13 ms·

Taking the LSAT with Zero Preparation

74 points by malloci 9y ago

anon1253 9y ago
I took GRE without prep as a non-native speaker. Lets just say I severely underestimated it, and went on to do other things in life … the concept of these tests are quite foreign in Northern Europe, so I was not expecting it /at all/. If I wanted to ace it, it would've probably taken me weeks to prep properly (especially all the silly math things, that I mostly forgot about how to do fast enough without mistakes or stressing out). Never ended up submitting my application, even though I had several first author papers as an undergrad, I felt too defeated by it.
- lmm 9y ago
  I would expect the language to be the issue? As a European I took the GRE with zero prep and comfortably got an 800 on the numeric part and a 6.0 on the essay part (I felt I was consciously pandering with an American-style essay because that seemed to be what they wanted), but dropped a bit in the verbal part (640) which seemed to be just about knowing dictionary definitions for a lot of obscure words.
ladberg 9y ago
Incoming: Bay Area LSAT registration skyrockets as techies try to outdo their law school friends with zero prep.
- olympus 9y ago
  After that: A bunch of nerds blow the LSAT out of the water, get admitted to Yale, and become crappy lawyers because they lack every other skill necessary to be a lawyer(social skills, mainly).
userbinator 9y ago
The Wiki article on the LSAT has an interesting section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_School_Admission_Test#Scoring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_School_Admission_Test#Scor... In the most recent study Nieswiadomy took the LSAC's categorization of test-takers into 162 majors and grouped these into 29 categories, finding the averages of each major ...and ironically, the last and second-last majors are criminal justice and pre-law, respectively.
- throwawayjava 9y ago
  I wouldn't read too much into that. I bet the pass rates on other professional exams are similarly skewed. Lots of hopeless pre law students will take the exam. Very few unmotivated math students will find themselves taking the lsats, however.
- zippergz 9y ago
  I hate to stereotype, but most of the "criminal justice" majors I've met have been... not high academic achievers.
- graeme 9y ago
  I’m not american, so I may be incorrect, but I believe many of the top ranked schools tend not to have prelaw/criminal justice as a major. So it could be in part a school quality issue.
epmaybe 9y ago
We're also starting to see some law schools not require the LSAT for admission. I know that Harvard, Northwestern, and Georgetown Universities are among those that have started accepting GRE or ACT scores. From the article, I noticed an interesting parallel to medical school admissions: > Testy told me she too once took the LSAT, though she doesn't remember her score. Unlike many of today's students, she didn't spend months studying. "Honestly, I didn't even know at the time people did that." She says LSAC actually worries test-takers spend too much time preparing. It suggests students familiarize themselves with the test and the rhythm of the questions and maybe take an online course. I've had mentors say the same thing about the MCAT for medical school admissions, and even our USMLE board exams taken during medical school. It's almost as if it's a requirement for everyone to pay up for a service that just drills you until you can expect the kinds of questions that can come up, rather than actually being tested on conceptual knowledge.
- blahedo 9y ago
  > It's almost as if it's a requirement for everyone to pay up for a service... From the article: "(LSAC will launch a free one next year.)" So it's not about making them money. More importantly, it seems to me that if you could effectively separate "I'm not familiar with the test format" from "I'm not good at this", that would be very useful in terms of differentiating the strong candidates from the weaker ones. That doesn't seem too unreasonable. (I'm aware it's also not the same thing as intensive prep courses, which are what a lot of people (most?) take.)
- graeme 9y ago
  Not ACT, just GRE. And Testy was actually recommending people prepare less than they do. (I think she’s wrong, incidently. If she had a $200,000 scholarship riding on the outcome, she’d prep) The LSAT is entirely different from MCAT. It’s a skill based test. From what I saw the MCAT is more content based, and you can cram the knowledge, except for the reading section.
dvt 9y ago
The LSAT is what's known as a "learnable" exam, which means that taking it without preparation is 100% not indicative of the final score one could get. This is well-reported all over law school forums where people took it cold and got a 140 and after months of study ended up with a 177. Or started with a 155 and ended with a 165. The LSAT (especially the logic games) is mostly pattern-recognition and understanding the "type" of problem you're being asked to solve. Getting a high score (e.g. over 170) the first time around is probably impossible because the questions are formulated so weirdly (in other words, you'd need to be familiar with the format to do well). Further, you'd probably not be used to the time constraint and end up guessing on whatever you didn't have time to answer. This article is just stupid bravado, but then again, it's Vice and they're not exactly known for hard-hitting journalism. NB: 158 going in cold is very high (which is why the article seems like humblebragging to me). A 20 point increase is doable with an intense studying regimen. And with a 178, you can write your ticket to basically any law school (given a 3.5+ undergrad GPA).
- zippergz 9y ago
  The GPA is an important caveat. I scored in the 99th percentile on the LSAT, and still couldn't get into any of the top tier schools I applied to because I slacked off too much in undergrad.
  - dvt 9y ago
    Yeah, with a sub-3.0 GPA even with like a 180 on the LSAT, you're basically out of the t14 (except for a few splitter-friendly schools if you get lucky). The good news is that if you scored in the 99th percentile on the LSAT, you probably don't need to go to law school to be successful :)
    - zippergz 9y ago
