Slightly More Complicated Than Minesweeper

Comedian Daniel Tosh has a bit in his stand up act poking fun at people who claim they are ‘bad test takers’. He quips:

“Don’t you love it when people in school are like ‘I’m a bad test taker’ — you mean you’re stupid!  Oh you struggle with that part where we find out what you know?  I know, I can totally relate, see, because I’m a brilliant painter minus my god awful brush strokes.”

While it is incredibly tempting to pick apart the flawed logic used by Mr. Tosh in this analogy, I am simply going to disagree with his overall statement; being a poor test taker does not mean you are stupid, nor are standardized tests an exhaustive or conclusive measure of one’s intellect.

There are many among us who are quite sharp yet don’t excel in the realm of standardized test taking. There’s a TON of pressure, and questions are often phrased in a misleading or confusing way.  In the case of the LSAT, the exam writers are constantly setting answer traps to trick you. With all of these obstacles present in most standardized test formats, it is no wonder that many folks simply do not perform well on these exams.

Luckily for you, we at Manhattan Prep have your back.  On September 15th we are debuting our first ever “Reaching Your Standardized Testing Potential” workshop in New York City.  The session will be run by Jen Dziura, owner of two perfect scores on the GRE.  Jen will discuss the various habits and practice routines that can help improve your performance on test day, as well as hack away at some of the intimidating myths surrounding such high stakes exams.

The best part?  It’s totally free to register. Join us and begin learning how you can maximize your standardized testing potential.

Have you noticed that your every day interactions are effected by your LSAT prep? Consider the following example:

Civilian: You’re an hour late, you seem drunk, and you forgot about our date. You !@#$ idiot.

LSAT Student: Darling, in order to draw that conclusion it’s necessary that you assume that I’m not late because I was building up the courage to tell you that I love you. And there is the flaw in your argument – it’s a classic case of concluding a certain explanation when many others would have sufficed.

One byproduct of a healthy dose of LSAT prep is the application of formal logic to one’s every day, non-LSAT-prep-related- life. You may not even realize this is happening at first, but trust me – this is a very real phenomenon and it will drive the people in your life bananas!

Since this is such an important issue – I mean let’s face it, it’s imperative that you preserve what is left of your social life– I have taken it upon myself to diagnose and (attempt to) treat this epidemic afflicting LSAT’ers everywhere.

My official diagnosis is ‘Logic Creep’ (every worthy affliction needs a label). Aside from doubling as the name all of your friends and family are calling you behind your back, it’s short and to the point.

So how can you get yourself to stop analyzing arguments in your personal life in terms of premises, conclusions, supporting principles, and assumptions? My advice is simple: don’t stop!

If you’ve trained your mind to scrutinize the logic of every argument you’re faced with in order to determine what assumptions it relies on and how certain evidence justifies or supports the argument, I’d say you’re heading for success in logical reasoning come test day.

However, if logic creep continues to be a problem in your personal relationships, try hitting them with a dose of their own medicine:

LSAT Student: “Your continued protests of my logical approach to our discourse is going to hinder my progress in getting a great LSAT score and you know how important that is to me. You must not love me!”

We are often asked whether or not we use real LSAT games in our class (the answer is YES! The vast majority of the questions featured in class, homework, and from our books are 100% real LSAT questions!), and the question has been asked so many times that the question now reveals more than the answer itself. Someone, at some point, was teaching the LSAT using fake games, and those students were not happy. Whoever that is/was, shame on you – may your pencils be always dull and your erasers leave annoying streaks on your paper.

But, the truth is that our site does sport a rather large number of fake games. What’s up with that? You thought Manhattan LSAT keeps it real; grade A, pure 100% USDA LSAT beef. We do, I swear, but we do like to dip our toes into the world of synthetic LSAT stimulants for extra practice. There are two big reasons for us having fakes. One is that we want to write games that are harder than the usual ones out there so we can push our students’ brains past their usual limits. But the most important reason we have these games is to hone our teacher’s skills. Every one of our teachers must write a logic game as part of his or her training, along with many other curricular and pedagogical challenges (up to but not including having to walk across a bed of coals while reading aloud a reading comp passage). Read more

We’re going hiking, folks! It’s time to bring some order to the hills of Colorado, and since we don’t have badges or guns, we’ll bring logic. It’s unorthodox, but it doesn’t require special equipment, like chaps.

Noah, our Managing Director, has moved to Denver to escape the NYC summer heat, subject himself to 300+ days of sunshine, and live out his dream of actually needing a 4-wheel drive vehicle. He’s still leading the MLSAT charge and he’s about to start up classes in Boulder. So, for all of you college kids who decided to go to school up there for the skiing but now realize you’d rather not work a chair lift after graduation, head to the first session of the Fall class.

Online study groups were much less effective before the Internet was invented.

