Many students call us for advice about what to do once they’ve received a low LSAT score once or twice.

To be clear about our terms, we’re talking about scores <145. (This post won’t be for students who expected a 170 and ended up with a 165). That cutoff is a good metric because it tends to be the lower quartile of Tier 4 schools. To be clear, that means that some Tier 4 schools will accept at least a few students under that mark, but you’d better have an outstanding GPA (and be willing to pay full price at one of the nation’s lowest-ranked schools).

Retaking the LSAT

Most importantly, you need to think about what you can do to raise your LSAT score. If you scored 3+ points lower than you’d scored in practice, you might be able to raise your score just by working hard between now and the next test and having a better test day performance.

But if you were practicing in the 140 range and scored a 140, you need to think about what else you can do. You can consider professional prep; for example, Next Step has helped hundreds of students with one one-on-one tutoring program make the jump from the low 140′s to the high 140′s or 150′s.

Just know that if you keep doing what you did before, you’re likely to get the same results. Yes, this means that if you took a prep course and it didn’t help, re-taking the class, even for free, will likely not help. (We know this from experience, not just common sense).

If you’ve already taken the LSAT multiple times and did your best to study, it’s time to have a serious discussion with yourself about your future plans. Even if it were possible to sneak into one of the lower-ranked schools, you would be coming in towards the bottom of their class.

Conditional Programs

Some schools have conditional acceptance programs. Often, this means that you’ll be required to attend some kind of summer institute, from which they will admit some of the students that do well. These programs are a good-faith effort by the law schools to find students that could succeed in school despite poor scores, but you must still be careful.

First, make sure to find out how many students are admitted from these programs. If it’s something like 20% (which we’ve heard from many programs), please, please be honest with yourself that this means that you in particular have a 20% chance. We see far too many students certain that they’ll be the #1 student, only to find out that everyone else has that intention as well.

Waiting a Year

This is an option that too few students seriously consider. In particular, we see many students that rush to take the LSAT because they either did not plan ahead or decided at the last minute to go to law school. (Neither of these are good ideas, by the way). If you did not spend 3-5 months studying intensly for the LSAT (10+ hours per week), you probably did not get the score you might have.

Going to a good school for the right price is incredibly important. You should very seriously take a year off to work and prepare for the test.

However, we’ve seen people take this too far as well. The best way to prepare for the LSAT is to study intensely (10+ hours per week) for 3-5 months. If you don’t get the score you want, work hard for 2 more months and retake. After that, you probably have the score you’re destined to receive. We’ve spoken to students who claim to have been studying for over 4 years — don’t let that be your fate.

Next Step Test Preparation provides complete courses of one-on-one tutoring with an LSAT expert for about the price of a crowded lecture-style prep course. Email us or call 888-530-NEXT (6398) for a complimentary consultation.

LSAT Test

This is part of our “Intro to the LSAT” series. Our regular readers who are far along in their studies can probably skip it, but if you are starting your LSAT prep we hope this post is helpful! ~ Next Step Test Preparation

The Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) is a half-day standardized exam required by all students attending American Bar Association accredited law schools. (You should not attend a non-accredited school if you want to have a serious career as an attorney).

While college graduates have taken tests before, they have likely not faced a standardized exam as challenging as the LSAT. Keep in mind that the LSAT is designed to rate and sort the nation’s most accomplished college grads. The curve is much steeper than in most college classes and certainly steeper than the ACT or SAT.

It’s hard to overemphasize the importance of the LSAT. Most estimates suggest that the LSAT and GPA are together by far the most impotent components of your application. Together they are referred to as law school “hard factors” as opposed to “soft factors” like recommendations, personal statements, and work experience. Although it’s hard to estimate exactly, hard factors are thought to be worth perhaps 90% of an admissions decision.

Students often overestimate their chances of admission based on good letters of recommendation, extra-curricular activities, or work experience. Good hard numbers qualify students to get into the “maybe” file of any given law school. Everything else in your application helps you get into the “yes” pile. Law schools can then look to soft factors to shape their class.

While you will no doubt read about outliers who were accepted to schools despite below-average numbers, these cases are rare and you should not bank on being one of them. (Schools also routinely reject applicants with above-average numbers if the other parts of the application are not excellent).

LSAT LSAT LSAT! What’s on the test?

On the day of your test, you’ll take an exam with 6 sections. Each section is 35 minutes long.

