Test Prep Classes: Waste of Money or Time? BOTH!!

Even though I've hinted around the subject, I don't believe I've ever come right out and said it. With that introduction, please, make no mistake about it: I HATE TEST PREP CLASSES.

So many LSATers get brainwashed into believing that the Taplans and the Lowerscores of the world are the key to succeeding on the LSAT. If you're one of them, please e-mail me. I have a beautiful half acre of swamp land that I believe you may be interested in as well. It has magical powers in the swamp water. You'll have to trust me.

Before we even get to the substantive issues I have, lets look at some of problems inherent with these programs that jump off the page. To begin with, you are sharing the class with others. The program has a certain tempo to it, and you have to keep up, regardless of whether or not you are any good at the stuff you've gone over. While this is great for my business (I get plenty of confused Taplan students who come to me for direction), chances are, this isn't the best thing for you. Secondly, they're expensive! Ok, so you get a lot of material for your money. Thats fantastic. That same material is available to buy without having to get stuck in those classes, and to be honest, you'd be better off spending a eighth of money buying old LSAT exams. This way you get used to reading questions the way the examiners intended them, since, after all, THEY WROTE THEM! I have one student who gave me a booklet of logic games questions to help her with that had a "none of the above" answer choice for every question in the book!!! What's the point of that?

Still not sold? Lets talk about some actual problems with their methodologies themselves. Akin to the loudmouth that talks just so he can hear himself speak, most of these classes have a bunch of fluff in the material so they can legitimize charging the absorbanent amount of money they require you to shell out. Take logic games as an example. In my view, this is the simplest section of the exam. Why? Easy. 1. You KNOW when you get the right answer, since the answer you pick will either break the rule or NOT break the rule, depending on the question. 2. The set-ups are USUALLY in the first paragraph of the game. You just need to pay attention. 3. If you can do a simple game, you can do the complex game. The skills that you need are all the same. The only difference between the easiest question and the hardest one is the amount of variables you have to track and the amount of rules they give you. In the end, success or failure in the Logic Games section comes from your ability to make the proper deductions. Thats all there is. However, if you take Taplan or Lowerscore, no no! You NEED to memorize what distribution questions are, grouping, matching, etc... After all, you can't do these questions correctly if you can't throw a label on them! (To this day, I don't think I can label an entire logic games section correctly, but I haven't been stumped by a game in a decade.) But wait folks, there's more! These companies give you pre-constructed game set-ups, so all you need to do is pull out the template and whip along the questions. Except, what they don't tell you is that this isn't a one-size-fits-all test, and they WILL throw curve-balls at you. What will you do when the game you have in front of you on test day doesn't fit into their neat and tidy chart? Unfortunately, Taplan already deposited your money. Besides, it can't be their fault you weren't prepared, right?

The bottom line is that, while many will have success with Taplan or any other of these programs, that doesn't mean they're worth the money. A good, reliable tutor won't cost nearly the amount that these classes will, you'll get personal instruction, which you won't get from these classes, and the study-sessions will be tailor-built around your goals and weaknesses. Here's a logical reasoning question for you: Which is the better purchase? A stock vehicle made for the masses with a hefty price, or a custom-built vehicle, made specifically for your specifications, which most likely equals, if not exceeds the stock car in quality, and is much more affordable? The answer is rather simple, isn't it?

Is It Too Late To Raise My Score?

I think the question that I most frequently get asked is " Do you think I have enough time to raise my score? While it may seem somewhat smarmy, the answer to this is an emphatic "who knows?!" I know, that's not all that incredibly helpful or encouraging, but the truth is, the LSAT is NOT a one-size-fits all test.

You have to be self-aware. The best way to judge for yourself whether you can raise your score is to conduct an HONEST appraisal of your strengths and weaknesses. To maximize your success on the LSAT, you need to have two core abilites. First, you need to be able to read at a high level. This doesn't mean you have to be the second coming of Tolstoy, but you should at least have a decent ability to not only read quality script, but more importantly, comprehend what you're reading. If you are the type that can get through that kind of material, but struggle to a point where you read exceptionally slow, you may want to consider buying yourself more time and investing some hours in elevating the level of your reading. If you can't read through the LSAT material and digest the majority of what you read in a somewhat quick manner, you are most likely going to run into problems. (We won't even discuss what your first semester of law school will feel like when you're struggling to get through Marbury v. Madison.)

Second, you need to have a decent level of common sense. So many students sit and do a section of logic games and get frustrated when the answer they didn't pick looks so obvious after looking it up. By its nature, the questions and answer will make sense. After all, it's not just a game, it's a LOGIC game. If you are the type of person that can easily sift through quantum physics calculations, but spend hours trying to jam a square peg through a round hole, chances are, the test isn't for you. On the other hand, if you do have some amount of common sense, that is really all you need to get through the exam. After all, no amount of subject matter studying outside of the LSAT questions will prepare you for the exam. That's the beauty in the LSAT. You don't need to know anything to get through it.

Assuming you are the typical law student hopeful, you are decently skilled in reading and have common sense, there is absolutely no reason you can't make drastic improvements on your base scores. The key is to identify where your pitfalls are. Is it timing? Work on developing strategies geared towards taking minutes off your time. (As the weeks go on, I'll try to offer suggestions for that.) Is it that you just can't get a certain section? Sink time and energy into that particular section and figure out what you're doing wrong. (A good reliable tutor can do wonders towards helping you get into shape.)

Whatever the reason is, assuming you meet the most minimal qualifications for the LSAT, there is absolutely no reason you can't make major strides towards improving your score by the next test date. Remember: It's not about studying, it's about studying effectively.

Logic Games Myths: The Set-Up Is IMPOSSIBLE!

