This video deals with a relatively simple logic game but the concepts taught here will help you on the more difficult games. We start by setting up the diagram and then look at some advanced techniques that will help make all your games easier.

It’s obviously different for everyone, some of us can ace the test with little or no preparation while others might take months of dedicated study to see significant improvements in their score.

We’ve put together an LSAT Study Schedule as a guideline for your LSAT studies. This is just a guide and you may require much more or less time than is laid out here. But it’s a great place to start.

Before you charge into the LSAT study schedule, there are a couple of quick things you should consider. Namely, Diagnostic Exams and Goals.

Diagnostic Exam – generally I recommend that students take a diagnostic LSAT to begin with, with two big warnings (we’ll get to those in a moment). Taking a diagnostic LSAT allows you to set a baseline score and to build your goals upon that. You can then track your progress from this base score. If you’re looking for an official LSAT to start with, there’s one in our trial LSAT course. Here’s the caveats on the diagnostic LSAT:

WARNING #1 – many successful students with high LSAT scores, did not score high on their diagnostic, there is lots to learn about the particulars of the LSAT, how they ask the questions and what methods you can use to get to the answers quickly. If you are the type of person who is demoralized easily with low test scores, skip the diagnostic and move into studying. When you’ve prepared a bit more then take an exam.

WARNING #2 – staring off with a full LSAT exam is often daunting and becomes a mental block to getting your LSAT studies started, if you find yourself more than a few days past your planned start date and you still haven’t written the diagnostic exam, skip it and just get started. You can start with a simple lesson on one topic and spend 20-30 minutes learning one thing. Much less intimidating than a 4 hour exam to start. You can always come back and do lots of practice exams later.

Set your Goals!

Essential for any study program, and especially for the LSAT. Set your goals early and review them often.

Goals should include:

• a final score (check what your hopeful law schools require for an idea of what you might require)
• hours per week – determine how much time you are willing to dedicate per week and stick to it
• that’s it. You can add in your school of choice but  too many goals and some start to slip. Stick to these two and you’ll stay focused.

You may also want to consider where you’ll be studying. It’s best to set a place, be consistent and visit it often.

Here’s a few good places:

• a school library or other library
• an office

And some bad places:

• home study or bedroom (maybe, see below)
• park bench – it may be sunny but you won’t get much work done

Studying at home – some people can, but most of us can’t. If you’re going to study at home make sure you eliminate all distractions and ensure that no one will be coming in to disturb you. Try this once or twice and if you find yourself taking a nap, watching TV or constantly being interrupted then you need to find somewhere else to study and stick to it.

Once you’ve got your place and goals set you’ll need a study plan. You can put your own together or use our suggestions here. This LSAT study guide will take you through all aspects of the LSAT in approximately 70 hours, plus a few more for extra practice and review. You can supplement it with official LSAT practice exams at any point in the study plan. We’d suggest you fit in at least 5 full length practice exams under timed conditions and include some time to review them after each exam. Total study time in this plan including 5 exams and review time is approximately 90-100 hours. At 10-12 hours per week that’s about 10 weeks, or at 20 hours per week it’s about 5 weeks. You can condense it down further by studying more often or by cutting down on some areas that you find easier. Often students will find a few topics that come easily to them and you can reduce your study time on these.

When you’re ready, get started with the LSAT Study Schedule here.

Take a look at some ways to improve your reading abilities in this video, or in the article below:

There are a number of ways to do this in the short term and these are addressed in full in our online LSAT prep course. For the purpose of this article I am going to take a look at some longer term solutions. If you only have a few weeks to go until your LSAT these solutions probably will not help you much, but if you have a month or more you can definitely make use of these techniques to improve your score on the reading comprehension section of the LSAT.

1. Practice Reading

The best thing you can do to improve your reading abilities and speed is to practice. This does not mean reading like you normally do. You need to focus. And you should focus on short articles of complex subject matter, similar to that which you will find on the LSAT. Grab a newspaper or a copy of The Economist magazine and read and article. Personally I like The Economist as it has short articles just like the LSAT with topics ranging from economics to social sciences or biological sciences and the arts just like your reading passages on the actual LSAT. You should be reading at least a few articles a day. This gives you a bit of a break from your LSAT studies and you can do it on the bus, in the library, in class (if it’s boring), or pretty much anywhere.

2. Focus

When you read a novel in bed or an article in a trashy magazine you will sometimes find that your mind is wandering. Ever read a page and then stopped only to realize you have no idea what you just read? It happens to all of us. You cannot let this happen on the LSAT. You must devote all of your efforts into focusing on what you are reading. There is not time to go back and re-read because you were daydreaming.