• 2 sections of Logical Reasoning (LR)
• 1 section of Analytical Reasoning (everyone but the LSAC calls this “Logic Games,” and we will do so going forward) (LG)
• 1 section of Reading Comprehension (RC)
• 1 unscored experimental section. This section will be either LR, LG, or RC. The LSAC uses this section to test questions for use on future exams. While it won’t be scored, the section will not be identified to you and, most importantly, will not be identifiable – there won’t be crazy question types or weird formats. That means you’ll have to give your best effort on all 5 sections on test day.
• 1 writing sample. The writing sample can’t be ignored, but as it is not formally scored it deserves very little preparation time.

Logical Reasoning

Logical reasoning, 2 of your scored sections, is made of 24-26 paragraph-length arguments followed by a specific task such as:

• Strengthen the argument
• Weaken the argument
• Find the flaw
• Identify the conclusion

While many of the first questions will seem elementary, the difficulty curve quickly increases, and the hardest LR questions involve complex formal logic. Here’s an example of a more straightforward question:

John never does the dishes. He always ignores them or waits for someone else to do them. This may represent self-involvement or mere laziness, but in either case I don’t think John will make a good husband for Susan.

Which of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?

As you prepare, you will learn strategies for each question type. Assumption questions can often be solved by asking, “What entity exists in the conclusion that did not exist previously in the argument?” Here, the concept of “good husband” is never really defined. The assumption must make a link between John’s laziness and his status as a bad husband (which is the conclusion).

Logic Games

The Logic Games section includes 4 logic puzzles followed by 23-24 questions divided among them. This is the section that worries students the most initially, but it’s also the section in which Next Step students have shown the most improvement. Smart students draw a diagram for each puzzle and work through the questions efficiently using inference and rapid process of elimination. Students sometimes make the mistake of over-studying for this section; just remember that LR actually counts twice as much in your final score.

Reading Comprehension

Reading comprehension looks a lot like the reading comp from the ACT or SAT, but you will find it to be much harder. There are 4 passages in each section with a total of 26-28 questions divided among them. Passages come from the social sciences, natural sciences, law, and the arts. The challenge will not be the topics, but rather how the passages are structured. Read our guide to RC in Part 2 to understand how to deal with this.

Next Step Test Preparation provides complete courses of one-on-one tutoring with an LSAT expert for about the price of a crowded lecture-style prep course. Email us or call 888-530-NEXT (6398) for a complimentary consultation.

Students starting their LSAT prep often have questions about what their scores actually mean, including:

• What is a good LSAT score?
• What do all the scores reported mean?
• How do I know what law schools think of my score?

Your LSAT score is made up of 3 components sent to you on your score report.

Raw LSAT Score

Raw LSAT score is simply the number of correct responses across the 4 scored sections, added up. Generally there are 99-101 questions on any particular LSAT, so this number is very close to your percentage of right answers.

Scaled LSAT Score

Scaled scores are on a band from 120-180. When people refer to your LSAT score, this is the number they are talking about. The LSAT applies a formula that differs slightly on different test forms to convert raw scores to scaled scores. (When you hear LSAT nerds talk about “the curve,” this conversion is what they mean.)

LSAT Percentile Score

Your percentile is the percent of test-takers that scored lower than you on that particular form.

What do LSAT Scores Mean?

Here is an example scoring scale; as mentioned this differs from test to test, but only slightly. If you got 55 questions right, your score would be 151, and 48% of students would have scored lower than you.

151 is generally the average score. It’s important to note that the LSAT is scored on a standard bell curve. Most students will score between 140 and 160, each a standard deviation from the mean of 151. Note that while many students start with a goal of a 170+ score, only very few students can accomplish that goal in a given year.

How do School Interpret My LSAT Score?

Here’s a list of Chicago-area law schools. All of this data is available from the Law School Admissions Council and on the websites of particular schools, so do some research on the schools you are targeting.

Let’s take the University of Chicago, a top-ranked school, as an example. For this year, the 75% LSAT was 173. This means that 75% of students scored 173 or lower (and 25% scored above 173). Similarly, the 25% LSAT is 169, meaning that 25% scored 169 or below. Therefore, the middle 50% of their class was between 173 and 169. To be competitive atChicago, you would want to have an LSAT in that range. Do note that 25% of their class had below a 169, but these students likely had a combination of near-perfect GPAs and very outstanding soft factors.

GPA numbers work in a similar way; the middle 50% of Chicago’s admitted class was between 3.84 and 3.63.

One note on GPA. You’ll often hear GPA discussed as “UGPA,” with the U standing for undergraduate. The LSAC determines this number, including your grades from all institutions you attended. LSAC also weights the GPA slightly (though it’s hard to say exactly how). Your official UGPA, then, will often be slightly different from that reported by your bachelors-granting institution.

