LSAT Logic Games vs Logical Reasoning | Coaching

since i took the june test i focused a lot of my studies on logic games and i found that i've been able to improve significantly even since since since um and i think that was still my best section on the test because i found it pretty easy um but i found i've improved since on those and i can definitely see the results there and as a lot of as you said on your website and as others the other resources that i've looked to do said because it's the most for lack of a better word empirical or the most precise section it's the most easily learnable one um in contrast i think i'm finding that the logical reasoning is where um i'm not improving very well i'm not improving in the same way i took a practice section um and i worked on in the last i worked on last week and a very unexpected occurrence happened um so the day before i had gone over i printed out every single question on a previous section i got wrong and went through and looked over the right answer the explanation and the wrong answer and the explanation why i was wrong and i thought that i fairly well understood why i got each of those questions wrong and so i went and i did another another separate logical reasoning section on a test i didn't time myself i tried to do within time but i figured i'm not worrying about that for these cases and i got it was honestly the worst section i'd done since i took my diagnostic and i was very very surprised by that because i genuinely thought that i was understanding these options and understanding why and a number of the questions um that i got wrong it was between two the two final answer choices that i had narrowed down so it was fundamentally i could have probably gotten five or six more questions right if i'd chosen the other option of course understood yeah it always comes down to those last two right and that's the nuances the small details and answer choice that can make all the difference and so as you're going through the review process that's one of those things you want to look for yeah logical reasoning is the section i think that is the biggest pain for me um i can certainly improve and want to improve about reading comprehension but i think that i want to focus more of my energies onto onto logical reasoning and maintaining the the improvements i've seen in logic games because if i'm frustrated with the lsat or i feel like i don't want to do logic games i don't get frustrated i do a lot i do logic games for the day because i know that i can definitely absolutely figure out all this stuff during that time yeah yeah of course yeah logical reasoning there's a lot more nuance a lot more dive into like you said logic games can be a lot more clear-cut logic reasoning has a lot that's perceived entities of language and so you want to walk through that review process in depth have you had the chance to go to any of the live classes for logical reasoning and walk through that review process there seeing the subscribe method in action no that i have not had the opportunity to do yet um i think i only registered on thursday for the supreme course and so and over the weekend i focused on logic games because it was very busy and so i wanted to get tested and studying in but i didn't have as much time as i would like so i just focused on logical reasoning through another program through my existing resources yeah understood of course okay well when you have some more time to dig in when work is not so busy you can carve out the time then go to some of those live classes on logical reasoning if you can't how you walk through it live in class and how involved it can really be when you get into it looking at what threw you off initially was it in a stimulus was it how you framed how you interpreted the question stamp or was it the small differences in the answer choices so in those situations where you're down to two it's really worth diving deep to figure out okay well what made the wrong answer seem appealing what ultimately made it wrong what made the right answer seem unappealing at anything and what ultimately makes it correct so you have those traps of encouragement towards the wrong answer and traps of discouragement away from the right answer there's a lot to unpack there yeah yeah it's still fun it's still very fun yeah well if you're looking at that yeah it can be fun it can be fun to say okay well those sneaky test writers they threw some tricks in there you can admire them for how clever they are and then over time as you adopt as you understand more of those you can then admire yourself and be proud of yourself for how you can dodge that i might use a less kind word than sneaky so that that one test i don't remember what test it was i think it might have been in 2013 or something but i was just absolutely astounded by the fact that i did frankly terribly on the section and i don't know the what the approach is for handling that kind of a an undulation that kind of a dip um because one of the things that i found so frustrating about the process of setting for this test is that unlike say the gre or the act before that there's far less of what i would call empirical content that it's like this is very clearly the wrong answer and why it does that make sense i might not be describing that very clear how do i put this there's i've been particularly frustrated with logical reasoning because it seems far more nebulous of a section than say the logic games and i found that very frustrating because it seems