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I'm not saying this isn't true, but I take stories like this with a grain of salt. Every now and then, you'll have someone claiming that they got a 170+ with no

by dvt 9y ago

I'm not saying this isn't true, but I take stories like this with a grain of salt. Every now and then, you'll have someone claiming that they got a 170+ with no practice on TLS or reddit. Since the LSAT is multiple choice, even a completely random outcome has a nonzero chance of scoring a perfect 180. I'd argue that what makes the LSAT difficult isn't the raw difficulty but rather the time management. Most people could probably do decent on it if they had as long as they needed, but the fact that you need to pick the best answer in like 2-3 minutes when the question is like two paragraphs long makes it very unlikely that a neophyte will score well. Once you study it, you learn to look for certain things and only end up skimming questions for the key information. Without having ever seen the test, you will most likely do what any sensible person would do: read the question carefully, read every potential answer carefully, come up with your answer, eventually run out of time, and blindly guess on the last 5 questions on every section.

graeme 9y ago
It’s probably true. My girlfriend took a timed LR section and LG section, and got 1 wrong, I think. I’ll give her a full test eventually. She is a physics/comp sci major. I expect a sizeable chunk of the physics department could do the same. But, they normally don’t take the LSAT. (I’m an LSAT instructor, so this is a bit more than a random anecdote)
ABCLAW 9y ago
I did the test cold, expecting it to be in-situ practice for a 'real' test which I anticipated to write a year later. I scored over 170 easily. I later trained to become an LSAT instructor on the basis of my scores and realized I didn't have any aptitude for it because none of my strategies for dealing with the test were explicit - they were just my test taking routine. If you did logic puzzles for fun as a kid and read enough to develop a large vocabulary, good test taking practices will take you the rest of the way. For what it's worth, in my experience most of the kids who did the LSAT coming from the sciences considered it a joke and prepared minimally with good results. They, however, constituted maybe 1/100th of the test takers.

by dvt 9y ago

graeme 9y ago

It’s probably true. My girlfriend took a timed LR section and LG section, and got 1 wrong, I think. I’ll give her a full test eventually. She is a physics/comp sci major. I expect a sizeable chunk of the physics department could do the same. But, they normally don’t take the LSAT. (I’m an LSAT instructor, so this is a bit more than a random anecdote)

ABCLAW 9y ago

I did the test cold, expecting it to be in-situ practice for a 'real' test which I anticipated to write a year later. I scored over 170 easily. I later trained to become an LSAT instructor on the basis of my scores and realized I didn't have any aptitude for it because none of my strategies for dealing with the test were explicit - they were just my test taking routine. If you did logic puzzles for fun as a kid and read enough to develop a large vocabulary, good test taking practices will take you the rest of the way. For what it's worth, in my experience most of the kids who did the LSAT coming from the sciences considered it a joke and prepared minimally with good results. They, however, constituted maybe 1/100th of the test takers.