4.8 • 868 Ratings
🗓️ 28 April 2025
⏱️ 86 minutes
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Logical Reasoning predictions rely on the basics: accept the premises, assume the conclusion is false, and don’t read the question first. Ben and Nathan explain how these steps make the section easier and why reading the question first often hurts performance.
They also discuss how law schools use seat deposit deadlines to encourage students to accept weaker scholarship offers. The guys warn about the return of student loan collections and emphasize avoiding debt without a solid repayment plan. They introduce “Crushing 1L,” a new tool to help students start law school strong. Then another episode of Personal Statement Gong Show.
0:28 – Deposit Deadline Drama - Law schools' admissions offices are sales departments. Changing offers right before deposit deadlines puts pressure on applicants to accept worse deals. It’s all part of the game schools play to leverage scholarship offers to manipulate their GPA and LSAT medians.
10:35 – Student Loans in Collections - Collections are now in effect for defaulted student loans, including wage garnishments. With less than 40% of borrowers current on their payments, it’s a stark reminder not to take on massive debt for law school unless you have a solid plan to pay it off. Always check employment outcomes. Most importantly, get an LSAT score that lets you go to law school for free.
23:34 – Prepping for 1L Success - The Demon has a new feature, “Crushing 1L,” to help you get a grasp of the language and the big picture of law school before you even start. Hadari’s story—getting into Stanford Law without debt after 2.5 years of prep—shows it’s worth taking your time to do law school the right way. Even if you finish law school at the bottom of your class, graduating debt-free puts you on firm financial footing.
37:19 – Making Better Predictions - Never read the question first. You get better at making predictions in Logical Reasoning by practicing the right way. Accept the premises, expect the conclusion not to be properly proven, and be skeptical of every argument.
52:16 – Remaining Time in Reading Comprehension - If you’re low on time in Reading Comprehension in a practice section, go ahead and start the next passage. Then finish the passage and the questions after time runs out. The goal of practice is long-term reading improvement, not squeezing out a few extra points. On test day, though, you might try reading a bit and grabbing a main point question, or simply use the remaining time to rest and reset.
56:17 – Personal Statement Gong Show - Bryan is the next contestant in the Personal Statement Gong Show. This is the segment where Ben and Nate will read your personal statement, but as soon as they spot a problem, they ring the gong and stop reading. The current record is five lines, held by Jeremiah.
1:12:18 – Don’t Want to Be an Attorney - A demon student aspires to become a clinical ethicist after a decade of nursing experience. Ben and Nate caution that if a JD is necessary, fine, but do not pay for law school. A nursing license already carries a ton of career value, so make sure you know exactly what you’re getting into before you commit to more school and debt.
1:18:54 - Word of the Week - Verisimilitude - “After reading this chain, I recognized that this conversation possessed a high degree of verisimilitude. The texts, in their word choice and arguments, sounded as if they were written by the people who purportedly sent them, or by a particularly adept AI text generator.”
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
0:00.0 | literally impossible to answer questions just from the question itself. |
0:05.0 | You always have to know. |
0:07.0 | You can frequently know what's going on if you just master the passage. |
0:18.0 | Hello and welcome to episode 504 on the Thinking ElSat podcast. |
0:21.6 | I'm Nathan Box with me as Ben Olson. |
0:23.5 | We are the co-founders of LSATDemon.com and the LSAT Demon Daily podcast. |
0:28.6 | Let's dive right in, Ben. |
0:29.6 | First item on the agenda is about deposit deadline drama. |
0:34.6 | Last week on Thinking LSAT, we went over a few of the ways that law schools use deposit |
0:39.4 | deadlines as marketing tools to pressure you into accepting an offer because, quote, their |
0:44.8 | seats are filling up fast. If you haven't yet listened to that episode, 503, make sure to check |
0:50.3 | it out. This is a continuation of that discussion. But this week we have an email from |
0:56.2 | Demon Student Ben, who wrote in an article from above the law. You want to take it from here? |
1:05.1 | Ben Olson, not Demon Student Ben, but Ben Olson. Yeah, thanks, demon, student Ben. |
1:11.6 | The article was quoting an email one student received from the University of Arizona, |
1:16.6 | quote, due to an unanticipated level of interest in Arizona law, |
1:21.8 | we have adjusted the financial award offers for a few admitted students who have yet to submit a seat deposit. |
1:29.6 | Wow. So they offered them money and then they're changing that. You received a full tuition |
1:35.5 | and then approximately some number, approximately $30,000. Renewable scholarship offer. That offer is being |
1:43.8 | revised to a $15,680 |
1:48.5 | renewable scholarship. |
1:50.1 | Wow. |
... |
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