      Yes, in fact I view this as one of the great "dodged bullets" of my life. Because I wasn't accepted by my top choice schools (I had several who I wasn't interested in beating my door down), I decided not to go to law school at all. In retrospect, that was the best possible outcome.
bbatha 9y ago
> Testy told me she too once took the LSAT, though she doesn't remember her score. Unlike many of today's students, she didn't spend months studying. "Honestly, I didn't even know at the time people did that." She says LSAC actually worries test-takers spend too much time preparing. It suggests students familiarize themselves with the test and the rhythm of the questions and maybe take an online course. This sounds about right. I took the LSAT in college after doing some studying. Between my first practice test and my final test I went up 12 points to 168. For those unfamiliar with the test there are 3 types of sections, plus an essay, which isn't really used by admissions offices nor is it a factor in your score. The multiple choice questions are a long form reading with many questions about a long passage, a logical reasoning section with a question per prompt, and logic games with several questions for a set of logical rules. The first two, reading and analytical, saw almost no difference in studying. There's a couple tips to get the flow of the test but there isn't much to learn: its fairly good test of innate skills. The logic games sections, even coming from a computer science background and solving similar problems for fun, were pretty challenging especially with a clock. However there are only a dozen or so variants to the games, with the occasional ringer and so studying by practicing a few of each variant has a huge pay off.
- wahern 9y ago
  The clock is the test. That's pretty much the LSAT in a nutshell. This is much more so than the SAT, the GMAT, or even the bar exam.
dogruck 9y ago
I found the writing amusing, but I don’t understand the premise. If I were a writer, I’d happily take any standardized test, with zero prep and zero consequences. Then I’d tell you how I scored. And, so what? I did not find his manufactured premise of “always thinking I might be a genius at something” too compelling. Suggestions to strengthen the piece: 1. Now, he should study hard for 5 months and then take it again. 2. Interweave a profile of another LSAT test taker who has hung his or her dreams on scoring well. 3. Take 3, or 10, standardized tests in other domains, and report on what it says about his greatest area of strength.
graeme 9y ago
I run an lsat prep website. A cold 158 is a very high score. The median LSAT is 151. Most students can improve about 10 points with practice. Beyond that, improvement gets dicier, as it depends on actually changing your patterns of thinking. The LSAT is a test of precision, and gets to a level most people are never called to think about when making everyday arguments. It’s actually a very interesting test, many people here on hacker news might find it fun to try. You can print this free version: https://www.lsac.org/docs/default-source/jd-docs/sampleptjune.pdf https://www.lsac.org/docs/default-source/jd-docs/sampleptjun... I strongly recommend doing it timed, as it is as much a test of your intuition with reasoning as anything else. It also uses subtle psychological biases to lead you astray. Each section is 35 minutes. If you only have time for one, try the logical reasoning. Law school admissions is in flux right now, as there is a move to start using the GRE as an admissions test. At the highest level of schools, this will likely help get a few STEM graduates into law school. Mostly though, it’s seen as a move by schools to pad their enrolment, as law student numbers have declined in recent years. Skyrocketing tuition is the main cause. The big open question is how the GRE and the LSAT will be compared in the rankings. My impression is that the GRE isn’t very important in grad admissions, so people don’t study for it. I suspect that motivated law applicants will be able to achieve a comparatively higher GRE percentile than LSAT percentile, as the GRE’s subject matter is more trivially learnable, and the motivated prelaw students will be ranked against the unmotivated GRE takers who are using it for grad school admissions.
- Naritai 9y ago
  You mention skyrocketing tuition, but haven't mentioned the second major cause of declining admissions, which is that employment rate for new grads _still_ hasn't recovered from 2008-2009 declines[1]. [1]https://www.nalp.org/0917research https://www.nalp.org/0917research
  - graeme 9y ago
    Thanks. Yeah, that’s the other half. If jobs and salaries were up I’m sure more would take the debt. Right now you need a scholarship for most schools to be worth it.
EGreg 9y ago
I once went to take a tough mudder without any preparation. I wanted to see what shape I was in straight from the computer chair. Well, it was in Mount Snow - turns out that going up and down large mountains was the hardest part for me. The obstacles themselves were pretty straightforward, but I was completely exhausted from jogging up mountains. I did skip the ice bath, though.
ChuckMcM 9y ago
Wow the logic games are pretty interesting (sample: http://www.admissionsconsultants.com/lsat/lsat-prep-game.pdf http://www.admissionsconsultants.com/lsat/lsat-prep-game.pdf) They feel like Karnaugh maps and state machines to me :-)
- graeme 9y ago
  And those aren’t even real ones. Try the ones in this official practice test: https://www.lsac.org/docs/default-source/jd-docs/sampleptjune.pdf https://www.lsac.org/docs/default-source/jd-docs/sampleptjun...
  - ChuckMcM 9y ago
    Awesome, thanks. I find those quite entertaining.
- scotty79 9y ago
  I'm not a native speaker and I couldn't shake the feeling that in first problem when order of sentences is reversed (<implication> if <condition>) it was supposed to mean 'if and only if' not just 'if' (it wasn't). Now I know why I hated 'if' after the condition in Ruby. And don't even ask me about 'unless'.
relics443 9y ago
I scored pretty high (I don't remember the score though) on a cold LSAT, but after taking a course with an instructor who got multiple 180's, my official score was in the 99.9th percentile. I got into a top 5 law school, but didn't get a scholarship even with my LSAT score, a 4.0 GPA, and multiple honors (including PBK). Two weeks into the semester I transferred to the MSCS program. Best decision I ever made.