3. Use the other half of your brain

One way to maintain focus is to employ the other half of your brain while you read. That’s the half that’s usually daydreaming about lunch or your date last night. Put it to work. You can do this by forcing yourself to not just read but to analyze as well. While you read you should be thinking about what you are reading. Think about what the text means, try to create a basic summary that simplifies what you are reading as you read it. Is the argument flawed? What statistics are they relying on? Does the way they use the statistics or supporting data make sense? Think about what the author’s view point is, is there a view point? Think about what other view points are expressed in the article. What is the main point or purpose of the article? Follow and make note of transitions in the article. If the article starts off in one direction supporting a proposition and then changes to address critiques of this view, make note of this change in direction. Thinking about these elements of the article will help you stay focused and will dramatically improve your comprehension and ability to recall the article.

4. Make notes on the article

As you read the article, mark it up. Circle, underline, box, draw arrows and stars. Develop your own system for how you will mark up an article or use ours (explained in full in the online LSAT prep course). Generally you want to be marking up your view point and key characters, the author’s views, the main point, transitions or changes in direction or tone and any key words that help you focus on the structure or content of the article.

5. Explain it to someone else

After you read, take the time to explain the article to someone else. This forces you to recall what you read, to summarize it in a meaningful way and to analyze it as you discuss and explain the article. This helps develop your memory as well as analytical skills that are so important on the LSAT.

Following these steps can help improve your reading abilities and have a direct impact on your LSAT score. But there is more to be gained from these exercises, developing these analytical reading skills will also help you in law school and in a career as a lawyer. Lawyers and law students are required to read with focus and to analyze complex text on a daily basis. So get started now, raise your LSAT score but also improve your overall analytical reading skills.

If you’re having trouble with the LSAT logic games, this method of studying often helps students break through into higher scores. The reason the repetition is effective is that there are only so many LSAT game constructions and this helps you become an expert at them. As you move on to other practice tests, and the real thing, the characters and story may change but the structure of the game will be very close to something you’ve done a dozen times and scored perfect on. Give it a shot and you might see a jump in your score on the games section.

For the games, try doing the same section over and over. It sounds strange but it works. You do the section in 35 minutes, score it. Review it. Really review it. Figure out exactly how to do the best diagram for the rules and game set up. Then make sure you know exactly why each answer is wrong and each right one is right. Also make sure you know how to answer each question. You should get to the point that when you see a “must be true” question with “additional information”, you know that you are going to plug the extra info into your diagram, apply all your rules, fill out the diagram as much as possible, then move on to the answer choices, for each answer choice plug them in somewhere other than where they say to go e.g. (A) Bob is 3rd. plug Bob in somewhere other than 3rd. If Bob only goes 3rd then the answer is correct, if Bob goes somewhere else and you can fill the diagram without violating any rules then you can cross this one off as wrong. You should be clear on this process (from the course) for each of the following:

- Must be true
- Must be false
- Could be True
- Could be false
- Cannot be True (same as must be false)
- Cannot be False (same as must be true)
- complete and accurate list questions
- additional information
- max/min questions

There are really two big hold ups on the games side that often hold students back.

1. Not being able to diagram properly, and
2. Not being clear on what the question is asking and how to get the right answer

Both these skills need to be so practiced to the point that you know exactly what to do immediately upon looking at the game setup or question. It will still take some time to go through the steps but at least you know you’re working towards the answer instead of wondering where to start.

The techniques mentioned here are all taught in Alpha-Score’s online LSAT prep course.

Due to copyright protection this is not an actual LSAT Game. (however, all the questions in our paid course are actual LSAT questions) The design of this question is identical to the games you will encounter on the LSAT. The principles for diagramming this game apply to your basic ordering games on the LSAT. Begin with listing your entities:

A B C D E G N

Then make your placeholders for each entity:

___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___

Then diagram each of the rules.
You’ll have to check out the video for the rest of the game.

The report was based on a systematic search of the research literature from 1996 through July 2008, and identified more than a thousand empirical studies of online learning. Analysts screened these studies to find those that (a) contrasted an online to a face-to-face condition, (b) measured student learning outcomes, (c) used a rigorous research design, and (d) provided adequate information to calculate an effect size. As a result of this screening, 51 independent effects were identified that could be subjected to meta-analysis. The meta-analysis found that, on average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.

A copy of the complete report titled “Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies” is available from the US Department of Education at http://www.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/finalreport.pdf