like there's it's almost it seems like it's almost up for interpretation and that sometimes the answer that they've chosen one could argue a different argue for another option and so i don't know how i just don't know how to read them as well as i would like to yet and i don't know how to handle the hurdle of the hurdle of doing well or reasonably well one day and then doing not so well the next day because it's i would think that if one has been studying for so long there would be a degree of consistency and i with logical reasoning i still see the even after working on stuff for a while i hear so there's two things there one is the fluctuations one is the seeming how seemingly nebulous how seemingly nebulous the logical reasoning section can be because of those perceived ambiguities of language so i'll address those separately the fluctuations are totally normal i've never met a student whose scores didn't fluctuate and almost everyone's also frustrated by those fluctuations but even if you have your ideal true score and i say ideal in like the philosophical sense like you have one inherent score to yourself let's say that your your true score that represented your aptitude was just let's say a 170 on a good day you could score 173 on a bad day you score 167 even lsac themselves says there's a natural range based on idiosyncrasies of any particular test form so maybe get a 170 on exam 89 by 167 on exam 88 and 173 on exam 87 that's entirely possible so it's crazy so that's actually a reason why retaking the lsac makes a lot of sense because if you score at your low point one time you can score your high point the next time it's a range of six points in reality they actually say that's a three and a half point range on each end so really you have a seven point range altogether so there's a lot of reason to retake to hope that you hit your high point maybe one exam has a tough game section and you don't like games one exam has a tough lr section and you don't like lr whatever you know what i mean like lots of possibilities and logical reasoning has fluctuations as well maybe they have a tougher parallel question one time and a tougher strength in question depending on your strengths and weaknesses it could unfold differently for you there's also just you as a person like one day you were tired one day you were overworked another day you're fresh you perform differently based on that as well so a lot could be going on there i'd like for you to take the average of your most recent five or so exams and take that as an indication of where you stand but not place over not place too much importance on any one exam or any one session okay okay another question in mind and it just slipped oh so here's a question that i have had and it's been a bone to pick that i've had while studying for this exam and it has to do with the value that the test is given by law schools and specifically i've been using lsac max for a lot and for a lot of my and something i found infuriating about their marketing is that they they report that it accounts for at least 70 of the admissions decision first of all i have no idea how that's quantified though i've seen it said i've seen and heard them and read them say it and second just in your professional experience what merit is there to that obviously unlike the gre unlike perhaps the mcat it is weighed in a particularly heavy weight compared to other graduate level level exams but what in your experience is the is the weight that it's given um by law schools in comparison to say say gpa or or those other qualities and components of the application such as your letters of recommendation and your personal statement it's a great question and certainly any numerical claim around the relative importance of the lsac relative compared to other factors that claim should have a citation we should be able to look up if it's 70 or 60 or 80 whatever it might be i don't think 70 is accurate that sounds really high to me and of course what you're saying was 80 and i think i i i had to bite my tongue because i wanted to say that that was out there had to be absolute bs yeah i mean they have to back that with something there has to be some evidence there's a citation you have to have data and you can't you can't provide that doesn't exist yeah admission officers will always claim oh it's holistic and probably that just it sounds nice to say there's the other end right like they say we look at everything in truth they have strong incentive to consider lsac scores very highly because that's what goes to the american bar association that's supposed to u.s news no one is quantifying a personal statement it can't be done but the lsac can be done and so u.s news factors in lsat they factor in gpa and i would expect that however u.s news factors in those numbers is how law schools have incentive to factor in as well yeah as for the exact numbers and proportions i couldn't tell you okay but overall my understanding is lsat is the number one factor gpa is number two then the quote-unquote soft factors like personal statement diversity statement letters of recommendation addenda or resume all have a role to play as well okay now because as you say and as i've read gpa is considered number two i'm in a position at presence where i am what the law school blogs and reddit and what have you have called a reverse splitter my gpa is very was very high in undergrad um and my lsat score is well i wouldn't say low i think because it's definitely above i did respectively