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The LSAT can be a long and grueling process, but it’s definitely possible to improve your score! Here I share insights from my journey on and off the LSAT bandwagon, lessons learned, and things I would’ve done differently if I were to study for the LSAT again. I end with general tips to improve your score and final words of encouragement. For full transparency, I scored in the high 160s. If you’re looking to score in the 170s, you may want to take my advice with a grain of salt (which you should be doing to all advice anyways!). Regardless of where you are in your LSAT journey, my goal is for you to take away something from my journey that will be useful to you!

Why the LSAT Matters

The LSAT is the most important piece of your law school application. The LSAT and GPA (but mainly the LSAT, as the LSAT is trainable but your GPA is not changeable) is the primary factor determining what school you get into, as it is considered the most accurate predictor of how you will fare in the rigors of law school. And every point matters. Out of the 15 schools I applied to, I was accepted to the 4 schools where I was above their LSAT median (even if only by one point). I was waitlisted to two of the schools where I was at their LSAT median (and rejected from the third), and rejected from the remaining 8 schools where I was below the median. So it’s pretty predictable. An exception may be if you’ve worked for many years or earned another graduate degree, in which case your work experience may carry relatively more weight.

Given the significance of this metric for success, law school hopefuls dish out hundreds, even thousands of dollars to prepare for this beast, and lots of prep companies profit. If you improve your LSAT score by even a couple points, you could save thousands of dollars on the backend because schools will increase your merit scholarship award, they claim in order to justify the high cost of their prep courses. The resources (including free ones) available to prepare for the LSAT have increased significantly over the years, but those who can afford to prepare for prep classes or tutoring still have a leg up. 

My personal opinion is that I am a little skeptical of the many websites out there that claim anyone can score in the 170+ range if they just work hard and smart enough. Some of the skills it tests, like reading comprehension, are skills you develop through your whole life, and some people are just better at test taking than others. That said, anyone can expect to improve their score. The good news is that the LSAT is a very predictable exam that you can prepare for and improve your score on. While it is not an IQ test, it is an exam that is designed to trick you. Therefore, it’s definitely an exam you can train yourself in, and the way you approach it is really important. When I think about it, it’s quite amazing how consistently the test makers are able to incorporate subtle tricks to tempt you to pick the wrong answer. The more you can recognize these patterns and tricks, the better off you’ll be on test day. 

LSAT Prep: 6 Months  

My first piece of advice is to NOT do what I did initially (lol). This may sound obvious, but it took me a while to realize that you need a strategy, you need to invest in resources, and you need to intentionally devote a LOT of time regularly — it’s basically like a part-time job, and can even be a full-time job. I started prepping informally in September 2019 by doing practice questions on Khan Academy’s free prep. I would not recommend using Khan’s free prep as your main study tool — start by getting a prep book. It wasn’t until a few months later in February 2020 that I finally invested in Mike Kim’s The LSAT Trainer and started studying. I found the Trainer to be a helpful introduction with an effective approach to solving the different types of question in one book, at least compared to what I was doing before.

[A note that I would advise anyone to be cautious when comparing your journey to that of other people. Everyone starts at a different place, so when people say they took a class and increased their score by 20 points, you have to take into consideration the score they started at (it becomes harder to increase your score the higher up you go), how long they have been prepping for, etc. This also makes it difficult to evaluate and compare prep courses because all these factors make it virtually impossible to claim that a certain course directly led to an X increase in someone’s score.]

My first diagnostic score, before doing any prep, was a 157 (out of 180). After reading The LSAT Trainer, I was scoring in the high 160s. However, breaking into the 170s was where I hit a wall. 

For those who aren’t familiar with the LSAT, there are three sections on the exam: reading comprehension (RC), logic games (LG), and logical reasoning (LR). I would say logic games is a pretty LSAT-unique section — they’re these strategic games that might actually be fun to solve if you weren’t pressed for time. But my weakest section was RC, which was unfortunate as RC is generally the most difficult section to improve your score on. I could get to a -0 or -1 on Logic Games, but would miss 5-7 on RC, which would bring my score down. (Another note is that due to the pandemic, I took the LSAT Flex, which was 3 sections instead of 5 sections, so only one LR section instead of two. As I note in my other post, there are pros and cons to this. Just looking at the test structure itself, this meant that LR becomes a smaller influence on your score, so depending on whether LR was your strong or weak suite, it could positively or negatively affect your final score.)

