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How I’d Score 175+ On The September and October LSATs
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If you're taking the LSAT this fall, you've got a massive opportunity because you get to take the LSAT without the logic game section and you get to apply early in the cycle. Today I'm going to walk you through what I would personally do if I wanted to score at a 175 or above on the LSAT in September and October. For those who don't know me, my name is Steve Schwartz and I personally increased my LSAT score from a 152 to a 175 and I've been teaching the LSAT for almost 20 years now. Now the September LSAT, the October LSAT, you got roughly two to three months to prepare for those. Hopefully you've already been at this for a little while and you already have a strong foundation in the different sections of the LSAT and the different question types. Now there are roughly 15 different types of logical reasoning questions but not all of them show up as frequently as others. For example, necessary assumption questions, inference questions, and flaw questions are the biggest three types of logical reasoning questions. They're the ones that show up most frequently on the LSAT and the good news is that since logical reasoning is now two-thirds of the sections, any gains you make in your understanding of logical reasoning will be doubled across those two sections. Now you can divide LSAT prep into three major phases, accuracy, pacing, and endurance. Accuracy is drilling questions by type, pacing is doing individual timed sections, and endurance is doing full-length timed practice tests. Now if you're taking the LSAT in September or October, hopefully you've got the accuracy phase down already, meaning you've already spent some time drilling the different question types and you understand the proper strategies for each of those types. I'd love for you to spend the final two months or so of your LSAT prep focused on pacing and endurance, doing individual timed sections to determine how you allocate your time over this course of the section and endurance doing full-length timed practice tests. Now if you have 35 minutes per section with standard timing, you want to consider that in logical reasoning, not all questions are of equal difficulty. Some are harder than others. They get harder as the section goes on, meaning you want to aim to knock out the first 10 questions of the section in roughly 10 to 12 minutes building up a time bank that you can then apply to the tougher questions later in the section that truly need it. Now when you're getting to the later questions in the section, questions roughly 15 through 23 are going to be the hardest band of questions, so you might want to consider flagging or skipping some questions in that set. Even for me personally, I'll flag three or four of those difficult questions just because I don't want to deal with them in the moment and I'm trusting that I'll be able to come back to them later when I already have the security of knowing that I've already completed the section. I can come back to them and with a second look, a fresh perspective, I might be able to break out of my previous tunnel vision and be able to knock out that question. Now how do you know which questions you want to flag and skip through prior exposure, through experience, knowing what you don't like. So for me personally, I don't like that over like technical questions on natural science or philosophy, anything super abstract. If it's a lengthy parallel question in the later parts of the section, that also might be a candidate for skipping just because everything's worth the same, why risk getting bogged down on a lengthier question with more words to evaluate when there might be an easier question as question 24 or 25 else act sometimes that's that because maybe they want to punish you for not allocating your time properly to be able to complete the section in the first place. All this to say top scores are aware of the difficulty order in logical reasoning, top scores are strategic in knowing what questions to flag and skip and they're strategic in knowing how to allocate their time so as not to get bogged down so they can come back and tackle those tougher questions at the end of the section when they've already locked up those easy points. And by the way, this is a major reason why you don't want to do the toughest questions first in logical reasoning. You don't want to work backwards through this section, not only because it's confusing and counterintuitive, but also because you risk getting bogged down on the tough questions and risk never making it to the easier questions at the beginning of the section. So I like to knock out the easiest questions first, lock up those easy points, then give myself more time for the tougher questions that truly need it. Now in the final month or two of your prep, you want to shift gears and focus more on full length timed practice tests. I recommend aiming to do at least 10 of them before the big day so that test day itself will feel like just another run through these tests are going to be strictly timed. Two sections back to back, a 10 minute break, two more sections back to back, and that's the test. And you want to play with all different combinations. You want to do two LRs, two reading comps, meaning that you're inserting one reading comp section as you were unscored extra experimental section. You also want to play with doing an extra logical reasoning section, meaning you're going to have three logical reasoning sections and one reading comp. And yes, it is possible that you could have three logical reasoning sections in a row, followed by a reading comp or one reading comp, followed by three logical reasoning sections in a row. So whatever is your worst nightmare, whatever you would hate to see on test day, do it now. So it's on a rude awakening for you. It's on a surprise for you on LSAT test day itself. And of course, since the LSAT is now two thirds logical reasoning, you're going to want to devote two thirds of your study time to logical reasoning, no matter when you're taking the LSAT and no matter what your study timeline is looking like going forward. Now, one thing I did not mention in this video is review too often neglected, but incredibly important. After you take any full length time practice test, after you take any individual time section, you want to make sure that you're reviewing your mistakes in depth. Because if you don't learn from your mistakes, of course, you are doomed to repeat them. And nobody wants that. The LSAT is very lazy. They keep reusing the same methods of reasoning over and over, just as they keep reusing the same question types over and over. And so you want to make sure when you're making mistake, what is the root cause of that mistake? It may not be about the question stem type. In fact, if you're already scoring 165 or above on your practice tests, you're probably noticing that there are not any major trends in the logical reasoning question types that you're getting wrong or having difficulty with. And that's because you already know the basic strategies with regard to question stem type. You could just be getting these questions wrong because they're difficult. And so you want to look at where did your mistake stem from? Was it misunderstanding something in the stimulus? Maybe it was failing to recognize a sub conclusion or a counter premise, given LSAT's failure to include key indicator words. It may be that you did not understand the argument or the underlying method of reasoning, the general principle contained within that argument, or maybe it was something in the answer choices. Was it attempting wrong answer or an unappealing right answer? If it was attempting wrong answer, you want to know what made it tempting and what made it wrong. If it was an unappealing right answer, you want to know what made it unappealing to you and what ultimately makes it correct because LSAT has these traps of encouragement towards the wrong answer and traps of discouragement away from the right answer. And until you know which tricks and traps you are personally uniquely prone to falling for, you may end up making the same mistake again. And this is why in our programs at else and unplugged, whether in our one on one coaching program or our small group program, we walk you through the review process using our Socratic review method framework. It's a cornerstone of our courses on our one on one coaching programs. You could check out the links below this video to find out more and to book a call with me, my team, we'd be glad to help you out. And in the meantime, I wish you all the best and take care.