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Lightweight LSAT

lightweightlsat.com

76 pointsgregsadetsky39 comments

> A history exam might ask a question like "When was the US Constitution ratified?" Suppose you pick answer "(a) 1776". Then you look at the answer key and you see that the correct answer was actually "(b) 1789".

Wasn't the constitution ratified in 1788?

The Constitution was ratified by state's conventions in 1787, 1788, 1789, and 1790. The convention of the ninth state (New Hampshire) ratified on June 21, 1788.

However, the operation of the Constitution didn't commence until March 1789 [1] [2]. Prior to that commencement, government still operated under the Articles of Confederation. The question is poorly worded, if they're asking for when the federal government began operating under the Constitution; but it's also poorly worded if they're asking for when the ninth state ratified it.

[1] https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/18/420/ [2] https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep...

Heh, this is the thread I came to see on a submission about the LSAT on HN o/

> The question is poorly worded …

That sums up roughly 95% of daily practice in US trials and appeals!

The Constitution was indeed ratified on June 21, 1788 when New Hampshire became the 9th state to ratify it, though it didn't go into effect until March 4, 1789.

Thanks for the correction! Website should update soon. Changed it to 1788 and I added a shout-out for y'all:

"(p.s. thanks to the smart readers who noticed I initially put the wrong date down, and who also noticed that "ratified" is somewhat indeterminate when it comes to the Constitution. But the real LSAT is unlikely to make those kinds of mistakes; there's only 1 correct answer, and it's definitely correct.)"

Feel free to make pull requests if you notice other errors or have suggestions for improvement: https://github.com/gpdowney/lightweightLSAT

This looks fantastic! I work in test preparation myself (though not for the LSAT) and this ticks all the boxes for the best approaches. I also really appreciate it being direct and opinionated without the obnoxious tendency of a lot of guides to denigrate alternatives.

Thanks for the nice words!

the only secret to the LSAT is to grind practice tests. back in the day (~10 years ago) i torrented all the available tests (~70) and all the practice books. I did one of the books to learn the "tricks" and then just took all the tests. scored a 178 (and then never went to law school lol).

Did you track your progress across practice tests? Did you need 70 tests to reach 178 performance?

I think 70 tests is overkill. As long as you are able to analyze and learn from your mistakes, you should be able to improve doing a fraction of the tests.

My experience was from almost two decades ago and is atypical. I had decided to write it only just a month before the LSAT, and so I started prior tests only four weeks before the test date. In that time, I did 27 official practice tests. I also read a couple books and tried two unofficial tests.

I tracked my results in a spreadsheet and had a marginal improvement from 173.4 to 176 for the first five and last five tests. But, essentially all improvement happened after just ten tests.

In all practice tests, I did best in logic games, answering 98.1% correct, compared with 93.5% for logical reasoning and 91.4% for reading comprehension.

I was somewhat lucky and got 97/99 on the actual test, enough for a 180 that time (2 incorrect in logical reasoning). I had only got that twice in the practice tests with an expectation between 174 and 180 with a median of 176.

After each test I analyzed every incorrect answer as well as the ones I was less sure about. There were online forums where I could ask about, or see other people's analysis of the problem questions.

I think a strategy aimed understanding wrong answers in your weakest area can be a more efficient use of preparation time.

"I think a strategy aimed understanding wrong answers in your weakest area can be a more efficient use of preparation time."

This is how I study. I don't need to review my strong areas, I need to learn the weak ones. I can cruise through tech certs very quickly this way. People are always surprised when I can learn earn a cert after studying only 2-10 hours for it.

Not with intent - I remember that I was excited the first time I got a 180 (maybe half-way through?) but I didn't stop at that point. Each test only took about two hours (I didn't practice the essay section because it was well-known it didn't matter) so it wasn't such a huge investment to do them all. Including the practice book it took me about 2 months of 1-2 practice tests a day.

That's a good score. I took a practice LSAT once. I think I got a 148 or a 152. I thought that was pretty good until I looked it up. Not terrible for not studying, but it was only the 40th percentile haha.

This works if you're already smart. Have seen plenty of people grind through all the tests while barely improving their score or ending well below their goals.

Anecdotes abound <shrug>. My only advantage going into it was 1) I was a good reader 2) I was well familiar with logical fallacies from a childhood of trolling/debating people online. But it's a standardized test that covers a very small set of skills. So just like any other standardized thing it's trainable.

It seems to me that if you’re not a good reader, law school is probably not for you. I would guess that while doing well on the LSAT doesn’t necessarily mean you’d do well in law school, if grinding practice tests doesn’t get you a good score on the LSAT, then you probably won’t do well in law school.

(Which is not to say that you couldn’t get into some law school somewhere and pass—University of American Samoa anyone?—just that having got your J.D., you might find it a challenge to pass the bar, and if you do you might find it a challenge to get a job that’s not handling bankruptcies for a storefront practice that advertises in the Pennysaver.)

The test pretty much only tests:

1. Raw reading skill

2. Precision

3. Working memory. (Less of this now that LG are gone)

You've got #1 and #2 covered it sounds like, and presuming you're a programming you're likely also top 10% in working memory, bare minimum.

There's lots of specific stuff you can teach that helps bridge deficits in those three skills, but they're serious bottlenecks if you don't come into LSAT studying already having them.

A lot of people read poorly, aren't precise, and get easily distracted/have low working memory. Including college graduates.