A common time trap that many lsat students fall into is spending time memorizing a pre-built system of logic game set-ups for each particular question type. (I won't point fingers, but you Taplan and Lowerscore students know who you are.) While this idea may have its merits in theory, for many, this is just another layer of information that needs to some how become jammed in your head with everything else you're trying to learn.

After doing hundreds, if not thousands of logic games, I'm here to tell you that this strategy, more often then not, wastes your time and brain power. I say this for a number of reasons. First, while being able to label a particular game makes sense when discussing it, whether a game is a grouping, sequencing, matching, or anything else is wholly irrelevant in terms of the actual completion of the game. As we'll discuss in future posts, there is no difference in terms of the execution of the questions, no matter what type of game there is. Once you get past the set-up, these games only differ in the amount of variables of which you will be keeping track. That's it.

Another problem with the pre-built, one set-up fits all strategy is that one set-up DOESN'T fit all. I have seen too many examples of students spending a lot of time trying to fit a particular game into one of these pre-built set-ups, only to see that the game doesn't fit perfectly. Instead of taking a fresh look at the way they describe the game in the first paragraph, these students went in trying to assign a label to the question, which places more pressure towards pushing a square peg through a round hole. This leads me to my final point:

In the vast majority of the questions, they will tell you how to set up your game, if you pay attention. In many cases, the initial instructions of the game, in the opening paragraph, will detail how the author wants you to set the game up. For example: Three corporate offices, X, Y, and Z, each have two stories containing a single office. Six employees, a, b, c, d, e, f, and g all use an office at one particular... While I made that particular instruction up off the top of my head, the point is there. They told you to draw three vertical rectangles each cut in half, so you have an upstairs box and a downstairs box. Now, all you have to do is figure out who to assign to each of the vacant buildings.

The majority of the set-ups are just that easy. All you have to do is pay attention to ALL of the facts that they give you. If you don't waste your time learning the pre-packaged crap the larger programs give you, you'll have more time to do what you should have been doing all along:practicing the questions instead of learning the different types.

Timing Is Everything

I often see the same question posed in some pre-law forums that I get frequently form my own students: At what point do I start timing my questions? The answer to this is simple. NOW. Ok, so maybe the answer doesn't need to be that emphatic, but the point is, the sooner you start working on pacing, the easier you will have it come test time.

You may score +165 on your un-timed practice tests, but in reality, being able to choose the right answer is only half the equation. Being able to do so in the alloted time is the REAL trick. As awkward as it sounds, you need to practice the questions timed, because you need to get a feel for what the amount of time feels like for each particular kind of questions. By doing this now, you start developing a habit. By the time the test roles around, you won't have to worry about nonsensical things like, do i guess on the last two passages or do I try to do one and sacrifice the other? That, of course, is for another post...

The LSAT: Check Your Ego At The Door.

When it comes to successfully handling any sort of difficult task, the most important intangible, right after the obvious ones (knowledge and ability), is confidence. No matter how well equipped you are to handle a particular challenge, if you don't have complete confidence in your ability to complete that challenge, you will either simply make whatever it is that much more challenging, or ultimately, you just won't do as well as you probably could have. This is especially true when it comes to the LSAT.

Confidence on the LSAT isn't simply about believing you are smart. The fact is, whether you were a straight-A student or a below average student, the challenges on the LSAT remain the same, and there isn't a single thing you learned or should have learned in your Bio-Chemistry class that is applicable when it comes time to picking the best answer on a logical reasoning question. The confidence you need stems from the belief that, when faced with two seemingly equally-plausible answer choices, you can, and more importantly, WILL pick the right answer. Confidence means not being afraid to pick the stupefyingly easy logic games answer choice that just seems too obvious for such an "insanely tough" section.

This is all the more reason to check whatever ego you happen to bring into your studies at the door. There are some cold hard facts about this test that you HAVE TO understand, or you will ultimately undermine your own success.

1. Any previous academic success or failure has little to no bearing on your performance on the LSAT. It just doesn't matter how well you scored in that Calculus class. The only exception to this rule is performance in logic-heavy, or reading comprehension intensive courses. Unfortunately, you can't succeed on this exam if you don't have, at a minimum, an average ability to read, and equally important, comprehend what you read. More on this at a later time.
   
2. Whether you consider yourself to be smart doesn't mean you are LSAT smart. Likewise, if you think you're an idiot, that doesn't mean you are LSAT stupid. The particular skills you need to do well on the LSAT aren't necessarily skills that you have a sort of heightened awareness of. A bit of common sense will take you awfully far on this exam. On the other hand, you may be able to intelligently lecture on quantum physics, but if you can't complete a logical progression, you have quite the uphill climb ahead of you.
   
3. How your friends, colleagues, and peers are doing in their studies means absolutely NOTHING towards your success. One of the dangers of taking the group instructional courses (which we'll call...uhm...Taplan, Lowerscore, etc...), is that while you're sitting there absorbing much of the swill thats going to confuse you and cause you to focus on studying nonsense (or as I like to call it, their lessons), you're also sitting there judging your own abilities against those of your classmates. This is an especially dangerous practice, but its unavoidable. I would venture to guess it is instinctive. The problem is, just because Mary from row 2 happens to be getting every question right, that doesn't mean that she will perform well when you add the pressure and anxiety of test day. Likewise, just because you may be getting every question wrong at that point, that doesn't mean that this failure will continue. Like anything, the test takes practice, and with enough practice, you'll do fine.

There may be other instances, but I think that the above will suffice. Develop a confident humility (only because there's a fine line between being confident and being a jerk), and you'll be on your way towards success. Besides, the test is difficult enough as it is, the last thing you need is to assist the examiners in making things more difficult for yourself.