How to Survive—and Even Prosper—On the LSAT

Excellent paper that makes you think a little bit more clearly about THE BEAST.

http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~rcoas/prelaw/survivelsat.pdf

Reposted below in case the original disappears:

How to Survive—and Even Prosper—On the LSAT

James Yoho, J.D., Ph.D.

From the Spring 2004 issue of NAPLA Notes

For most who aspire to attend law school, the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) looms as an

academic rite of passage that is, at best, an annoyance-and, at worst, downright intimidating. You may hear

whispered Wes of other pre-law wannabes that approach the status of urban legend: the college

valedictorian (known by 'somebody's' cousin) who became a broken person after doing no better than 152

on the LSAT after three tries, or the Type-A Ivy Leaguer (knowingly profiled on an Internet bulletin board)

who decided to become a telemarketer following a poor performance on the test that came even after

investing a few thousand dollars in prep courses.

Part of the task for one who is preparing for the LSAT, then, is to somehow cut through the near-

paranoia about the test in order to do well and get into law school (for which the reward will be to go

$100,000 into debt in order to spend three years studying subjects with strange names like 'torts' and

'remedies' for 10 or more hours a day—but that's another story). This paper is intended to give LSAT-takers

the proverbial "big picture' about how to navigate these rapids; after all, we need more telemarketers even

less than we need more lawyers.

Setting a goal for your LSAT score

Most LSAT-takers back into their target score for the LSAT: in effect, they say "Given my GPA, in order

to get into the law school of my (optional insert: parents') choice, I'm going to need an LSAT score of

about 195, so that's my goal.

2

The obvious problem here is what happens if it eventually comes to pass that

you can't score that high. After all, the LSAT produces a bell-shaped distribution curve of its scores, and so

only so many people are going to attain any particular score.

There certainly are those who, trying to be encouraging, contend that anyone who's willing to work hard

and long enough can attain a particular target score, whatever it may be. They quite understand that, say, a

176 will be achieved by only a fraction of 1% of LSAT-takers (the precise figure varies a bit), but believe—as

the major commercial preparation firms are fond of saying—that the LSAT tests only one's ability to take

the test. Thus, this theory goes, with sufficient dedication you will be one of those three or four test-takers

per thousand who gets a 176 or better.

It's dear enough that diligent preparation for the LSAT can improve one's score, even significantly:

more people improve from, say, a 140 to a 165 or from a 152 to a 173 than you might suppose. However,

it's also clear that even the most dedicated test-takers eventually will take their score, as they said in the

musical Oklahoma about the metropolis of Kansas City, “About as fur as you can go.” In short, it never

should be assumed that one can reach a certain score on the LSAT.

A less obvious problem with backing into your goal for a score on the LSAT is that it may well limit

your potential. If you set your sights on, say, a 155, then you might well quit preparing once that score has

been reached in practice. However, suppose that you actually have the ability to reach 165? With that

higher score, you'd have the option of attending a few dozen additional law schools. And even if you don't

want to change your first choice for law school, that higher LSAT score may well translate into more

financial aid.

So, the I-can-score-whatever-I-need approach to arriving at a target LSAT score is, for most, pretty much

a recipe for disappointment, if not heartbreak. A better approach is to set a goal of scoring as well as one

can, whatever that may prove to be; let's call it the go-as-fur-as-you-can-go plan. In other words, prepare for

the test to the point where your score peaks. Whatever that score proves to be, accept it.

The odds are that you can go to law school somewhere- although, certainly, the higher the score, the more options (and

financial aid) you'll have. Note that you don't need the best LSAT score, or other credentials, among your entering law school

class. If you're in, you're in: it's not as though, at graduation, the dean will intone something like “And

graduating now, the last person to be offered admission to his class, is Sasquatch L. Peabody, Jr.” Given

the levels of competition these days to gain admission to law school, if you're offered admission then you

probably can handle the work. (Most of those who don't get through law school have some sort of

significant personal distraction, such as being bored by the work or paying too much attention to pinball

machines, rather than an intellectual inability to handle the work.)