I think the LSAT has lots of overlap, skills-wise, with programming. My undergrad math classes were way more helpful than my political science classes for LSAT prep. But I think the relevant skills are actually (1) pattern recognition; and (when logic games were still a thing) (2) being able to follow rules methodically one-by-one.

A good memory can help on the reading section for sure. But a lot of students get tripped up trying to memorize all the details of long passages, when they should actually zoom out a little more so they can get the gist of the passage, and then use that bigger picture understanding to contextualize the details.

Oh to be clear I meant working memory. As in, if you have a rough idea of the passage in your head, and then you read a question, can you keep that rough idea of the passage in your head while doing the question or does it fall out of your working memory because you haven't got space for both.

Most people have space for 5-7 items at once. So if you're on a the lower end, you need to put more work in specific strategies to optimize. If you have a higher end working memory you can just read and solve and not think of it.

Agreed fellow Gram! When it comes to the LSAT, grinding can work for smart folks who already have the basic reasoning/reading skills they need. But for most students it just leads to frustration and entrenches bad habits. I wrote a bit more about that here, since it's pretty common to see this bad advice on r/lsat: https://lightweightlsat.com/how-to-study/pitfalls/

Great list! Hadn't realized you were also Graeme/Graham

This is great. My tip: don’t spend money on LSAT prep (unless you have no impulse control and can’t learn from a book). Just take practice tests, and when you get an answer wrong, carefully articulate exactly why each of the wrong answers was wrong and the right answer was correct. At least when I took it (17 years ago now) there was always a clearly right answer and three clearly wrong answers. I’ve never seen a single LSAT where that wasn’t the case. During the test you should be able to not only identify the correct answer, but articulate in your head why each other answer is clearly wrong.

Absolutely correct.

Completely agree. Iny experience commercial prep was not of the same quality and the actual LSAT questions and doing actual true historical LSAT practice tests was cheap and effective.

Thanks! And agreed. There is exactly one right answer. And you can learn a lot about the test by figuring out why it was right and the wrong ones are wrong. But I say that with the caveat that it's not "clear" for everyone. I often had students who came up with very convincing but completely incorrect reasons for why they thought the right answer was right.

I was puzzled by the site only talking about two kinds of sections on the LSAT, so did some checking.

In 2024 they dropped the analytic reasoning section. Now it just tests logical reasoning and reading comprehension.

Mixed on this — I personally struggled with logic games, being dyslexic, the diagrams would easily get mixed up. On the other hand, an extra logical reasoning section could really beat the crap out of you mentally. Wonder what people who have taken both versions think?

Funny thing about the logic games. I aced that section and enjoyed them.

A few weeks after the test I was looking at the magazine rack at the grocery store, and saw a magazine called "Dell Logic Puzzles". I took a look inside and it was full of the same kind of logic games as on the LSAT, with 5 different difficulty levels.

From the ads in the magazine it was clear that the target audience for this was old ladies.

I bought it figuring that since I had aced those puzzles on the LSAT (and on all my practice tests beforehand) I'd have no trouble with any of the puzzles in the magazine, but the harder ones might provide some mild amusement.

Man was I wrong. I could barely do the level 1 puzzles.

Haha, I could imagine. The logic games in the LSAT aren’t particularly “hard” as much as they’re just uncommon. You’re kind of just applying procedural rules, like a human calculator. I suppose if you enjoy it as an activity, the LSAT logic games must be like child’s play.

This was because of a lawsuit brought by a blind student. IMO they should let students who are blind, and perhaps dyslexic, have an accommodation that skips this section and grades them just on the remaining sections. Getting rid of the section for everyone seems like an extreme reaction, and may have contributed to the LSAT inflation in recent years.

Don't bother with the writing section. Leave it blank, turn in your test and leave early. The proctor might say you can't do that but you can. Nobody cares about it. No one ever has. It's only there to deflect criticism from LSAC.

That seems like a high risk low reward move. Why not spend 20 minutes writing a basic 5 paragraph essay?

Speaking of these standardised tests, I think it's ridiculous that even for someone like Elon Musk, who read for up to 10 hours a day for most of his of pre college days and learned how to build rockets with the use of books och instruction manuals, only scored 730 on the Math section and 670 on the Verbal section for a total composite score of 1400. The fact that he couldn't get higher score means something is wrong with these tests. They are mirroring a very narrow frequency of aptitude.

> only scored 730 on the Math section and 670 on the Verbal section for a total composite score of 1400.

Those numbers are well above average. Good results. I don't know the context but if he didn't prepare much or at all then those results are quite good.

If you expected him to get a perfect score, your expectations might be too high or there might be some hero worship going on.

Been a very, very long time. But I expect that getting a top score involved being both "smart" (whatever that means exactly) and having done a ton of prep work.

Assuming those are SAT scores, at the time Musk would have taken it those scores would be around 90th percentile for math, 75th for verbal, and 92nd for the overall test. That's pretty good.

> The fact that he couldn't get higher score means something is wrong with these tests.

Does it? As others pointed out, those aren't bad scores. Not the highest scores, but not embarrassing for a better student.

It could be that his claimed reading time is just that, a claim, and not true. Or the material he was reading wasn't challenging in a way that would help with test prep to get him a higher score.

I was going to say, you can study 10 hours a day on topics that you like or find valuable and not cover all the material for the test. I took the SAT as a junior and didn't really study for it, so I hadn't covered some of the math types yet. I still did fine and got into all the colleges I applied to. It really only seems to matter if you want to go to a prestigious school.

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