well on it um but it's low when you if we're a student wanting to get into like northwestern or georgetown um and so what's positioned is how how do i put this how what position is a student like that in um when they don't have the lsat score but they clearly have the gpa um and then say they also have a good personal statement and all the other the other factors um if if one is not going to be able to raise the lsat score obviously they intend to do that but in that sort of a circumstance yes so as you said remember that you have a retake ahead of you and so your lsat score is not set in stone let's let's do everything you can take to a higher score when you take and you can potentially take after that if you want to so it's not done the door's not closed also you can potentially write an addendum and say hey if this is true for you you could say hey my sat or act score did not accurately predict my undergraduate performance see my sat score was whatever it was my gpa is quite high so my standard scores are not my destiny as you can see from this track record i have of success so that is something you could write in an addendum not recommend it if you end up at the end of the day still in a somewhat of a reverse leader situation even if you don't say hey my lsat score is still pretty good but even that doesn't reflect how i could ultimately end up doing look at my gpa so that's the moment you can handle it at the end of the day numbers are numbers though yeah as we know but at least you have a very strong gpa and again your lsat's not done so there was another question i should have written these down i had them all in my head perfectly before this meeting another are there any questions you have for me there is one thing i want to circle back on just to discuss a little bit more which was the the seeming ambiguity of logical reasoning so i'm getting the sense that you you might think that like logic games is clear cut it's mathematical there's no ambiguity correct answers there but i had the sense from your wording that maybe you kind of i think this is what kind of challenge some of these answer choices in lr is that am i right about that i absolutely would say that first of all i'll say i think a lot i love i love the logic games i legitimately find them enjoyable even though i think they're kind of the silliest thing that is tested on the test um but i really enjoy the logic games because when i get something wrong i can redo it and i can see by i can see based upon the exact delineated rules that were at play like okay well of course i just overlooked that c before d d was not before c like it's very clear why i got the answer wrong it makes perfect sense to me because it's backed up by those rules and i guess i'm not seeing the corollary in logical reasoning about how that is that can work out does that make sense yeah it does because logical reasoning certainly is not as formal yeah as logic games is one can make reasonable arguments on answer choices yeah however the true growth of logical reasoning will come when you can come to understand lsat's reasoning and you can see that this little thing in the stimulus or this little thing in the wrong answer made that choice wrong there's always something lsat has a very good track record where out of nearly 10 000 questions they've only withdrawn like a dozen or so at most as being invalid for some reason and maybe there's a couple they should have removed but didn't but overall out of 10 000 let's assume that everything that remains is correct you just gotta dig deeper to figure out what that choice is wrong and what the other one right but there's always something when you get down to it and that's part of where the review that's where the review process comes in to say okay well my mistaken reasoning was xyz i failed to consider this factor whatever it was or just one little thing in the choice made it wrong this other one little thing in the choice might not be how i would afford it but it is correct in the end but yes it's much more informal you gotta look at the method of reasoning or the principles they're using under like their arguments it takes time it's not a clear cut and then oh another question i wanted to ask and it has to do with the way that the lsat um is weighed when it comes to admission decisions for merit scholarships i doubt that there's any data on this either if i wasn't sure i would found it by now but how much if if the two main factors say are your gpa and your your lsat in terms of merit scholarships what's the what would you say in your professional opinion is the breakdown between what decides those merit scholarships for an applicant being admitted well basically the more the higher you are above their medians the more likely you are to get scholarship money and the more scholarship money you're likely to receive so i want you ideally to be let's say above their 75th percentile yeah but say say for example at i don't know georgetown i'm saying my gpa is because it was above the 75th but my we get my lsat score ultimately to be around like the 50th percentile ultimately does that would that be a hindrance to me hypothetically or if that's too specific you can't really answer that because it's too specific well the one thing i'll say in summary is that higher numbers are better this that's all you can really give me your gpa you say it's high that's fantastic you should take your lsat score as high as possible there's not too much more i can say than that except let's