What would make this an especially useful conversation for you today? So as someone who is like relatively new to preparing for the outset, I want to gain like a good grasp on how to like study for it for like the best results. Yeah, sure. So when are you taking the LSAT?
I'll probably take it around my junior year of college. So in like in years, oh, okay. And you want to start studying soon? So that was actually one of my questions.
So I was wondering like around how much time should I spend studying for the outset? Like how much time before the test should I start studying for it? Yeah, sure. So that's your goal score.
Um, my goal score will be around just the best score I could get. So in the one 60s, one 70s. Okay. Where do you want to go to law school?
I don't have like a specific law school in mind, but I do want to get into top 25 or top 15 law schools. Okay. The reason I ask is that it's important to have the goal of mind so that we have a sense of how much you need to invest in the process. Okay.
Yeah. So with law school, there is a category of schools called the top 14 based on the US news rankings. These include several Ivy League law schools as well as other top law schools like Stanford, University of Chicago, like University of Michigan and Virginia and so on. And these schools typically require scores in the high one 60s, low one 70s and beyond.
Okay. And the specific LSAT score that you need will vary depending upon your undergraduate GPA. Okay. So is it like the lower the GPA, the higher the LSAT's where you would need to like compensate for your GPA?
Exactly. Okay. As she regardless, if you want to go to a top school, you want to get the highest possible LSAT score. And so I'm glad that you reached out to me now because that gives you maximal time to invest in the process and achieve the best results possible.
I find that this use to do best on the LSAT typically spend at least five to six months in order to reach their fullest potential. Actually, the more you put in, the more you'll get out. I don't think that you study every single day over the course of an entire year. But it's not too early to start thinking about what your prep might look like.
So I'm glad that you reached out about that. Of course, we can talk about a plan. Okay. So do you think I should like start studying a little bit from now on and like start maybe like once a week up to I take the LSAT, where do you think I should like start studying maybe like six months before the LSAT and just like study every single day, like three hours a day?
So I would start a little bit now and then granted off times you get closer to the LSAT. But I understand of course that you may have competing obligations in the meantime. So I wouldn't want you to study for the LSAT at the expense of your GPA right now if you have a full course load. So let me ask you this.
What's your course like and what are your other obligations like? As for now, my schedule is pretty, pretty tight. So I don't think I have like a lot of time to study for the LSAT, but I'm trying to drop a couple of things next year. So maybe that would be a good time to start studying more for the LSAT.
So yeah. That sounds reasonable to me. Now, what about the summer? What are your plans for the summer?
I don't have a full plan for the whole summer, but I do have some stuff that I want to attend for like a month. So I do have some time in the summer to study for the LSAT. Good. Okay.
So I would suggest that you try to keep your summer as light as possible since presumably you won't be doing any college classes then and you can focus a lot of your summer on LSAT prep and then you could take the LSAT in the late fall or in the winter. Okay. I see. And I was wondering like how many times, how many times should you like take the LSAT?
Is there like a specific number of times that people would do like the best on or? So most people in my experience retake. Okay. Now you don't need to retake.
Of course, it would be ideal if you took it once and got a 180, right? That would be, there's nothing better than that really from an admissions perspective unless maybe you got two 180s or three 180s, but there's actually a limit on students who have gotten that score. You can't take it again. Okay.
I would say aim to take it only once. Okay. Keep in mind that if you achieve at or below your prep test average, it might not hurt to retake it. In fact, it would not hurt to retake it because law schools do not average multiple scores.
They only take the highest. So let's say that your average and the score that you deserve to get reflected your true attitude was a 170. That's obviously fantastic. You could apply with that and potentially be okay, depending on your GPA.
But there's a score band or margin of error of three and a half points on each end, which means that you deserve a 170 one day you might get a 170 the next day you might get a 173 or 174. And even if you don't truly deserve that 173 174, let's say you got lucky or the test played to your strengths or what have you, you can do a fly with a 174. That's awesome. Obviously it opens far more doors than a 170.
