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How I Raised My LSAT Score by 20+ Points (Self-Study Plan and Materials)
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The good news is, because logic games are no longer on the LSAT, there is less material for you to study and you can narrow your focus. Today I'm going to walk you through my personal LSAT study plan that brought me from a 152 to a 175 on LSAT test day itself. I'll also share with you the materials that I use that were the biggest impact on my LSAT score increase. For those who don't know me, my name is Steve Schwartz. I've been teaching the LSAT since 2005 and I've helped thousands of students improve their LSAT scores by 10, 20, 30 points or more. A lot of the success is come down to helping you study smarter, focusing on what to do and what not to do as well. And so for every student I work with, I create for them a personalized day by day study plan showing them exactly what to do every single day from now until LSAT test day itself. These study plans are based on my LSAT journey and now what I call the laser approach to LSAT prep. Doctor is an acronym standing for learning, accuracy, sections, exams and review. The bottom lines that you're going to build the foundation first before drilling questions by type and you're going to learn drill questions by type before you take full-length timed practice tests. Far too many students just jump right into taking test after test and measuring the results. Another group of students loves to drill questions by type and never ends up making it to the stage where they're taking full-length timed practice tests. So when you have a dedicated plan of attack, like what we give our students in Elson unplugged, what it does is it keeps you on track and it lets you avoid falling to the trap of doing what you want to do rather than what you should be doing. And so the laser approach is an acronym again, standing for learning, accuracy, sections, exams and review. Learning is where you build that foundation first. It could involve reading LSAT prep textbooks. It could involve watching course lesson videos. But the idea here is that you're getting a solid understanding in the different sections and the different question types. Now that logic is no longer on the test, you can focus a lot more on logical reasoning. There are roughly 15 different types of logical reasoning questions, but it's not all about questions stem type. And so you're going to want to learn these question types, necessary assumption, inference, flaw, strengthen, weaken and so on. And then in the next phase, A for accuracy, you'll drill these questions by type. However, you don't want to spend too long drilling LSAT questions by type because you also want to move to the next phase, which is S for sections doing timed 35 minute sections to work on your pacing. Because in practice on LSAT test day, you're not doing a bunch of strength in questions in a row. You're not doing a bunch of must be true questions in a row. You are doing all the questions mixed up together in the context of a timed 35 minute section, roughly 25 logical reasoning questions. One after another, it's a whole grab bag, a whole mix. And so you want to get used to questions stem recognition when you're doing these questions out of context. After the third phase as for sections, you're moving on to E for exams and endurance. This is where you're doing full length timed practice tests, ideally at least 10 of them in strict test day simulated conditions so that test day itself will feel like just another run through. Now, a lot of prep companies have created their own platforms where you can take the practice tests, but it's much better in my opinion to do them in LSAT's law hub platform because that is the only platform that will actually look and feel like what you'll experience on test day. And so for example, LSAT's law hub and Prometrics system both have a glitchy highlighting and underlining tool, which allows students use for reading cap. The private prep company platforms actually often work better for highlighting and underlining. And so you're in for a rude awakening and a pretty negative surprise on test day when you end up seeing that, hey, wait a minute, why isn't the highlighting tool working? Why isn't the underlining tool working? It's much better to discover now that doesn't work well, so that you're not going to end up relying on it on test day when it actually counts. You also want to build up your endurance so that your performance on this fourth section isn't dropping just because it's section four. Now, the final phase of the laser approach is the R for review. I've created a framework for this called the Socratic review method to help you review better because the biggest mistake you can make on the LSAT is failing to learn from your mistakes. The LSAT is a test of pattern recognition, the methods of reasoning, repeat themselves, the structures repeat themselves. And so if you make a mistake on one practice test, you are likely to make it again on the next practice test until you learn from your mistakes and discover which weak areas you might want to drill on the side. And in my experience, helping thousands of students on their LSAT prep journeys, I've discovered that the biggest score increases come from the review process because they allow you to discover what you should focus on, what you should course correct for your next practice test, and of course, before the big day itself. Now I mentioned earlier, there were a lot of different LSAT prep materials that I used back when I was studying for the LSAT. What worked well for me were the actual official LSAT practice tests. You can get them on Amazon in books of 10 for about 20 bucks each. There are nearly 94 of them in the old numbered system with logic games. Here are approximately 60 of them in the new numbered system without LSAT logic games adjusted and reorganized for the new LSAT format with two logical reasoning sections and one reading comprehension section. However, much better now than using old LSAT prep books is using LSAT's law hub advantage platform where you can get those 60 new exams in the actual official LSAT format. Going forward, LSAT has reorganized all the exams for the new format with two logical reasonings, one reading comp and one unscored extra section of other logical reasoning or reading comprehension. Now what you don't want to do and what did not help me at all was using the books that contained fake LSAT questions, which are unrealistic or full of mistakes. And using those books containing fake LSAT questions is a terrible idea because there's nothing more frustrating than getting a question wrong, not because you made a mistake, but because the people who created the questions themselves made a mistake simply because they didn't want to pay licensing fees to LSAT to use actual official LSAT practice questions. So avoid LSAT for dummies, avoid barons, give those books to your worst enemy or throw them in the garbage because it is not worth spending your time on them. LSAT's official prep tests in law hub advantage are definitely worth the money. Highly recommend it. Anyway, folks, that's all for now. In the meantime, I wish you all the best and take care.