LSAT score as a freshman

Spanks
Mon, 06 Apr 2009 18:48:34 +0000

So I’m a freshman doing my undergrad right now. Just for kicks I took a practice LSAT that Kaplan was administering. Having seen maybe 4 LSAT questions I took the test and got a 147. This kind of surprised me because I got a 1310 on my SATs with just as little prep, I was expecting some kind of correlation; I was wrong heh. Funny this is, I took the test for fun and now it’s worrying me.



The SAT is knowledge-based, so it’s a reflection of what you learned in high school. The LSAT’s subject matter technically requires no prior knowledge, but understanding the test itself clearly does. You’ve never seen an LSAT before, so you had no idea what you were doing. Your diagnostic score says very little about your potential on the real LSAT with proper preparation.



So my question is, how much will my score increase in 2-3 years without any prep? If at all. I only ask this because I heard that with the SATs your score would increase by about 80 per year. For example, someone scoring a 1500 his/her freshman year could expect a 1660 if he or she were to take the SATs her junior year. Does this apply to the LSAT?



Your LSAT score probably won’t increase much without preparation. Without studying you’re not going to gain an improved understanding of a test that isn’t based on what you’ve learned in college.



With extreme prep and possibly a course, money allowing, how much could one expect an increase?



This varies on an individual basis. With enough preparation there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to get your score into the 160s and possibly the 170s.



Also, a big problem for me was finishing in time. I only get to about 75-80% of the questions. Is this common for most people?



At first time is an issue for most people. If you study enough you should be able to finish each section comfortably on test day.