Graduate GPA is not taken into account in determining this number. However, law school admissions committees will certainly examine your graduate school performance. Excellent marks in a MA program are likely to at least somewhat balance lower grades in undergrad.

Hopefully that gives you a good idea of what scores mean. The best place to start is to take a practice exam and see where your score falls related to your goals. For a link to a free practice test, email us at lsat@nextsteptestprep.com with “Practice Test” in the subject line and your name and year in school in the body.

Next Step Test Preparation provides complete courses of one-on-one tutoring with an LSAT expert for about the price of a crowded lecture-style prep course. Email us or call 888-530-NEXT (6398) for a complimentary consultation.

Scores from the October 2011 LSAT are likely to be released over the weekend. For those of you who got the scores you wanted, congratulations! (You’re also probably not reading this). Students that were disappointed in their scores should consider a retake; however, this decision can be hard to make, and students often decide based on emotion rather than data. LSAC reports that students improve, on average, between 1 and 3 points on a retake, and that roughly 2/3 of students improve on a retake.

Here are the key factors that go into that decision.

How do you know if you should retake the LSAT?

• There was some extraneous circumstance, like you were shorted on time, ill, or misbubbled (and for some reason you didn’t cancel)
• Your score was significantly lower (>2 points) than the average of your final 3 full prep-tests
• You didn’t devote yourself to a complete course of study (i.e. you worked through LSAT for Dummies and took one full real practice test)

If you got a score that’s comfortably in the range of your past prep tests and you devoted 3+ months to studying the first time, you probably shouldn’t retake. Students that have a vague sense that they “could do better” rarely improve much, and it’s probably time to get on with the admissions process with the score you have. (I’ve gotten calls from students that have been studying for the LSAT for over 4 years. Don’t be one of those students.)

You should also consider how taking the next test will position you in the admissions cycle.  For those who took the October LSAT, having to wait for a December score could put you at a  disadvantage in the rolling admissions cycle of very competitive schools if you plan on entering in 2012.  That said, if you are able to raise your score by even 2-3 points, you’ll on net have a better admissions portfolio.

How to Prepare for a Retake

If you simply weren’t prepared, well, work harder! But for students that thought they were ready for the test, make sure you think about your retake studying strategically. Looking through the same books again or re-taking a prep course is unlikely to help much in our experience. Here are a few guidelines:

• If you took a prep course, retaking the same prep course, even for free, will likely not help you improve.
• Students that studied on their own might benefit from the guidance of a one-on-one tutor or another flexible prep strategy. (If you already know the basics and studied from decent prep books, a lecture-style prep course will generally go over the same material you already know).
• If you weren’t on a regular study schedule, it’s time to get on one. Many students studied haphazardly; LSAT prep is like a job. If you’re going to be successful, your study times and practice tests should go on your calendar just like classes or work shifts.

The good news is that in our experience, students who follow these guidelines often can make substantial score gains that really impact their admissions chances. Needless to say, if you’re retaking in December, today is a great time to start.

Next Step Test Preparation provides complete courses of one-on-one tutoring with an LSAT expert for less than the price of a commercial prep course. Email us or call 888-530-NEXT (6398) for a complimentary consultation.

Today I want to discuss a key issue head-on that keeps many, many students from being successful on the LSAT. Over the summer, I’ve seen far more students than I would have liked see less success than they otherwise might have by not making the time commitment necessary for the LSAT.

I won’t belabor the point because most of our readers already know how important the LSAT is to law school admissions. The LSAT is worth roughly as much as your entire undergrad GPA. That means that it’s worth 4 times a year of study, 8 timees a semester of grades, 32 times a course (assuming 4 courses per semester), and 128 times as important as a paper (assuming 3 papers per course). Your mileage may vary, but any way you cut it this exam is critical.

Yet, even after we explain this to students, I keep seeing students under-prepare. There’s always a reason — a paper due, a work assignment, etc. Let’s be real — some people who study for the LSAT are just lazy (and probably won’t go on to a successful law school experience), but many more just leave the LSAT for last in their planning.

I think the reason why this is is that the LSAT has the longest feedback mechanism. While you get in trouble today for missing work or failing to turn in a paper, you don’t really get dinged for under-preparing until scores come back, and you don’t really feel the disadvantages of a lower LSAT score until your admissions and financial aid decisions come back.

The way to combat this, even for busy students, is to treat LSAT prep like a job. It should be blocked out on your calendar in big chunks, just like a shift at work or a college course. Then, you need to commit to treating it that way. Just like a shift at work, if you’re deathly ill you can call in sick. But you can’t call in sick because of great social opportunities, school work, or extra-curricular meetings.