74 points by malloci 9y ago

I took GRE without prep as a non-native speaker. Lets just say I severely underestimated it, and went on to do other things in life … the concept of these tests are quite foreign in Northern Europe, so I was not expecting it /at all/. If I wanted to ace it, it would've probably taken me weeks to prep properly (especially all the silly math things, that I mostly forgot about how to do fast enough without mistakes or stressing out). Never ended up submitting my application, even though I had several first author papers as an undergrad, I felt too defeated by it.

lmm 9y ago
I would expect the language to be the issue? As a European I took the GRE with zero prep and comfortably got an 800 on the numeric part and a 6.0 on the essay part (I felt I was consciously pandering with an American-style essay because that seemed to be what they wanted), but dropped a bit in the verbal part (640) which seemed to be just about knowing dictionary definitions for a lot of obscure words.

ladberg 9y ago

Incoming: Bay Area LSAT registration skyrockets as techies try to outdo their law school friends with zero prep.

olympus 9y ago
After that: A bunch of nerds blow the LSAT out of the water, get admitted to Yale, and become crappy lawyers because they lack every other skill necessary to be a lawyer(social skills, mainly).

userbinator 9y ago

The Wiki article on the LSAT has an interesting section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_School_Admission_Test#Scoring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_School_Admission_Test#Scor... In the most recent study Nieswiadomy took the LSAC's categorization of test-takers into 162 majors and grouped these into 29 categories, finding the averages of each major ...and ironically, the last and second-last majors are criminal justice and pre-law, respectively.

throwawayjava 9y ago
I wouldn't read too much into that. I bet the pass rates on other professional exams are similarly skewed. Lots of hopeless pre law students will take the exam. Very few unmotivated math students will find themselves taking the lsats, however.
zippergz 9y ago
I hate to stereotype, but most of the "criminal justice" majors I've met have been... not high academic achievers.
graeme 9y ago
I’m not american, so I may be incorrect, but I believe many of the top ranked schools tend not to have prelaw/criminal justice as a major. So it could be in part a school quality issue.