Thus, the obvious question is how to reach one's highest score on the LSAT.

How to reach one's highest score on the LSAT

First, you must come to understand why the right answers to the questions on the LSAT are right and the wrong

answers are wrong. This is not really a matter of your knowledge or intelligence, by the way, as the LSAT is

primarily a test of reasoning skills. Happily, the reasoning tasks presented by the LSAT are limited in

number and so they also are quite repetitive. Put another way: the question types are predictable. Thus, the

careful study of fewer questions than. You might suppose prepares you for all of them and allows you to

move accurately. Additional study beyond this point allows you to improve speed without sacrificing

accuracy. Once you're moving at your maximum speed while retaining accuracy, you're ready!

Second, you must employ a sensible procedural approach to the test; this is necessary to maximize your efficiency.

After all, the whole game here is to maximize the number of correct answers. It's beyond the scope of "

paper to address this in a comprehensive fashion, but consider just one strategic example: most people

move through an LSAT section too quickly. That's somewhat understandable, as it's likely that every single

test one has encountered before the LSAT (with the possible exception of college admission tests like the

SAT and ACT) was structured so that it could be finished easily enough within the allotted time. It's also

the case that much of the advice given. to LSAT- takers holds that one should move at a pace such that a

timed section is finished. Even many LSAT-takers who are advised to slow down fail to heed it; the habit of

finishing a test is just too strong to break.

When an LSAT-taker moves too quickly, three bad things happen. Only the first is recognized very

often: when we do anything too quickly, we make more mistakes-and wrong answers on the LSAT don't

raise our score. This much is obvious enough, but what escapes most test-takers is that the move-at-a-pace-

to-do-all-of-the-questions approach really suits only those who can move that quickly without seriously

compromising accuracy.4 All but the rare test-taker would do better to bet the rent on the state lottery: the

LSAT-taker who can miss only one or two questions at the most and score a 180 is, literally, fewer than

one in 1,000-and likely something more like one in every 10,000.

The second problem with moving too quickly should be obvious enough once you think about it: the

time that's spent on missed questions does nothing to raise your score. So, if you miss, say, half of the

questions, you have—all else being equal—spent half of the allotted time without raising your score. If,

instead, you were to emphasize accuracy over speed, you might get another 10% or 20% correct.

That's connected to the third problem that's caused by moving too quickly: during timed practice in

which you move too quickly, you learn to be sloppy rather than accurate-and this complicates learning

why the right answers are right and the wrong answers are wrong. It's possible to overcome this even ff

you're moving too quickly during practice testing, but it's much more likely that such a test-taker will,

instead, make the problem even worse by making the additional strategic error of emphasizing the quantity

of practice at the sacrifice of its quality--which guarantees only that you'll get a lot of practice missing

questions.

Finally, you must practice applying those sensible procedures to real LSATs until your practice scores peak. As

already intimated, to practice less-than-sensible procedures is no guarantee of success, or even of

significant improvement. Many LSAT-takers say something like this: 'I've spent a few hundred hours

taking every practice LSAT that I could find, and my scores still haven't improved much.' It's possible that

such a person simply has gone as "fur" as he or she can go, but it's much more likely, given the sheer

quantity of practice, that this is mostly reflective of confusion about what and how to practice and so all of

these hours of practice are reinforcing some bad test-taking habits. It's like a beginning tennis player who

endlessly practices serving while standing on only one foot: he might well practice more than anyone else

and could be the best one-footed tennis server in the whole state, but-all else being equal-he's going to be

at a real disadvantage with an opponent who practices less, but with both feet on the ground.

Even sensible procedures must be practiced until your score has gone as high as it will go. There is no

magic number of hours of practice before this happens, and it's fairly idiosyncratic. I suggest that a test-

taker take at least three full (real) LSATs under timing, each to be followed by a careful, untimed review of

the wrong answers. This includes doing the questions that there wasn't time to answer during the initial

timed practice of that section. Once all of this has been done, take careful stock: how close does your score

seem to be to peaking? How much time is left before test day?