So unless you score above your average, there's really no reason. Not to retake from my perspective. I see. I see.
Also, do preps test tend to correlate to like preps scores. Are they like, do they like translate to like real test scores? Are they like similar or is there like a big difference, usually? So they should be relatively similar.
Sometimes they aren't though. There's a couple of reasons for that. Your your test day performance could be better than your average prep test score. If you perform really well under pressure, if you get lucky, you get into your flow state if adrenaline tends to help you, that could be fantastic.
What happens a lot though is that test day performance actually is lower than your prep test average. And that happens when students do not properly simulate test day conditions or if they suffer from nerves and anxiety. And so I would want you to take your practice test under as realistic test day conditions as possible. And if you are someone who has issues with nerves and anxiety, I would want you to take steps to recognize that as early as possible so that you can better take steps to mitigate that.
Okay. And also like, um, what are like some of the best study methods to study for the outside? Yeah, so what I recommend is a five step approach that I call the laser approach to asset studying. And that is an acronym that stands for learning, accuracy, sections, exams, and review.
Most students just jump right into step four of the exams. They do exam after exam. They measure the results, sometimes obsessively, and then they're happy you're set about however they did and they move on looking for the next dopamine hit to see what I'm not going to get this time. In reality, you should take a step back.
Learning is the first step. That's doing foundational material, reading textbook chapters, watching foundational video lessons covering the basics because you have to learn about what you're going to be doing before you do it. Next up is accuracy, which is doing questions by type. So maybe you do several ordering games in a row.
You do several must be true logical reasoning questions in a row to get a better sense of the proper perspective from which to view that question type. Then as it's for sections doing individual timed 35 minute sections to work on your pacing, ease for exams and endurance, which is doing full length five section exams to properly simulate test day conditions. And then R is for review, which is often neglected, but really important to help you spot your weak areas and learn from your mistakes. I see.
How should I approach reviewing my wrong answers for those that? Yeah, so let's take logical reasoning as an example. If you have trouble with a logical reasoning question, either you got it wrong or you got it right, but you weren't totally confident or you were guessing and it could have just as easily gone the other way, you want to review all of those questions. So for logical reasoning, where did you understand?
From was it in the stimulus? Was it in the question? Or was it in the answer choices? If it was the stimulus, what about the stimulus through you off?
Was it the topic? Was it the lack of indicator words for evidence and conclusion? Was it the fact that things were kind of mixed up and there was a lot of filler? You want to nail that down.
Next is the question. Sam was the question? Was the question? Were it in a confusing or unfamiliar way?
And you want to know exactly what they were actually asking you in your post game analysis. And if you're misunderstanding some of the answer choices, what was tempting about the wrong answer that made you pick it or strongly consider it? And what ultimately makes it wrong? And what was discouraging about the right answer that pushed you away from it?
But what ultimately makes it correct? And this takes time. It takes more time than most students want to invest in it. It's not enough to simply look at an explanation and say, I get it now or spend three minutes reading it over looking at the answer key and saying I get it now.
It's really about slowing down and taking the time to thoroughly articulate your thought process so that you can avoid making the same mistakes again. Because it's else that really is a test of pattern recognition more than anything else. I see it. I see it.
So I did take one practice test one time and I found that analytical reasoning, the analytical part was my weakest. So do you have any tips on how to study for the analytical section? Yeah, so analytical reasoning is also, of course, known as logic games. So referring to the logic game section, which is the most intimidating and unfamiliar section for a lot of students at first.
That's because most people haven't done anything like that previously. But it is actually the most learnable and the most perfectable section as well. And so if there's one thing, and I'll talk a little bit later about things you could do in the law over this long span of one year to build your basic familiarity. But I do recommend starting with games.
I would say you could do one game section per week and then look explanations, redo them to look for the patterns and start to build some basic familiarity because otherwise it may be hanging over you that you have this identified week area that seems really strange and unfamiliar. But I would want you to actually just do full sections as they're published in the prep test. I would rather you do four games at a time of a certain type. So let's say four of the simplest relative ordering games than four of the strict or basic ordering games than for grouping games and so on.
