Law Schools Want You to Want Them (Ep. 422)
Thinking LSAT
Nathan Fox and Ben Olson
4.8 • 868 Ratings
🗓️ 2 October 2023
⏱️ 89 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Law school admissions is a competitive game, and schools are wary to admit applicants who are likely to enroll elsewhere. This week, Ben and Nathan examine a tactic that an admissions office may use to gauge an applicant’s interest in their law school. Later, the guys share some tips for overcoming test day anxiety, they evaluate a strategy for the closing minutes of timed sections, and they dig into the Flaw question type in Logical Reasoning.
0:58 - Updating a Personal Statement - Why might a law school invite you to rewrite your personal statement? Nathan and Ben suspect that they’re gauging your interest in their school. The guys remind listeners that lawyers never shy away from extra work if it helps to make their case.
34:48 - Test Day Anxiety - Ben and Nathan share some tips on how to mitigate test day anxiety.
41:41 - Question Timing - LSAT Demon student Lucy suggests a new feature that would show students how much time they spent on each question of a timed section. Nathan and Ben are open to the idea but doubt that such a feature would be as helpful as Lucy thinks.
44:30 - Last Five Minutes - Listener Hanna sees value in another prep company’s “five-minute plan” for when time is running low. Ben and Nathan don’t want a five-minute plan to distract Hanna from her 35-minute plan.
52:11 - Apply Now or After October? - An anonymous listener considers withdrawing from the October LSAT to apply earlier in the cycle. Nathan and Ben offer an alternative: apply next cycle with a better LSAT score.
1:00:38 - Flaw Questions - Ben and Nathan break down two of the most common phrasings for answer choices on Flaw questions.
1:13:51 - Plug and Chug - Nathan and Ben discuss why solving Logic Games is never an either-or decision between opposing methods. Everyone will discover their own best approach, which is often a blend of worlds and “plug and chug.”
1:18:48 - Personal Statement Topic - Ben and Nathan encourage an anonymous listener to focus their personal statement on career successes rather than an early-career layoff.
1:22:32 - Scholarship Estimator - Nathan and Ben explain some of the methodology behind the LSAT Demon Scholarship Estimator.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to episode 422 of the thinking ELSA Podcast. I'm Dan Olson. |
| 0:13.1 | With me is Nathan Fox. |
| 0:14.8 | We're the co-founder of Elsat Demon.com |
| 0:17.0 | and the Elsat Demon Daily Podcast. |
| 0:20.2 | Be Elsat Famous, share news and ask questions on our website, thinking-L-Sat.com. |
| 0:25.0 | On Monday, October 9th at 10 a.m. Pacific, 1 p.m. Eastern, I will be doing my regular class, it will be free so all you need is a demon free |
| 0:36.6 | account you can get that at el sat demon.com and then you can sign up for this class in |
| 0:42.0 | particular at elset. link |
| 0:45.4 | forward slash free. We will be doing logical reasoning if I remember correctly. |
| 0:50.7 | Yeah, we will. So, yep, come to that if you can. Do you have anything you want to share, Nathan? |
| 0:57.0 | No, let's get into it. |
| 0:58.0 | All right, so this first email, it looks like, is from our very own Leslie, our personal statement editor? |
| 1:06.7 | I think so. |
| 1:07.8 | Okay, you want to read it? |
| 1:09.4 | Yeah. A student applying to University of Denver was contacted by email a few days after submitting her application. |
| 1:17.5 | They're giving her a chance to update her personal statement for their new prompt, which is, I have the new prompt here, all in italics. |
| 1:26.1 | It says, a recent survey of 24,000 practicing lawyers by the University of Denver-based |
| 1:31.3 | Institute for the Advancement of the American Legal System, IALS, |
| 1:41.3 | has determined that the professional competencies of early career lawyers are as important as the legal skills that they develop in law school. |
| 1:50.0 | Describe how your distinctive life experiences have shaped two and then in parentheses the numeral two. |
| 2:00.0 | Okay, this is a good package. The absolute worst. |
| 2:04.0 | Have shaped two, two of the following competencies identified by IALS |
... |
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