The Biggest Myth about LSAT Improvement (Ep. 424)
Thinking LSAT
Nathan Fox and Ben Olson
4.8 • 868 Ratings
🗓️ 16 October 2023
⏱️ 68 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Law schools thirsty for applicants may tell you that people rarely improve their LSAT score by more than a few points. This week, Ben and Nathan unpack the motivation behind this pernicious myth. Law schools don’t want you to improve your LSAT. They want your application now. Later, the guys discredit the impact of stamina on LSAT performance. They encourage listeners not to write addendums that draw attention to their weaknesses. And they consider the extent to which law school rankings matter outside of the T14.
3:57 - Law School Transparency - Nathan and Ben react to news that the U.S. Department of Education will soon require law schools to disclose more information about student debt and career outcomes.
10:42 - Patience Pays Off - Don’t rush to apply this cycle. Patient applicants can make life-changing improvements to their LSAT scores. Ben and Nathan also warn listener Jacob that law school isn’t a business investment—it’s a box to check en route to becoming a lawyer.
29:10 - Unlocking LG - The guys ponder what’s keeping LSAT Demon student Aidan from unlocking perfect scores in LG. They preach accuracy over speed and suggest that Aidan stop trying to finish all four games in a section.
34:03 - Premise Indicators - Ben and Nathan explain how words like “for” and “because” indicate premises.
36:52 - Strengthen and Weaken - The guys use a football analogy to illustrate different approaches to strengthening or weakening an argument.
42:22 - Stamina - Listener Jewel blames her lack of stamina for lower scores in the later sections of practice tests. Nathan and Ben fear that Jewel is engaging in a self-fulfilling prophecy.
48:30 - GPA Addendum - An anonymous listener asks whether to address a past substance abuse problem that negatively affected their undergraduate grades. Ben and Nathan advise Anonymous to highlight recent career accomplishments instead.
55:52 - Résumé Addendum - The guys encourage listener Sydney to refrain from writing an addendum that draws attention to a gap in their résumé.
58:24 - Do Rankings Matter? - Listener Chris wonders whether ranking matters outside of the T14. Nathan and Ben reiterate their 2x rule for law school rankings: When comparing one school to another, you shouldn’t consider their rankings unless they differ by twice as much or more.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and |
| 0:05.0 | welcome to episode 424 of the thinking Elsap podcast. |
| 0:11.0 | I'm Ben Olson and with me is Nathan Fox |
| 0:14.8 | where the co-founder of el sat demon dot com and the elside demon daily podcast |
| 0:19.5 | the elsat famous share news and ask questions on our website thinking |
| 0:23.3 | else at.com Thursday November 23 at 5 p.m. Pacific 8 p.m. eastern |
| 0:30.3 | Nathan you're going to be doing a free class you know what you're going to be |
| 0:33.4 | covering? Same thing I cover every damn time which is the L-SAT is easy. I mean it I'm |
| 0:40.4 | clearer and clearer the longer I teach L-SAT about what my primary mission is as an L-SAT instructor and it really is to show you how easy the L-SAT is, not how easy it can be or like in some fantasy land but my job is to convince you that the questions are solvable one at a time and it's not going to be gimmicks, not going to be these weird tactics like, oh, do this one weird trick. It's not like that. It's like we're going to read a bunch of Elsack questions very carefully and we're going to show how they essentially answer themselves like all you really have to do is understand what the hell it's saying. |
| 1:22.9 | Just read what read what it says, react to it, really understand what they're saying, you know, |
| 1:28.8 | not just the topic, not just the what, but what about it? do they want why is this why are these words |
| 1:34.9 | arranged in this order on the page and when you figure out the meaning of what the |
| 1:39.6 | hell they're asking you they're not asking you unsolvable questions. |
| 1:43.8 | I mean, I think, what do you think, Ben? |
| 1:45.8 | It's like 98% of all ELSAR questions. |
| 1:49.6 | There's just no debate. |
| 1:50.6 | It's not even, it's not close. |
| 1:52.2 | It's not, it's not close it's not there's one answer that credibly |
| 1:56.6 | answers the question and there's four that don't I agree agree and the vast vast majority of our explaining involves helping |
| 2:08.2 | someone understand how they misunderstood something that they either read too quickly or didn't take the time to just process. |
| 2:15.1 | Yeah, and I mean, you know, I do think that it's the biggest difference between how I teach |
| 2:20.4 | Elsat or how Ben teaches Elsat and what you're likely to see out there in Elsat world because I just know that there are so many of these classes that are trying to get you to some cheesy, you know, oh, we're going to get you to our seven point improvement if you do our full class and you know, it will guarantee seven points and if not you can retake our already shitty class again to try to get your seven point improvement you know that's what's out there |
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