epmaybe 9y ago

We're also starting to see some law schools not require the LSAT for admission. I know that Harvard, Northwestern, and Georgetown Universities are among those that have started accepting GRE or ACT scores. From the article, I noticed an interesting parallel to medical school admissions: > Testy told me she too once took the LSAT, though she doesn't remember her score. Unlike many of today's students, she didn't spend months studying. "Honestly, I didn't even know at the time people did that." She says LSAC actually worries test-takers spend too much time preparing. It suggests students familiarize themselves with the test and the rhythm of the questions and maybe take an online course. I've had mentors say the same thing about the MCAT for medical school admissions, and even our USMLE board exams taken during medical school. It's almost as if it's a requirement for everyone to pay up for a service that just drills you until you can expect the kinds of questions that can come up, rather than actually being tested on conceptual knowledge.

blahedo 9y ago
> It's almost as if it's a requirement for everyone to pay up for a service... From the article: "(LSAC will launch a free one next year.)" So it's not about making them money. More importantly, it seems to me that if you could effectively separate "I'm not familiar with the test format" from "I'm not good at this", that would be very useful in terms of differentiating the strong candidates from the weaker ones. That doesn't seem too unreasonable. (I'm aware it's also not the same thing as intensive prep courses, which are what a lot of people (most?) take.)
graeme 9y ago
Not ACT, just GRE. And Testy was actually recommending people prepare less than they do. (I think she’s wrong, incidently. If she had a $200,000 scholarship riding on the outcome, she’d prep) The LSAT is entirely different from MCAT. It’s a skill based test. From what I saw the MCAT is more content based, and you can cram the knowledge, except for the reading section.

dvt 9y ago

The LSAT is what's known as a "learnable" exam, which means that taking it without preparation is 100% not indicative of the final score one could get. This is well-reported all over law school forums where people took it cold and got a 140 and after months of study ended up with a 177. Or started with a 155 and ended with a 165. The LSAT (especially the logic games) is mostly pattern-recognition and understanding the "type" of problem you're being asked to solve. Getting a high score (e.g. over 170) the first time around is probably impossible because the questions are formulated so weirdly (in other words, you'd need to be familiar with the format to do well). Further, you'd probably not be used to the time constraint and end up guessing on whatever you didn't have time to answer. This article is just stupid bravado, but then again, it's Vice and they're not exactly known for hard-hitting journalism. NB: 158 going in cold is very high (which is why the article seems like humblebragging to me). A 20 point increase is doable with an intense studying regimen. And with a 178, you can write your ticket to basically any law school (given a 3.5+ undergrad GPA).

zippergz 9y ago
The GPA is an important caveat. I scored in the 99th percentile on the LSAT, and still couldn't get into any of the top tier schools I applied to because I slacked off too much in undergrad.
- dvt 9y ago
  Yeah, with a sub-3.0 GPA even with like a 180 on the LSAT, you're basically out of the t14 (except for a few splitter-friendly schools if you get lucky). The good news is that if you scored in the 99th percentile on the LSAT, you probably don't need to go to law school to be successful :)
  - zippergz 9y ago
    Yes, in fact I view this as one of the great "dodged bullets" of my life. Because I wasn't accepted by my top choice schools (I had several who I wasn't interested in beating my door down), I decided not to go to law school at all. In retrospect, that was the best possible outcome.

bbatha 9y ago

> Testy told me she too once took the LSAT, though she doesn't remember her score. Unlike many of today's students, she didn't spend months studying. "Honestly, I didn't even know at the time people did that." She says LSAC actually worries test-takers spend too much time preparing. It suggests students familiarize themselves with the test and the rhythm of the questions and maybe take an online course. This sounds about right. I took the LSAT in college after doing some studying. Between my first practice test and my final test I went up 12 points to 168. For those unfamiliar with the test there are 3 types of sections, plus an essay, which isn't really used by admissions offices nor is it a factor in your score. The multiple choice questions are a long form reading with many questions about a long passage, a logical reasoning section with a question per prompt, and logic games with several questions for a set of logical rules. The first two, reading and analytical, saw almost no difference in studying. There's a couple tips to get the flow of the test but there isn't much to learn: its fairly good test of innate skills. The logic games sections, even coming from a computer science background and solving similar problems for fun, were pretty challenging especially with a clock. However there are only a dozen or so variants to the games, with the occasional ringer and so studying by practicing a few of each variant has a huge pay off.