A related issue here is under what sort of timeline you're operating. If you're scheduled to take the test

in, say, 10 days, then it's simply not feasible to plan to take and review 10 more LSATs before then.

Obviously, one option is to delay taking the test; how- ever, that also may delay your entry into law school,

depending on the circumstances. Generally, an earlier application is better than a later one during the

same application cycle and thus an early start on LSAT preparation

The ideal timeline for a law school wannabe is to take the June administration of the test; if in college

at the time, that's the June that follows the junior year. This allows for the final 4-6 weeks of preparation

to be uncomplicated by classes. Obviously, once the test date has been ascertained you must decide when

to start preparing for the LSAT, but this can be a bit trickier than you may suppose: if the timeline is too

short, you'll run out of time; if it's too long, you may not follow through and, if you do, you may burn out.

Consider adopting a preparation timeline that's designed to get you ready one test administration earlier

than your true target (e.g. the February test), as you may well find that, for various reasons, you're not

ready then and so have some extra time. If the June test date arrives and you're just not ready, then

postpone taking the test until October.

Preparation books and courses

The primary rationale for obtaining assistance in preparing for the test is that this will both save time

and increase even your long-term effectiveness-not to mention short-term. After all, those who write the

books and preparation courses have taken studying the LSAT for a long time and so probably can get you

off to a faster start. It's also entirely possible that they know a few things about the test that you wouldn't

discover through the trial-and-error that's the hall- mark of self-preparation.

By far, the cheaper way to go here is to buy one or two commercial preparation books that contain test-

taking strategies. For a rather small investment, you'll get lots of ideas on strategy. Keep in mind that some

of them are better than others. Therefore, be ready to discard any particular bit of advice if your practice or

common sense tell you that it just doesn't work for you. On the bright side, even the process of thinking

critically about what you find in these books- whether you eventually accept or reject any particular bit of

advice-will sharpen your ability to think strategically about the LSAT.

Note carefully that the practice tests found in these books are not worth your time. They aren't real

LSATS, which is to say that their difficulty level has not been calibrated like the real thing; thus, the

practice 'scores" that they yield are not necessarily accurate. Also, the quality of the questions often is rather

poor, especially on the three-fourths of the test that are the Reading Comprehension and Logical

Reasoning sections; thus, they don't show what the real LSAT is like as well as they should. The only

positive attribute of unofficial LSATS, really, is that explanations for the questions often are provided.

However, explanations really aren't all that helpful.

Luckily, there's a cheap way around this problem: you can purchase real LSATs for a relative pittance

and use them for your practice. Some like to make sure that some of the more recent tests are used for

practice, as they reflect certain trends in the evolution of the test.

Preparation courses are more expensive. Even if you have the money, that doesn't mean it's necessarily a

good use of it-or of your time. The trick to making this decision is to be clear about why you would be

taking a course. If your eventual decision is to take a course, then find the one that best meets those needs;

by no means are all courses equal.

Above all else, you'll want an effective instructor. Unfortunately, it's often the case that you can't

ascertain even the identity of the instructor of a particular course, much less something about his or her

credentials. This is never a good sign, and often it's meant to hide that the instructor has few or no teaching

credentials-and having scored well on the test is a test-taking credential and only slightly relevant to teaching

ability. Often, instructors still are undergraduates themselves!

Instructors must know both how and what to teach. If you're thinking about taking a preparation course

mostly for its test-taking strategies and the company that offers the course also publishes a book on the

LSAT, you'd probably be better off just buying the book. After all, do you really think they saved any

"secrets' for the course?

A preparation course that's longer than 15 or 20 hours is too long for most people. Undue length

suggests intellectual disorganization-not to mention an unnecessarily high price. There are other problems

associated with undue length, such as lots of meetings; beyond a certain point, you're better off using this

time to practice. Still, the biggest problem associated with an overlong prep course may well be that you

never learn to work on questions while away from the instructor. After all, the instructor won't be able to

help you on test day!