But I tried — I was really optimistic I could break into the 170s. In June 2020, I purchased Graeme Blake’s LSAT Hacks Mastery Seminars, which are tailored to students who are already scoring above 160. In recorded webinar style, Graeme goes through his step-by-step thought process when approaching questions. He had a discount at the time so I got all three section types (LR, LG, RC) for $350. I’m more of a visual learner than an auditory/video learner, so I didn’t find these as helpful. But they did provide good tools to approach the questions more efficiently. I learned a lot of tips and pieces of insight that I wouldn’t have picked up just from reading his free online explanations (which I also highly recommend; they’re super concise). If you only wanted to get one, I would recommend the LG or RC seminars; the LR ones are longer, more expensive, and not necessarily more helpful.

I took the LSAT Flex in July 2020. My score was the average score I was getting leading up to the exam, so it was what I expected. Thus I would recommend, do not sign up for the exam until you are consistently getting the score you want. For me, the LSAT was very predictable in that my score on test day was very close to what I was getting in practice exams. Once you are consistently hitting your target score, that’s when all the test day prep advice (e.g. sleeping well, eating well, meditation, exercise, etc.) comes into play to make sure you’re performing at your optimum level.

LSAT Prep Take Two: 3 Months 

After I decided I was going to take the LSAT again, I purchased the PowerScore Bible prep books (Logical Reasoning Bible, Logic Games Bible, and Reading Comprehension Bible) and basically followed their 2-month plan. I found all 3 books helpful, though if you were to only get one, I would say the LG and LR Bibles were most helpful — some concepts in the LR and RC Bibles overlap. It’s hard to say whether the PowerScore books were more effective than Mike Kim’s LSAT Trainer and the mastery seminars. Different people have different preferences. Perhaps the PowerScore books would’ve been effective on their own, but the LSAT Trainer was still helpful as a comprehensive overview. I know someone at Yale Law School who used the PowerScore “Bibles” along with the PowerScore “Training” books (not the workbooks) and found this combination very helpful. In particular, she found the training books essential to get tons of practice for each section and different types of questions within each section. In hindsight, I probably would also try this approach if I were to do it all over again. The training books seem like an effective way to drill specific types of questions, which is key when you’re aiming for perfection, i.e. a score in the 170s.

I also purchased PrepTests 88 and 89, the most recent ones available, since I had already done the other practice tests and wanted to practice with brand new, unfamiliar tests. If possible, do NOT practice with repeat exams (a mistake I made), as your brain has real good memory and remembers old questions. Practicing with older exams is probably more helpful than practicing with a newer exam you’ve seen before.

In October 2020 I retook the LSAT Flex — and did worse.

Having had so much hope and expectation that my score would improve, this crushed me. I was nervous the morning of the exam, which ate into my ability to concentrate; I remember reading the first passage on the RC section (my first section of the exam) and having no idea what I had just read. Then I started panicking because I was running out of time. So if I had to guess, it was probably the RC section that brought my score down. Logic games was also strange because I breezed through the first two games but then spent the majority of the time brute forcing my way through the last two because I couldn’t figure out any shortcuts. I had been scoring in the low 170s leading up to the exam, which is why I was so hopeful, but my score still fluctuated and I was also reusing practice tests, which may have artificially boosted my score and deceived me into believing that I was improving when in reality I wasn’t.

I went back and forth on whether I wanted to take the exam a third time. I asked a lot of people and read a lot of blogs on whether I wanted to retake (e.g. PowerScore). I heard that the spring exams tend to be “easier”, i.e. less competitive, since fewer people are taking them at that time, but I also saw discouraging stats on how most repeat test takers only score marginally better, if at all. It’s a tough balance because you won’t improve your score unless you truly believe you can improve, but you also have to be realistic and know that the odds are stacked against you. 

I took a break and didn’t think about it for a few months. I knew that if I was going to retake the exam for a third time, I would have change something that wasn’t just buying another prep book or signing up for a generic prep course. I actually geared up to take the LSAT a third time, but knew my chances of increasing my score and getting off the waitlist were slim, and I actually wanted to live a little before getting into the thicket of law school, so after a few weeks of jumping back onto the LSAT bandwagon, I stepped back off. But I did make a note for what I would change if I were to retake the exam:

1) Go into the process with a fresh start.