There’s no way around it — students who prepare for the LSAT like it’s their job consistently get higher point gains, get into better schools, and get bigger aid packages. Make sure you’re one of them.

Next Step Test Preparation provides complete courses of one-on-one tutoring with an LSAT expert for around the price of a lecture-style prep course. Email us or call 888-530-NEXT (6398) for a complimentary consultation.

Students who are accustomed to getting A’s on their college courses are often surprised by how difficult Reading Comp can be on the LSAT. Part of the confusion for those just starting out studying for the exam is misunderstanding how the test-makers make the test harder. Students should be aware of 2 myths and 3 realities as they start prepping for RC.

LSAT Reading Comprehension Myths

Myth 1: The hardest sections are those that have to do with science; I majored in Canadian Studies! Science-based sections are not inherenly more challenging than law or politics-based passages. The test assumes no outside knowledge; if you need to know the definition of a technical term, it will be in the passage. In fact, science passages often tend to be structured in a more obvious way. By no means should you save science passages for last, especially if they have 7-8 questions following.

Myth 2: LSAT RC will be similar to the ACT/SAT. If you’re like most law school applicants you haven’t thought about theses tests in several years. If you looked back at the RC section of those tests now, they would seem laughably easy. On college admissions tests, questions ask you to pick out broad themes and to do a lot of searching within the passage for little details. The LSAT is much more about structure and flow of the passage, which is both a higher-level task and much more challenging.

LSAT Reading Comp Realities

Reality 1: LSAT RC passages are designed to trick you in repetitive ways. Take a look at the acknowledgement page at the back of an LSAT — material has been “adapted” from original sources, in ways that the test-makers know will make the passage harder to read. That’s right — the material isn’t just challenging, it’s specifically re-written to be less comprehensible. The most obvious way LSAC does this is by making it harder to understand who is speaking at any given time — the author, the author’s opponents, critics of those opponents, etc. That’s why it’s critical to outline passages aggressively.

Reality 2: The questions are hard because they are designed for you to get wrong. Especially since the RC section became harder a few years back, most RC questions will have at least one wrong answer that seems like a very  good option. LSAC makes questions harder primarily by making answer choices look closer together. If you need an example of this, look at any given main point question; there are generally 1-2 answer choices which certainly are correct in outlining some or even most of the main idea of a passage (but which are ultimately incorrect).

Reality 3: The particular challenge of reading a RC passage is understanding the structure and flow of the argument. At the end of the passage, you must understand how the argument fit together at a high level and what the author was ultimately getting at. A great way to do this is to predict the passage’s main point (actually write this down, but you can do it in ~10 words.

Next Step Test Preparation provides complete courses of one-on-one tutoring with an LSAT expert for around the price of a commercial prep course. Email us or call 888-530-NEXT (6398) for a complimentary consultation.

LSAC just announced a modification on the long-standing “3 in 2″ policy — students generally cannot take the LSAT more than three times in any 2 consecutive test cycles (June through February). However, students used to be able to ask specific schools to petition to LSAC. No longer. Here’s the official policy:

We also have a change in the policy related to applicants who wish to take the LSAT more than three times in two years. Applicants may not take the LSAT more than three times in any two-year period. This policy applies even if the applicant cancels their score or if the score is not otherwise reported. LSAC reserves the right to cancel the applicant’s registration, rescind their admission ticket, or take any other steps necessary to enforce this policy.  Previously, candidates could request a waiver of this policy from law schools.  That no longer will be possible.  Instead, in exceptional circumstances only, candidates can ask LSAC directly for a waiver of this policy.  More information about the limitations on test taking is available here:http://www.lsac.org/JD/LSAT/about-the-LSAT.asp

So, LSAC is getting more serious about enforcing this rule. Don’t bank on being one of the students in “exceptional circumstances.” To be clear it’s never been a good idea to try to take the LSAT more than three times, but now it’s looking to be nearing an impossibility.

Just another reason to study smart and be completely ready to take the test just once.

Next Step Test Preparation provides complete courses of one-on-one tutoring with an LSAT expert for around the price of a commercial prep course. Email us or call 888-530-NEXT (6398) for a complimentary consultation.

As it turns out, the GRE has a writing section. We don’t like it but there it is. Here’s everything you need to know about it:

Structure of the Writing Section:

1. “Issue Task”: You get 45 minutes to express your view on an “issue” randomly selected from a pool of “issues.” The “issues” in question will be pretty similar to what you might remember from the SAT Writing section; probably you’ll see something like: “Do you think individuals determine their own lives, or do you think that they are influenced by society?”
2. “Argument Task”: You’ll be presented with an argument on a random topic and asked to evaluate it and suggest how its logic might be improved. This section takes 30 minutes.

