How to Get a 160 on the LSAT

This is a guest article by my friend Dustin Timblin who runs Me and My JD, a blog about his law school experience.

So you’ve decided to go to law school. The first thing you should do after taking that important step is to realize how important your LSAT score is to your overall acceptance chances. The LSAT is often called the “great equalizer” because it levels the playing field across majors and schools in order to more objectively evaluate your chances of success in law school.

The LSAT score is by far the most important factor in the admissions process, followed by the GPA, and then the personal statement, soft factors, letters of recommendation, etc. Often, students fret about their undergraduate school when deciding to apply to the more prestigious schools, but it isn’t considered very important, unless it’s giving the edge to a student with the exact same other stats as another qualified applicant. The LSAT, therefore, is something to be taken seriously and adequately prepared for.

The LSAT is administered the first Saturday of every February, June, October, and December. If you want to start law school in the fall semester, you should take the February, June, or October test of the year before the year you want to start law school. The December LSAT generally reduces your chance of acceptance because so many applicants have already applied by the time December LSAT test takers can submit their fully completed applications. So, go ahead and go over to www.lsac.org and sign up for a date of your choice. The cost is $125 so be prepared to pay for that. While you’re at it, familiarize yourself with LSAC’s website because you will have to pay an additional $125 dollars for the LSDAS service on that website, which streamlines the application process, allows electronic applications, and takes care of sending in letters of recommendation and transcripts for you.

What is an ideal time for adequate LSAT preparation? The popular opinion is 3 months, which is what I did, so this guide will be based off that time frame. You don’t necessarily have to be unemployed and devoting 40 hours of your week to this, but it does help if you do it during the summer, or when school isn’t that important to you, because you do need to commit 20+ hours a week for this plan to be effective.

First, take a free sample test, provided by LSAT. This will be your initial diagnostic to gauge your potential. Find a quiet, uncomfortable location and make sure you stick to 35 minutes per section. This is very important—if you allow yourself more time, you are essentially overinflating your score, since the LSAT is a test of speed as well as logical thinking. So don’t do it. After scoring your test, don’t fret if you scored lower than you hoped. My first diagnostic was a 160, and I ended up with a 171 on the test – an 11 point gain in 3 months.  With a 147-148 initial diagnostic, you can reach the 160 plateau, making you an excellent candidate for a good school. You should expect your score to go down approximately 2-5 points on test day, because of nerves, noise, other students, etc.

Ok, now make a trip to your local bookstore or online store and order the Powerscore Logical Reasoning, Logic Games, and Reading Comprehension Bibles. Don’t waste your money on any of the crap out there such as the Princeton Review books, Barron, LSAT for Dummies, etc. The Powerscore Bibles use actual LSAT questions as a basis for their study guides, while some of the other companies, because they are cheapskates and don’t want to pay LSAC to use their material, do not. Now, for your last study material purchase, buy 2 or 3 of the Books of Ten Official LSAT Practice Tests. Your total amount spent here is about $200, but it’s completely worth it for the potential scholarship money, and chance at a better law school.

You often hear that you have to take a class in order to score well, but that’s not necessary true if you are self-motivated and can regularly study on your own.  In fact, these classes sometimes aren’t very beneficial at all if you are scoring above a 160+, since the majority of students score below a 160.

Your first month should be spent in intense study of the Powerscore Bibles. Spend about 3-4 hours a day and 5-6 days a week. It’s hard to go into the specifics in an article of this length, but you should acclimate your brain to the types of questions that will be asked on the test. Most importantly, you must recognize that the makers of the LSAT are concerned with testing your logical reasoning. The most important difference between someone who does well on the LSAT and someone who doesn’t is that the person who does can recognize that, behind all the questions about biochemical capacitors, Pacific Ocean fish larvae, and subcutaneous cell membranes, is a definable, logical structure with the same logical fallacies, inconsistencies, or missing links over and over again.

To put it simply, concern yourself with construction, not content.

The next month and a half you should begin taking your official practice tests at a rate of three per week. Try and take them early in the morning and make sure you simulate the test conditions. For the first couple of weeks, I think it’s important to stretch the time constraints beyond 35 minutes so you can practice each type of question and identify the methods you’re going to use to answer them. Slowly bring the time constraint down to 35 minutes over the course of the month and a half and if you want to take it down to 33 minutes or so, that’d be a good idea in case you go slower on test day. One last point to consider: on the actual day of the test, there will be one experimental section that doesn’t count as part of your score. It is used to test future potential LSAT questions. It will be one of the first three sections of the test, so you may want to insert a random section into your practice tests, if you like, in order to simulate the test even further, though it might not help all that much since you’ll know which is the experimental section in your practice but not in the actual test.

The last couple of weeks should be intense. Cancel social engagements. Explain to your significant other how important it is. You should take one practice a day for this last leg.  If you run out of tests, go back to your old ones and circle all the answers so you don’t know what the right answers are, and go over it again. Make sure you are adhering strictly to the time limits, and have adequate testing conditions. If you have a friend who has study plans, you could go to the library with him or her and tell them to occasionally make annoying noises, drop their pencil, or sneeze in order to simulate the test. Two days before the test, take two practice tests and then go hang out with your friends, do something relaxing by yourself, or just get some sleep. The day before the test, don’t study at all. Take the opportunity to watch a movie, eat a good meal, or do something else fun. Forget about the test and just relax. Get an early night and set two alarms.

All that’s left for you now is to step up to the plate and deliver. Keep calm and recognize that it’s the same type of test you’ve been studying for months. You’ll have to do a writing sample, which I didn’t cover because it’s not graded and not important. Keep your stamina up, make sure you wear comfortable clothes, and bring a healthy snack. You’ll do phenomenal!