2) Do blind review: write down an explanation for every single question before checking the answers, i.e. why you picked/crossed out every answer choice. It’s tedious, but keep doing it until it clicks and you can consistently pick out the right answer.

3) Write down explanations for each answer you miss and say it out loud. Use a whiteboard, like you’re teaching the LSAT to yourself. Screenshot the questions you miss and add them to your bank of missed questions so you can go back and review them.

4) Do more drilling by question type.

5) Change my study environment, i.e. where/when to study. Perhaps instead of doing half-hearted study multiple days a week, do more intense study fewer days of the week, alternating heavier and lighter days, e.g. MWF do 4-5 hours of prep, T-Th do 2-3 hours. One website advised doing logic games 5 hours a day, and practicing them so much that when you go to sleep you see variables flying around in your head. I thought I had studied really hard, but I guess I could’ve gone farther!  

Some resources I found helpful when thinking about retaking include PowerScore, 7sage, and LawSchooli.

LSAT Tips 

General Tips: 

• Start by mastering the concepts, untimed. Once you can consistently do sections with -0 or -1, then start keeping track of time. The more you practice, the quicker you’ll naturally go. 

• Focus on your weaknesses (keeping in mind that every point is worth the same on the LSAT). I will note here that this is harder than it sounds — I tended to miss required assumption/weaken questions, but that might’ve suggested I was having trouble understanding the stimulus/flaw.

• Set benchmarks to keep track of the timing. E.g. for LR, set benchmarks at 25 minutes remaining (on question #5), 20 minutes (#10), 15 minutes (#15), and 10 minutes (#20). This usually provides a couple minutes at the end allowing you to go back to and review the more difficult questions. 

• RC: The hard part is not usually understanding the passage, but rather, staying concentrated and focused on the passage. Try picking up casual fiction books, which may make you more excited when you see a block of text — make reading exciting! And when you’re reading in general, try to think about the main point, author’s point of view, etc. just like you would for reading comprehension passages.

• Blind review: Open a google doc and write down an explanation for every single question, and why you picked/crossed out every single answer choice. Keep doing this until you’re ready, until it clicks (which takes different amount of time for each person!) — you’ll know when that happens. You’re striving for the point where you can put reason over feeling — relying on gut feeling isn’t going to cut it if you want to score on the high end. Your nerves will go away and you’ll feel more confident. Study to develop muscle memory — then you can trust your instincts and trust the process on test day.

• Write down explanations for each answer you miss and say it out loud. Use a whiteboard, like you’re teaching the LSAT to yourself. Screenshot the questions you miss and add them to your bank of missed questions.

• Don’t take the exam until you can consistently get the score you want. Of course there’s variation depending on the specific exam and your strengths/weaknesses, but most likely you’ll score within the range you’ve been getting.  

• Save the most recent tests for the last few weeks leading up to the exam, as the LR questions do get more difficult and the LG change in focus (more emphasis on working quickly with the rules, less focus on making deductions upfront). 

• A lot of people advised that taking as many practice tests as you can is the best way to prepare, and I agree — once you’ve solidified a foundation of the concepts, AND making sure you take a couple hours after each exam to review the ones you weren’t sure about and the ones you missed, analyzing exactly why you missed the question: why the wrong answer seemed more attractive than the right one, what in the stimulus or question stem tricked you into not picking the right answer, what word(s) should you have paid more attention to? Since the LSAT Flex is just 3 sections, in the 3 weeks before the exam I was taking a practice test every other day. This may or may not have been helpful, but it helps hone your (hopefully good) habits for test day. 

Study Strategies: 

• Keep a running list of new vocabulary words —though many times you can still answer the question or figure out the meaning of the word based on context, a few words (e.g. invariably, untenable, avant-garde, ostensible, representational, superfluous, imperturbable) come up enough times that it would be very helpful to know what they mean. 

• Note the questions that give you trouble so you can come back to them later. LSAT Trainer provides downloadable templates on their website that you can use to keep track of these questions by section.

• Keep your own notebook of key concepts and things to remember that you can easily refer back to. The PowerScore books recommend that you take notes as you go through the lessons and create your own “LSAT Bible”. 