Or maybe even more than four. But I want you to do games by type. So in my study plans that had that underlying laser focus approach to else and studying, my study plans starting with games, specifically the easiest ordering games. You work on the easiest ordering games, then the moderate ordering games, then the most difficult ordering games, then easy grouping, moderate grouping, difficult grouping and so on.
Because in the exams, they're all scattered around like a grabback, which is confusing because you're playing dodgeball with all different sized balls. You don't really know what's coming at you. But if you work on them with categorization that puts some method to the madness and you'll be able to better see the patterns between these games and the common set of techniques for each one. And if you really want to top score, I would say get your hands on every single LSAT ever released.
And if you want to top score, if you want to perfect games, then I would say do every LSAT game ever released. Over the course of a year, there's no reason that you couldn't do all of them multiple times. And even if you did half of them multiple times, there would really be very little new under the sun they could throw at you. Is it helpful to repeat questions that you already have done?
Definitely. And the reason is that it's not about measuring yourself because obviously if you repeat a question within a short enough time span, you will remember something about it. But the point of doing these is not to simply measure yourself. It's to learn from your mistakes.
So when you get a perfect score, you said that you did one outside diagnostic. If you were to redo that exam today, would you get a perfect score on it? Probably not. Most people.
And that means that there's still something to learn from those questions. So same goes for these games. And you may also find a more efficient approach. Like maybe you could do the game perfectly, but it takes you 20 minutes.
Could you cut that in half with a more efficient technique? Were you using previous word or more inferences upfront or better diagramming style? Okay. Or what I find those sets like the practice sets are released.
So they are available, most of them are available in books of 10 exams on Amazon for about 20 bucks each. Okay. There are also a handful of the newer ones that are not published in books of 10, only available individually, but a year from now, I think they may be available by the time you take it as a book of 10 as well. And then there's a handful that are harder to get, but with some digging around in the out of print section of Amazon, you may find them.
Okay. So you were saying start with the games and then from easy moderate and then keep moving up difficulty level. Yeah. Go ahead, please.
Okay. And after I finished those, then start with the real test and I can practice tests. Yes. Do games by type, then reasoning by type, then reading comprehension.
But once you've done all the games by type, or enough of them of each type by type, then you can do individual time sections. My second plan is go into this. I would say check those out. If I have some free general week by week ones on the site, then I have some paid, but low cost ones there as well for a variety of different study time and that will take all the guesswork out of it.
So that step by step, day by day, you know exactly what to do and what not to do. I integrate the games, categorizations and logical reasoning categorizations so that you're not hunting through the exams yourself. Okay. Thank you.
Of course. One more comment I want to share with you before we sign off is that you can, aside from doing actual problems, there are some other ways you can study or gain some basic foundation on this exam in the meantime. I have the else on the podcast and the else on the YouTube channel where I'm putting out new material every single day. I mean, I'm including discussions, interviews, class recordings, Q and A's, shorter videos as well, coaching conversations like this one we're having right now.
And so there's a lot of ways you can be learning in the interim even during your downtime. Like during, like I say, you're driving home from college or you're doing some errands or doing some housework, whatever it is, you could be listening to the podcast or playing the video and absorb some basic information around this process. Okay. Thank you.
Of course. Yeah. Thank you for your help. My pleasure.
Before we sign off, what do you say is the biggest insight you got from this call today? I think I've gotten a better grasp on how to really approach the studying of the L for the set. So like I learned that I should start with games first and the practice sets. So that would be one example.
So yeah, I think I've gotten a better grasp on how to study for it. Glad to hear. Well, please let me know if you need anything at all as you move forward. All right.
Thank you. Thanks for tuning into the show. Please subscribe if you haven't done so already to be notified of new episodes as I release them. And feel free to reach out if you need anything at all as you feel with your prep.
I'm happy to help. However, I can. In the meantime, I wish you all the best and take care.