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How I Scored 175 On the LSAT - What It Takes
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Today I'm going to walk you through what it takes to score 175 on the LSAT. For those who don't know me, my name is Steve Schwartz. I've been teaching the LSAT since 2005 and I personally raised my LSAT score from a 152 to a 175. It took me an entire year though and at least half of it was a complete waste of time. Now I've spent the last 20 years or so distilling the lessons I learned from my own LSAT journey and from the journeys of thousands of my students to help you get that same score increase in less than half the time. Now I thought first off it'd be easy to get a top LSAT score because I'd always been good at standardized tests. I've always been good at school but getting a top LSAT score took a lot more than I'd ever expected. I would like to help you avoid making the same mistakes I didn't study for the LSAT as efficiently as possible and what I've learned is that it's not just about taking practice tests. It's not just about drilling LSAT questions but how you study matters a lot more than how much you study. So today I'm going to share with you what to do, what not to do and how to avoid making the same mistakes I made in your own LSAT journey going forward. Now when I first start working with a new LSAT student, I create for them a personalized day by day study plan based on my laser approach to LSAT prep that I'm going to share with you now. Laser is an acronym standing for learning, accuracy, sections, exams and review and the idea here is basically you're going to build a strong foundation before you take tons of practice tests. A lot of students just jump in taking their practice tests without learning what is they're going to be tested on so surprise surprise, it doesn't go very well. A lot of other students spend too much time drilling LSAT questions by type but they're solving these questions divorced from the context of the entire section and divorced from the context of timing and pacing and endurance as well. And so the L in laser is learning where you are building that foundation. You are getting a proper understanding of the different sections and the different question types. What is logical reasoning? What is reading comprehension? What are the 15 or so different types of logical reasoning questions? And what is the proper perspective and approach to take with each of these 15 or so different types? The next phase in laser is the A for accuracy. This is where some of you want to drill but it's okay you can do that but not for too long. You drill questions by type meaning you do a bunch of say strengthening questions in a row, a bunch of weakened questions in a row, a bunch of flaw questions in a row to get crystal clear on exactly what the question stem is asking you to do. But then move on to phase three which is the S for sections doing individual timed sections to work on your pacing. So now you're taking the grab bag of different logical reasoning question types and doing them all mixed up just like they're going to be mixed up on test day itself and you are giving yourself that time constraint 35 minutes per section with standard timing to solve roughly 25 questions. It's a pretty fast pace roughly one minute and 23 seconds per question, not a ton of time but some are easier than others. And so you want to go faster on the easier ones to build up a time bank that you can then apply to the tougher questions later in the section. The fourth phase is E for exams and endurance. This is when you're doing tons of full length timed practice tests to build up your endurance to build up your LSAT stamina so that test day itself will feel like just another run through. Now the final phase is the R for review and you are reviewing LSAT questions throughout your LSAT journey meaning that you are looking in depth at exactly what questions you're getting wrong and why what you're having difficulty with and why so that you can extract that key lesson or insight to avoid making the same mistake again. Review is too often neglected, it's probably the most important phase of this five phase process because if you don't learn from your mistakes of course you're doomed to repeat them. It can be a lot more addictive to drill questions by typing at that immediate feedback which you're not going to get on test day and it can also be a lot more addictive to take test after test to measure where you currently stand and see if your scores go up you're happy if they go down your sand but you're still getting some immediate feedback that same day. On test day of course you're going to have to wait two to three to get your score back and so in that review process you're going to look at every question you got wrong and every question you had difficulty with to extract that lesson so that you don't make the same mistake again. Now I've developed a framework for the review process called the Socratic review method. It's a cornerstone of my LSAT courses at my one-on-one coaching programs. If you're interested in finding out more you can check out the links below the video to book a call with me my team. We'd be glad to help you out. Now the idea here is that we're looking systematically with Socratic review at every single element of the question guiding you through this process in a conversation to look at what mistakes are you making and why. Is your mistake that you misunderstood the stimulus meaning the argument in logical reasoning? Was your mistake in misidentifying the question stem or was it that you were led astray by attempting wrong answer or you were discouraged by an unappealing right answer? If it was attempting wrong answer choice what made it tempting? What ultimately makes it wrong? If it was an unappealing right answer what made it unappealing and what made it correct in the end? Because you have 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 personally are uniquely prone to falling for you of course are likely to end up making the same mistake again and that's what you want to help you avoid with that Socratic review method. Anyway folks that's all for now. In the meantime I wish you all the best and take care.