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Related Discussions
How long does it take to complete course?
JPJ July2021
Core Member
Hi everyone!
I started studying over the summer using the LSAT Trainer. While it was helpful to understand some concepts, I'm not even close to where I want to be scoring, which is 170+ for the June test. I'm especially weak on Logic Games. I'm on winter break until the end of January and I wanted to try 7Sage. How long does it take to complete the Starter or Premium course?
Comments
The short answer is, it depends. Some people need more/less practice and thus do more/less problem sets and review while going through the course. On average, I think it takes most people around 2 months-ish to complete the course.
Before I upgraded to Ultimate + I had the starter. I believe studying 25 hours a week, it tooks me about 8 weeks to go through the course. That time doesn't include all of the problem sets and fool proofing, though.
@"Alex Divine" How many months did you study before actually taking the LSAT the first time? It looks like some people on here spend a year preparing. Since I will be returning to school full time in few weeks & working, I am wondering whether I should postpone the test until June to give myself more prep time. If yours is a rough estimate 8 weeks x twenty five hours is a lot of hours.
I'm not a great example because I started my prep last year and have studied on and off since. But I still haven't taken the LSAT yet. My job makes it really hard for me to have quality study time and plan more than a few weeks ahead.
Having said that, yeah, a year is a realistic time to study for this test depending on what score you want/where you start from. The majority of the people I know who scored a 170 studied for close to a year or more. The people who studied less definitely studied intensely for 4-6 months, and most of those people had diagnostics in the 160s.
You should plan on taking the test when you're ready. You'll know you're ready when your PT average is at or above your target score.
Have a tentative date (like June) so you have something to work towards. I think that's important due to Parkinson's law and human psychology. But, if you want a 170, that's just a score you can't brute force; It requires just as much propositional knowledge as it does know-how. So you really have to have time to properly master the methods and sections as well as time to practice applying what you've learned on timed sections/PTs. And, at least in my experience, this takes most people a year or more.
The LSAT is going to be the most important part of your entire application. Give yourself all the time you need. Spend a good amount of time upfront learning and mastering the fundamentals and the rest will take care of itself with practice and smart review
These things are different for different people. I took my first test after three weeks of study without 7sage. I scored a 172. But my diagnostic was a 168. Like you I started weak in games, but either my nature or my education already had me almost perfect in the other two section types.
Since I found out logic games were the easiest section to improve I decided to retake. I got 7 sage and studied almost full time(I had a part time job) over the summer. Since I was full timeish and already familiar with the test I went through the core curriculum fast, less than a month. Then I got into the heart of my studying which was foolproofing logic games using the freely available explantions on 7sage. Foolproofing means that you do each game, watch the explanation video, and then repeat the game until you have memorized every inference in the game. After that you come back to the game a couple more times(I did it the next day and next week) to make sure that you still remember. Since there are a limited number of total game types and different inferences, eventually this process makes you perfect at games. I did it with the games from tests 1-35 and then added in some more after I had taken them in practice tests. This took until the end of August and I didn't quite get to perfect(I missed 1 on the real test in September).
During this time I also took practice tests with blind review. Those ended up being really important and my main learning method for the other sections. Other people often drill question types that they are bad at.
After just over 3 months of this prep I scored a 180 in September with the 1 mistake from logic games.
What you should take away from that isn't that it takes three weeks to get from 168 to 172 and 3 months to get from 172 to 180.
You should take away that logic games are the most easilly learnable section. You should not take the test before averaging below -2 on games over your last ten PTs.
Even though they are the most learnable, it can reasonably take about 3 months studying close to full time to go from struggling/unable to finish the games section on time to not quite perfect. Further, you may have less far to go on the other section types, but they are even more time intensive to improve for most people.
So could June be reasonable? Yes. Could the starter pack be reasonable? Yes, it is all I used. Could you need more time and resources? Yes, so I would probably take a diagnostic now and if it isn't in the mid 160's and your mistakes are not just or almost just on games, get the ultimate course. If your problems are just on games, I found the starter course and the free publicly available online explanations for every game ever sufficient(the starter course only lasts three months though).
Good luck with your journey!