Resources: 

• Mike Kim’s The LSAT Trainer
• PowerScore Bible prep books (Logical Reasoning, Logic Games, and Reading Comprehension Bible)
• PowerScore “Training” books
• Manhattan Prep/PowerScore discussion forums: the posts with the most “Thanks received” tend to be the most helpful 

• LSAT Hacks free explanations: super concise explanations for why the right answer is right and the wrong answers are incorrect  

• Khan Academy free test prep: helpful for tailoring/working on certain question types, but didn’t use as much later on because there weren’t a lot of questions and I would start to see questions I’d already seen before 

• Bought a subscription of The Economist, which can be helpful for RC —they had a 12-week sale for $12. 

• Actual Prep Tests: 1-50, 52-61, 62-71, 72-81, 88, 89

• If you want to take a class: I heard TestMasters is good, also check out LSAT Demon (they have podcast too)

• I was recommended The Loophole in Logical Reasoning by Ellen Cassidy, which helps with logical reasoning

• When practicing LR in actual exams, do the second LR section, which is generally harder than the first section. 

Mistakes to Avoid and Final Words of Encouragement 

• You have to believe you are capable of getting your goal score! Belief changes actions, which changes outcomes. 

• If you find yourself dwelling on mistakes of the past, run through questions you crushed, so you remember what that feels like. You could even make a success journal. 

• Don’t expect immediate results, or compare your journey to others (everyone works at a different pace!)

• Fear for the future is a distraction (“what if I don’t get into [dream school]??”); it changes your emotional makeup and positivity. Fear of failure is good if it keeps you motivated, but be aware if you’re starting to worry about the failure that may come to pass more than you desire success. Stay focused on the process of where you are at right now, and the results will take care of themselves. 

• Embrace change. You have to be willing to adopt a new strategy and way of thinking for the LSAT. You can get angry at the test and try to fight it and disagree with the test makers all you want, but that won’t help you overcome it. 

• Don’t go in with the attitude that you deserve anything. You need to work for it, and even then it doesn’t always get you what you want. 

• You don’t have anything to lose, whether it’s opportunity, self-esteem, etc. Rather than fixate on negative outcomes (e.g. “if i do bad on this test, maybe I’m not as smart as I thought. I’ll disappoint and lose the respect of my family/friends/professors”), visualize what is possible.

• Burnout is real. It can feel like you’re wasting time or falling behind, but taking a week off and returning to the exam with a fresh mind can really make a difference. Your brain needs time to process all the information! Cultivate self-awareness at what your body/mind is telling you. It’s important to have enjoyable distractions and take time off. You won’t forget how to do the exam — studying is a process, and your brain still rearranges and organizes concepts when you’re not thinking about the LSAT. This a skills based test — it tests how your mind works and thinks and processes information. That’s also why it can take longer to improve your score. So don’t cut yourself off from normal life, for the sake of mental health. Treat each problem is a new and exciting problem to solve, or a new passage to decipher and learn from! And this sounds hard, but try to have fun — it can be if you go into it with the right attitude 🙂 

• The problems you face are not unique. Your journey will be your own, but you share your struggles with thousands of other people. It’s a standardized test, so there are points they test over and over again, and still many people struggle with it. Embrace your difficulties and know you’re not the only one. 

• Failure is not a signal to turn back. Failure doesn’t define you. How you respond to difficulty will determine how you do in the long run. You learn more from what you got wrong than what you got right. Failure is simply guiding information — use it as a starting point on how to fix a mistake the next time around. Treat setbacks as opportunities. As Einstein famously said, “You never fail until you stop trying.” (In conditional reasoning, that’s Stop trying –> Fail) 

• There may be times when you want to feel sorry for yourself. In these moments, use failure as the flashpoint to build a new approach and figure out what you were doing incorrectly so that you can improve. Adopt an attitude of interpreting feedback in a way that is always in your best interest. The test is designed to make you angry and frustrated, so this attitude will give you the best chance to conquer it. Reframe the idea that you have to get up and study. You get to do this — you get to continue to learn and grow and pursue law school and pursue your dreams! See things that could be interpreted negatively, and turn them into something positive. There’s always something positive that can come out of it. 

Good luck! You got this 🙂

Read here about the rest of my law school application journey!