wahern 9y ago
The clock is the test. That's pretty much the LSAT in a nutshell. This is much more so than the SAT, the GMAT, or even the bar exam.

dogruck 9y ago

I found the writing amusing, but I don’t understand the premise. If I were a writer, I’d happily take any standardized test, with zero prep and zero consequences. Then I’d tell you how I scored. And, so what? I did not find his manufactured premise of “always thinking I might be a genius at something” too compelling. Suggestions to strengthen the piece: 1. Now, he should study hard for 5 months and then take it again. 2. Interweave a profile of another LSAT test taker who has hung his or her dreams on scoring well. 3. Take 3, or 10, standardized tests in other domains, and report on what it says about his greatest area of strength.

graeme 9y ago

I run an lsat prep website. A cold 158 is a very high score. The median LSAT is 151. Most students can improve about 10 points with practice. Beyond that, improvement gets dicier, as it depends on actually changing your patterns of thinking. The LSAT is a test of precision, and gets to a level most people are never called to think about when making everyday arguments. It’s actually a very interesting test, many people here on hacker news might find it fun to try. You can print this free version: https://www.lsac.org/docs/default-source/jd-docs/sampleptjune.pdf https://www.lsac.org/docs/default-source/jd-docs/sampleptjun... I strongly recommend doing it timed, as it is as much a test of your intuition with reasoning as anything else. It also uses subtle psychological biases to lead you astray. Each section is 35 minutes. If you only have time for one, try the logical reasoning. Law school admissions is in flux right now, as there is a move to start using the GRE as an admissions test. At the highest level of schools, this will likely help get a few STEM graduates into law school. Mostly though, it’s seen as a move by schools to pad their enrolment, as law student numbers have declined in recent years. Skyrocketing tuition is the main cause. The big open question is how the GRE and the LSAT will be compared in the rankings. My impression is that the GRE isn’t very important in grad admissions, so people don’t study for it. I suspect that motivated law applicants will be able to achieve a comparatively higher GRE percentile than LSAT percentile, as the GRE’s subject matter is more trivially learnable, and the motivated prelaw students will be ranked against the unmotivated GRE takers who are using it for grad school admissions.

Naritai 9y ago
You mention skyrocketing tuition, but haven't mentioned the second major cause of declining admissions, which is that employment rate for new grads _still_ hasn't recovered from 2008-2009 declines[1]. [1]https://www.nalp.org/0917research https://www.nalp.org/0917research
- graeme 9y ago
  Thanks. Yeah, that’s the other half. If jobs and salaries were up I’m sure more would take the debt. Right now you need a scholarship for most schools to be worth it.

EGreg 9y ago

I once went to take a tough mudder without any preparation. I wanted to see what shape I was in straight from the computer chair. Well, it was in Mount Snow - turns out that going up and down large mountains was the hardest part for me. The obstacles themselves were pretty straightforward, but I was completely exhausted from jogging up mountains. I did skip the ice bath, though.

ChuckMcM 9y ago

Wow the logic games are pretty interesting (sample: http://www.admissionsconsultants.com/lsat/lsat-prep-game.pdf http://www.admissionsconsultants.com/lsat/lsat-prep-game.pdf) They feel like Karnaugh maps and state machines to me :-)

graeme 9y ago
And those aren’t even real ones. Try the ones in this official practice test: https://www.lsac.org/docs/default-source/jd-docs/sampleptjune.pdf https://www.lsac.org/docs/default-source/jd-docs/sampleptjun...
- ChuckMcM 9y ago
  Awesome, thanks. I find those quite entertaining.
scotty79 9y ago
I'm not a native speaker and I couldn't shake the feeling that in first problem when order of sentences is reversed (<implication> if <condition>) it was supposed to mean 'if and only if' not just 'if' (it wasn't). Now I know why I hated 'if' after the condition in Ruby. And don't even ask me about 'unless'.

relics443 9y ago

I scored pretty high (I don't remember the score though) on a cold LSAT, but after taking a course with an instructor who got multiple 180's, my official score was in the 99.9th percentile. I got into a top 5 law school, but didn't get a scholarship even with my LSAT score, a 4.0 GPA, and multiple honors (including PBK). Two weeks into the semester I transferred to the MSCS program. Best decision I ever made.