Thinking about forking up the money and signing up for a LSAT prep course. Princeton Review, Kaplan or PowerSource. Anyone taken such courses before? Have they helped any? Plan on taking the test in June and need to do pretty well on it to have any shot at Law school. I would just buy all the prep books I can but I can't motivate myself to study. Thoughts? Advice? Thanks in advance.
If you can't use the books because you can't motivate yourself to study for a test to determine something like this, I wouldn't even consider going to law school.
I took the Kaplan course during my fall semester 04. Doing it during classes was a BIG mistake on my part (EE Major). You need to be damn sure that you have the time to commit to it for the whole process to work and for you to get some benefit out of it. Pros: It's a huge motivator, you can track your progress and you really see what you need to work on. You have access to a ton of previous LSATs. Small class size (I think mine had about 10) You get used to the tempo/setting of the test. You can retake the class if you don't feel prepared (they'll check your homework logs) Cons: Price. Time (if you have other commitments) If I could go back and do it again I would clear out a whole summer for preparation where studying was all that I needed to do. Keeping up with all of my classwork was a major pain in the *** and it took me a whole lot longer to fully prepare.
If you want a good test score, then definitely take a prep course. Some can do well without it, but most who take a prep course benefit from it.
I have to agree with scott on this one- if you can't sit down and study from a book, law school might not be your cup of tea. It sounds like your grades are not very good which means your law school options are going to be one of the lower tier schools. About the top 2-5% of the class will get high paying jobs, the next 15-25% will get something OK, and the rest will have 100K+ in debt and be scrambling for a job. So, if you are not ready to study enough to try to get in that top percentile that gets employment, you are just wasting 3 years of your life and setting yourself up for years of student debt payments that you can't afford. Of course if your parents are paying for it, you should do it, law school itself is not bad (despite the horror stories you may hear)- it's practicing law and having a shitload of debt that sucks. Continue being a student for 3 more years, get your JD and use it to find some other job far away from the legal profession. As far as your orginal question, I just ordered some old tests directly from the LSAT people and practiced on those. It is pretty easy to figure out what types of questions they use and the system for cracking them. Of course this was 15 years ago, so there are probably plenty of other options to find old tests.
I took Princeton Review the summer before my senior year. All I did that summer was study for the LSAT and work out. You need to devote at least 2 solid months without distractions if you want to make it worth your time. I decided on Princeton Review because I was told that PR uses actual past LSAT questions whereas Kaplan gives you LSAT-like questions that they created. I really don't know if that's even true. I just took the guy's word for it.
texas0407, kaplan says the same thing in their marketing. i taught the lsat for kaplan before going to law school, and ive looked at all the princeton review materials as well. i can say, without a doubt, that the only difference in the actual methods they teach is terminology. of course, who cares what you call it. both are plenty capable of explaining the questions. the whole reason that these classes exist are for the personal attention/motivation you get out of having a teacher, weekly assignments, and practice tests given under approximated conditions. i say that because, for far less money, you can simply buy the books from either kaplan or pr and a bunch of actual old tests from the lsac. but, as the original poster said, sometimes people need more to motivate them. i bought a mountain of books and tests before taking the lsat, and knowing that if i didnt make a good score i wasnt going to get into any school, much less a good school, was all the motivation i needed to do the work. my advice to the king of the 40 acres would be to find one of the books, either from a friend or half priced books or something. take a look at it and do a practice test. if youre a natural and score well, forget about dropping a grand on a class and just do a bunch of practice tests to get familiar with the questions and the timing. if you really suck at it, take serious stock of just how much a course might help. no reason to pour money into a losing proposition. a course probably isnt going to give you a 20+ point bump. but if you need 10-15 on your score, and you know that you need the class environment in order for you to do what is needed, then it may be the right thing to do. but remember, dont pay the money for them to teach you, cause they arent going to teach you ****. there isnt going to be some magic convergence of knowledge and test taking skills that just happens. you have to make it happen by taking endless amounts of practice tests and drills. kaplan or pr are going to give you all the opportunity in the world to take those practice tests and thats the only way its going to happen. and im not just talking about the three or five or however many are part of the schedule. kaplan has at least 30 old tests, and if you dont do at least ten of them, you are wasting your money.
thanks for all the insight especially Gen. Applewhite I just picked up a copy of the Powerscore's Logic Games Bible recently and have been going through it. Still undecided on whether I will fork over the $1299 for the Princeton Review course but supposedly the teacher here at the Upper Kirby location has gotten some good reviews. Going to take a practice test sometime here in the near future and that will probably determine whether I need the extra point boost that taking a course could probably give me. KO40A
I took the Powerscore course as well as used the logic games bible and it was well worth it. Depends on the person I guess but I definitely would have scored lower without the prep course. If you cannot get motivated though, save yourself the time and money that you will waste. The LSAT isn't as hard as the discipline required to consistently practice for it.