The LSAT-takers who most benefit from a long prep course seem to be those who need the 'structure'

that it provides. However, even these test-takers still must find time to practice on their own. It also makes

you wonder if someone who needs this sort of coddling really belongs in law school, where there's very

little 'structure.' (For example, in most law school classes there are no papers, quizzes, or even midterms-just

a final exam!)

If you opt to take a preparation course, try to find one that's offered through a college or university it's

likely to be a short and relatively inexpensive course that's taught by someone with better qualifications

than is likely with a commercial course.

Retaking the Test

It's surprising how many people take a half-hearted stab at preparing for the LSAT, figuring that they

always can take it again. The most obvious problem with this approach is that whatever your score may

prove to be, it clearly won't be as high as it might've been. A second effort will require preparation any-

way, so why not get it right the first time? Also, note well that law schools usually average multiple LSAT

scores, so a low first score will continue to haunt you.

If you prepare using real LSATs taken under timing, your score m test day should not surprise you.

Conclusion

Chin up! If you believe you can handle law school, to be followed by a glamorous and lucrative career

in the law, then presumably you can handle the LSAT, too. While a certain contempt for the whole

process is healthy, you should not fail to respect the test-for it is what it is. Above all else, you should

understand the beast, and plan for how you're going to tame it.

Notes

1. Dr. Yoho is a denizen of Pennsylvania who holds a law degree (Juris Doctor) from the

University of Illinois and a Ph.D. in Government from the University of Virginia. He also has

12 years of experience teaching at colleges and universities, including two law schools, and

served for seven years as a university pre-law adviser. He now works full-time as a coach on

standardized tests of general reasoning ability (like the LSAT), offering preparation courses

since 1996 at the request of several well-known colleges and universities. Well-published in law,

political science, and test preparation, his principal research interests are in the areas of

American constitutional law, interest groups, and the strategic dynamics of standardized tests.

2. Yes, the author knows that the scaled score for the test ranges from 120-180; he was just

kidding around, which was the only recreation available to him during a youth misspent in the

Midwest. He figures that you know the scale, too (or can find out easily enough), which is why

he's not focusing here on basic details about the LSAT.

3. It's acknowledged that reasonable people can disagree on when an LSAT-taker knows that his

or her practice scores have gone as 'fur' as they can go. Without tying to address that issue

comprehensively here, it will be said that the notion is rejected that an apparent peak in

practice scores necessarily is just a score plateau that will prove to be temporary if additional

practice is undertaken. As already has been argued here, you can reach your limit of

achievement on the test; the problem is knowing when you can't go any higher. In addition,

the additional practice that will be necessary to raise your score even more may not be feasible,

and the possibility of preparation burnout also must be considered.

4. "Accuracy" doesn't necessarily mean 100% accuracy. The standard that the author urges upon

students is to be about 90% confident that an answer is correct unless there is an extenuating

circumstance with that question, in which case you should move on rather than get bogged

down. (The move-on-ff-you're-truly-stuck idea may seem either contradictory or suspiciously

similar to the move-fast-enough-to-finish approach, but this is as much a matter of emphasis as

anything else: as a matter of routine, does a test-taker emphasize accuracy or speed?

5. You may not want to hear this, but here it is: once you have been told what types of reasoning

tasks are on the test, you're better off being self-reliant when it comes to applying those

principles to particular questions. Explanations are a crutch that you should discard as soon as

you can.

6. Law schools sometimes say that they'll 'consider" an applicant's higher or highest LSAT score,

but this always was true. However, they'll still average them for such purposes as describing the

qualifications of their entering class, should they offer you admission to it and should you

attend- so beware: law school prestige is most closely linked to selectivity in admissions, and so

a law school's prestige is, in a sense, only as good as the official LSAT scores of the applicants to

whom admission is offered.