A national epidemic occurs every summer. Perfectly well-adjusted and social people become hermitically-sealed misfits as they prepare for the LSAT. Do you know someone who is suffering from this? Symptoms include, but are not limited to loss of friends, demise of love life, lowering of standards of hygiene, mis-categorization of sharpening fifteen #2 pencils as “a fun night.”

If you have a–cough, cough–friend, who is suffering from sololsatlifeitis, we can help. Have your friend join us every Tuesday night (6-8pm ET) for our online self-study group. There you’ll find like-minded geeks who are restoring their link to the human race while inching towards a 170+ score.

If you’d like to join, here are the rules:

1) You have to be using Manhattan LSAT books (we have other groups that are more free-spirited, but this group is trying to avoid wasting time navigating through multiple approaches)

2) Do the assigned HW and be prepared to discuss it.

3) Show up. One of our teachers generally will do so as well to help.

4) Do NOT talk about fight club. [Editors Note: Shouldn’t this be Rule #1?]

If you–I mean your friend–wants to join, create an account on our site if that hasn’t already occurred, e-mail studentservices@manhattanprep.com/lsat/ and get ready to rumble. (Yes, it’s free.)

Please join us as we work to end the suffering of tens of thousands of young American LSAT-geeks.

Like snowflakes of intellectual pain, the hardest LSAT question is different for each and every one of us – it’s up to us to look into our hearts and find the question that is burning a hole through an artery. For me, that was PT45, S1, Q12 – the dioxin question. Oh how we fought, oh how we struggled!

Let me walk you through our relationship.

The conclusion of the argument is that, as opposed to what most people are thinking, dioxin released from a mill does NOT cause fish to have abnormal hormone levels. Why? Two premises are given to support this – and here’s where we had our first fight L: dioxin decomposes quite slowly and when the mill shuts down, the fishy hormone levels quickly return to normal.

At this point, me and question 12 were still on speaking terms, but when I looked at her answer choices, oh the pain! The correct answer – the one that most weakens the argument – states that dioxin actually is washed away pretty quickly from the mill area. Sounds painless enough – until you think about it! How does that weaken that argument? I was lost. Read more

The Law School Admissions Test and jazz. What do the two have in common? Gilad Edelman.

We all knew that Gilad can teach – he’s funny and wickedly smart. But last week, Gilad blew us away by revealing his other talent: the sax. It was dark, it was smoky (well, not really, NYC banned cigarettes – you now have to go to Jersey to smoke), and it was awesome. As one of Gilad’s true fans, I was super excited to see that he can play like a champion, because it’d be really lame for Gilad to try to impress the ladies with his perfect LSAT score. (Remember that initial scene in The Social Network?).

Watch him play and then sign up for his course.

If you want to see me seriously mangle some Bob Dylan tune on the guitar, please privately e-mail me. J

We have exciting news: Manhattan LSAT students now have access to all 63 LSAT PrepTests. Woo-hoo!

What Lucy failed to realize was that the rubik's cube section of the LSAT was experimental

Now that you’ve dried your tears of joy, let’s back up and talk about obsession. If you have OCD-like tendencies, the LSAT is the test for you. Not only is it one of the nit-pickiest tests out there, but the tests are also conveniently numbered and published after each administration. Except – and oh, how we love exceptions – the February exams. So, we now have 63 published LSATs floating about in the world, along with a bunch of odds and ends the LSAC put out. (Here’s a full list.)

Now the question is, should you do all 63 PrepTests? Read more

There's got to be a better way to decide whether or not to retake the LSAT

If you took the LSAT on June 6^th and were less than pleased with the outcome, then consider attending our free online review of the exam next Monday night (7/11) at 8pm EST.  Two of our instructors will be breaking down some of the harder questions from the exam and offering advice on whether or not retaking in October is a good choice for you.

Speaking of ‘the great retake debate’, here are a few questions you should ask yourself as you begin to make your retake considerations:

Read more

Did you put up the numbers you were hoping for?

If you took the June LSAT and didn’t know that the scores were just released, you are a hermit! Go check your e-mail inbox!

For the rest of you non-hermits, if you’d like to review that LSAT with us, we’re holding a free Live Online Workshop on July 11^th, at 8pm ET.

You rocked the LSAT? Awesome – good luck with your applications.

You didn’t rock it? Let’s talk. If you decide to retake, you should know that the average re-taker only does a few points better, so you better dig deep to beat that statistic! Don’t just repeat what you did last time and expect a different result – that’s the definition of insanity. Take a look at our various prep options. And, if you already took a class with someone else (gasp!), we’ve got a discount for “refugees” – folks who took another course and need to get down and dirty with us.

You kind of rocked it? Same advice as above – if you simply go and re-take, you’ll probably score about the same as this time. If you’re going to go for it, go for it. If you’d like to talk through this decision (and no, we don’t try to get everyone to take a class with us!), feel free to give us a call – (646)-254-6480 or shoot us an e-mail at studentservices@manhattanprep.com/lsat/.