumstances, and the thought process is identical in both cases. Just like sines and cosines work a certain way, so too do logical syllogisms. You prove that A->B + B->C yields you A->C mathematically, via a truth table. Logic's proofs are all rooted in mathematics. That you're applying a formulaic method of reasoning to a given argument instead of a volume formula to a given cone makes very little difference.
This is one of the reasons math education is such a travesty. The people teaching it don't understand that it's not the specific mathematical idea that matters, it's the thought process, pattern recognition, and abstract thinking capability required to apply them. Teaching a kid how to graph a parabola isn't about the parabola, it's about figuring out how it works so you can realize that graphing [x^2] is not meaningfully different from graphing [(x+1.625)^2 + 5.375] in terms of how you deal with it. It's about the thought process; the idea itself is just the vehicle (not saying that there's no value at all, but for the vast majority of people the value of the actual mathematical concepts never matters - hence the poor "I'll never have to do this in real life" attitude that's so common among people struggling with math). And because the teachers don't get it, they can't teach it to their kids, so they never understand why they should care about how to manually calculate the volume of a cylinder.
This is why "you won't always have a calculator" is such a poor response to "why do we have to learn long division by hand when we could just use a calculator" - because it misses the entire point. The point isn't that you can get the end answer correct. The point is that you want to understand how it works on a core level, so you can flexibly apply the lesson to a variety of different circumstances, including circumstances that were not explicitly taught to you. And if you're good at math, that means you're at least reasonable at the sort of deductive reasoning and disciplined thought processes that being good at math requires, and those skills translate over really nicely to the LSAT, in every section.
Just some thoughts.