The Writing Section is Scored by a Cyborg

Okay, not exactly a cyborg. Your essay will be scored by (1) a “trained grader” (probably a semi-employed grad student), and (2) a computer program. It’s scored on a scale from 0 to 6 in 0.5-point increments. If the computer and the grad student agree on your score, that’s the score you’ll get; if they disagree, it will be sent to another human for re-evaluation. Think about this for a minute: Your essay is graded in such a way that a computer can grade it. This is a pretty good indication that nuanced critical thought is not what they’re testing here.

Tips on the GRE Writing Section:

1. It’s really, really not that important. Grad schools have all sorts of ways to evaluate your writing, and they’re well aware that standardized tests aren’t a great way of doing it. Assuming you don’t freeze up and run out of the room crying, your writing score probably won’t determine whether you get into grad school. So don’t spend too much time preparing; write a couple of timed practice essays, make sure they’re not incoherent and move on.
2. Go for simple, solid argument and don’t try to be too clever! You have very little time to write these essays, so you won’t have time to come up with anything particularly good. Plus, your writing will be graded by someone who reads thirty of these things a day and probably hates her job; odds are she won’t be interested in tracing out the nuances of your argument.
3. Remember those five-paragraph essays you learned to write in high school and unlearned to write in college? Learn to write them! Read the topic, quickly choose a simple point to make about it, figure out a couple of examples, write an outline and get going. Be very clear about what you think and why. Don’t use vocabulary you’re not sure how to spell or sentence structures you’re not comfortable with; you won’t have time to edit, and you want to look as competent as possible.

Next Step Test Preparation offers complete packages of one-on-one GRE tutoring for less than the price of a packed prep course.  For more information, see our GRE tutoring page, contact info@nextsteptestprep.com or call 888-530-NEXT.

Photo credit Markus Rödder under a Creative Commons license.

Taking the GRE is quite a bit different from taking the SAT or ACT: Instead of showing up at a high school at all hours of the morning with a zillion other people, you’ll show up at a time of your choosing in an office building with tight security and get a cubicle all to yourself. Here’s what to expect from the experience:

1. Extremely tight security. Like, CIA-level security. All your possessions will have to be placed in a locker before you enter the test room, and you may even be fingerprinted! There are a whole bunch of things you can’t bring to the GRE, notably calculators, cell phones, music players and some watches. You can get the full run-down from ETS here, and you should read it carefully. You can’t even bring your own paper into the test.
2. Your own personal televised cubicle. The test takes place on a computer in a little cubicle in a room full of other cubicles with computers. Each of these cubicles has a video camera pointed at it which monitors test-takers during the test.
3. Bizarre and infantilizing rules. You have to raise your hand in order to get permission to stand up during the test. Seriously. If you have to go to the bathroom, you have to raise your hand and wait for the proctor to let you go to the bathroom. Also, the proctor will provide you with scratch paper, but not enough scratch paper! And when you run out you’ll have to raise your hand and ask for more. I just don’t know about this.

Test Day Tips
So, how to prepare?

1. Schedule your test for the time of day you like best. One nice thing about the GRE is that you get to choose when you take it, so you won’t have to climb out of bed at all hours of the morning, chug some coffee and rush to the center. If you feel sharper in the morning, get a morning session; if you hate mornings, take it in the afternoon.
2. Get enough sleep the night before. Obviously.
3. Plan for the long haul and bring some snacks. Not counting sign-in and administrative rigmarole, the GRE will take 4.5 hours. Don’t plan on doing anything else that day, and bring snacks to eat during the breaks. According to science, sugary foods are best for a quick burst of mental energy, so bring an apple or some candy along as well.
4. Dress in layers. You know how office buildings are always freezing cold? I took the GRE freezing cold. It sucked. Don’t make my mistake: dress so that you can adjust to the temperature.
5. Scout the testing location the day before. You want to arrive at the test center on the day of the test feeling cool, calm and confident, like James Bond. No one feels like James Bond when they’ve just spent fifteen minutes stuck in traffic or cursing at their GPS. Find out exactly where the test center is and exactly how long it takes to get there; then allow half an hour extra time, just to be sure.

Next Step Test Preparation offers complete packages of one-on-one GRE tutoring for less than the price of a packed prep course.  For more information, see our GRE tutoring page, contact info@nextsteptestprep.com or call 888-530-NEXT.

Photo credit Swem Library under a Creative Commons license.