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My 175+ Hack for the September LSAT
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Elsak made a huge mistake when they removed logic games from the test and now it's going to be easier to get a top LSAT score. I'll show you how. For those who don't know me, my name is Steve Schwartz. I've been teaching me LSAT since 2005 and I personally increased my LSAT score from a 152 to a 175. I majored in political science. Humanities was my background and so logic games did not come easy to me. It was discouraging. Took me a ton of work to master that section. Now that game is no longer on the test. You have cut away a third of the material that folks had to study. You can now double your focus on logical reasoning since it's two-thirds of the test now and any gains you make in your understanding of logical reasoning will be doubled across the two sections. Now, of course, there are a ton of different types of logical reasoning questions, roughly 15 of them or so, but they don't all show up in equal proportion. Some are more common than others. The biggest type of logical reasoning questions are necessary assumption, inference, and flaw. These are the three most common types of logical reasoning questions. And so you want to focus primarily on those to start. Now, the good news is reading comp only one-third of the test. You can, of course, make big improvements there, but you probably won't improve nearly as much there as you will on logical reasoning if you focus on those three big question types, again, necessary assumption, inference, and flaw. Now, a big misconception students are under about assumption questions is that there is no such thing as assumption questions. There are necessary assumptions and sufficient assumptions. And if you can get crystal clear on the difference between those two types, you can remove one of the biggest obstacles to getting a top LSAT score and perfect the logical reasoning section. I'll share with you the difference. Necessary assumption questions are looking for an assumption that is necessary in order for the argument to work. You're looking for words and phrases in the question stem that are synonymous with necessity like depends upon requires and assumes sufficient assumption questions. On the other hand, much less common, by the way, use words and phrases in the question stems synonymous with sufficiency like allows enables follows logically if assumed and properly inferred if assumed. So if you're clear on the difference between these two question types and if you're clear on the 15 different types of logical reasoning questions in general, you are well on your way to getting a top LSAT score. Since again, logical reasoning is now two thirds of the test. Of course, it's not all about question stem type. Usually when folks are hitting 160 or so on their practice tests, that means that they are good at identifying the different question types and understand the proper way to approach each of those 15 different types. Of course, it's not enough though to get a top score. You've also got to deeply understand the methods of reasoning in the arguments themselves, conditional reasoning versus causal reasoning, correlation, causation, confusing necessary conditions and sufficient conditions for example. And so a lot of LSAT prep textbooks out there, you know, those big 500 page phone books, they devote hundreds of pages to question stem types, but they don't spend nearly as much time on the methods of reasoning in the stimulus. Maybe because it's harder. Maybe because not everybody can get it. I don't really know. But of course, it also unplugged. We do focus on methods of reasoning. It's this part of the Socratic review method framework that we cover in our one on one coaching programs and small group coaching programs. If you're interested in finding out more on your journey to scoring a 175 or above, you could check out the links below this video to book a call with me and my team. We'd be glad to help you out. The idea here is that when students get questions wrong at a certain level, if you're scoring 165 170 or so on your practice tests, usually at that point, you're not going to see major trends in what you're getting wrong based on questions stem type because you already understand things like the difference between necessary assumptions and sufficient assumptions. At that point, you're usually getting hard questions wrong because they're hard. These are your level four and level five questions that show up later in the section in logical reasoning, since the logical reasoning section presents questions in roughly a general order of difficulty, meaning it gets harder as the section goes on. Usually you're getting these hard questions wrong because you missed something in the method of reasoning in the stimulus. And so with this Socratic review method framework, we're helping you look systematically at every single element of the question, looking at the argument in the stimulus, for example, did you fail to recognize a key indicator word referencing evidence or conclusion or sufficient or necessary conditions, maybe LSAC buried a sub conclusion or a counter premise somewhere in the stimulus. Maybe there was filler in the stimulus, making it more difficult to recognize or untangle the method of reasoning in that argument. Of course, if you don't understand the argument, then you're not likely to get the question right itself because the answer choices only make sense in the context of the stimulus. So the worst thing you can do is when you don't understand an argument, throw even more random information at yourself in the form of the answer choices. Of course, you may get a question wrong because you were led astray by attempting wrong answer or you were discouraged by an unappealing right answer. So of course, we can look at that as well, and we do look at that as well, but your analysis should not just be limited to question, sem recognition only or proper approaches for different LSAC question types. Now, of course, there's a lot I could say regarding reading comprehension as well, but the thing is that reading comprehension doing less is often more, meaning taking fewer notes will often serve you better than taking more notes. And you can make a far bigger impact in your LSAC score on your journey to 175. If you focus on logical reasoning, since of course it is now two thirds of the test. Anyway, folks, it's all for now. In the meantime, I wish you all the best and take care.