also look at the soft factors let's look at your personal statement diversity statement addenda letters of rec resume all of that can play a role as well and let's say if you happen to get lucky as well let's say there's a topic that you cover that really resonates with the person reading your file they've got some wiggle room they can they can do that money as they like it could be like okay well oh you see i like skiing also or you play table tennis i like playing table tennis also whatever it is or it could be based on what you talk about your personal statement there's no longer you talk like i'm saying go google all the people who read the essays yeah and try to try to mention the right things and you don't know which individuals are going to be looking at it but those things can make a difference and if you want to maximize your odds of getting in you want to maximize your scholarship money and make everything as high quality as possible okay oh i finally remember the one question i wanted the main question i wanted to ask so i plan to retake obviously and retake the lsat in november and therefore i'm going to not be fully submitting applications until probably after i do that um my first question is because that lsat score will probably not be coming out so to speak until the end of november will i run into issues as an applicant if say i push send on november 14th the day after i to take the test and so they have everything except that newly updated LSAT score until later then does that would that potentially screw me up as an applicant or would the law school admissions council's credential assembly service sort of just basically send an update saying oh he's got a new LSAT score factor this in put this in his file so i would hold off on hitting submit until your score comes back okay just in case yes schools can see that you have another date on the calendar they can even see if you're registered for an LSAT but you don't want them to look at your application or look at anything about you in terms of your score report until you get that new score back and just think about you want to make the strongest impression possible and a higher score for november then seeing associated with you rather than seeing a lower score plus materials and say okay well we're gonna hold off so we get the new score i want to see a higher score okay and then in that circumstance then that would probably have me applying at the very start of december obviously um it's the the constant advice is submit your applications as early as possible does that classify me as a late applicant at that point would you say okay no december december is not late the cycle has changed over time you might see outdated information from five ten years ago when things happen much earlier in a given cycle but now december january are totally fine they're smack in the middle okay okay because that was one of the concerns i had because i had been preparing myself mentally for the idea of you know i would be okay with pushing it off a year i know this is what i want i'm okay with pushing it off if it means being more strategic um but of course if i can manage everything and it all works out why not for sure i mean if you were taking february or march and you were on the fence about waiting a cycle yeah i would wait if you were taking february and you were not in a hurry if it didn't really matter to you you go this year next year whatever but november lsat january lsat still totally fine to apply the same cycle okay good that is good to know that was something that was a concern to me because i had obviously and this is just the neurotic side of me i've already asked people about letters of recommendation i don't want to feel bad by saying actually i'm waiting a year i'm so sorry to inconvenience you no no it's fine those letters would still be good typically by the way but it's not a year is a big deal and then i think there was one other question but unfortunately it's also a statement okay well if it comes if it comes up later okay they're actually too so sorry when are those um mastermind sessions i'm sure i can find it under website i just haven't had the time to look through it all as thoroughly as i would like when those class sessions are yeah sure so the classes are almost every single day what time typically so typically they're the classes themselves are at 8 p.m eastern okay oh okay there's also study groups typically before and or after class as well so for example today's monday we have reading at 8 p.m eastern there's a reading study group at 7 p.m eastern one hour prior then logical reasoning i mentioned that because you talked about logical reasoning but logical reasoning is on thursdays and there's a group both before and after so logical reasoning 8 p.m eastern study group one hour prior and also at the end of the class itself so if you go to any section of the course on the right sidebar you'll see the summary and then the workshop section has all the zoom rcp links as well okay excellent thank you very much yeah of course do you have one other question as well no i think that actually i think i mentally merged both of my questions and you answered both of them cool perfect all right well it's great to speak with you today any questions you need anything reach out i'm happy to help excellent thank you very much 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 move forward with your prep i'm happy to help however i can in the meantime i wish you all the best and take care