Lesson 1: Introduction to the (New) LSAT

[Music] hello there and welcome to the new and improved Insight elsat prep course for the law school admission test my name is Albert and I'm going to be your instructor for the course this new set of eight videos is the updated version of what has become the most watched series of of elsat videos in the world it's true with over a million views the original Insight Prep course has become the most watched elsat preparation series on YouTube now this new series has everything you loved from the originals but I've updated things to reflect some major changes to the test back then the lset was administered in person on pencil and paper it's not how it is anymore plus as many of you know the lset is undergoing a major structural change as of August 2024 the logic game section hated by many beloved by a few is going away the logic game section technically called analytical reasoning was that section that gave you these little scenarios like five Alberts are lining up left to right in a row the Albert with the hat has to stand to the left of the Albert with the mask and the Albert with the guitar has has to be to the right of the Albert with the cat and so on and then you had to make these inferences about all the different ways you could arrange things it was fun I swear but alas it is no more enough about the past though this is a new course for a new test let's talk about how it can help you today the Insight elsat prep course is an 8 video series designed to prepare you for the law school admission test the LSAT or the at for short in this course we'll cover all aspects of the test from the basics what it is and why it matters to the fundamental skills you'll need to practice in order to succeed to timing and test taking strategies that will ensure that you perform at the top of your game on test day as you'll see the course stands alone and serves to provide you with the main toolkit that you'll draw from in your preparation but it also serves as a companion to a new training platform that I'm happy to announce Here For the First Time drawing from everything I learned over the years as a tutor and from my own time preparing for the test I designed what I have dubbed the Insight training platform available at our website Insight els.com the Insight training platform is an exciting new way to prepare for the test it is a streamlined program of videos and exercises along with algorithmically generated personal recommendations that take into account your current skill level and suggest precisely what you need to focus on at any given moment in order to make the biggest gains of course I hope and recommend that you give the Insight training platform a try but I want to stress that this YouTube series can be used with or without it throughout I will provide suggestions for how you can build on the material presented here on your own through self-study and for how you can develop your skills if you're following the new training program on the platform for now let's Dive Right In in this first video we'll start with an introduction to the test and a preview of what you should expect from the rest of the course okay so what is the elet anyway the elsat short for law school admission test is a standardized test that you'll need to take in order to secure admission to a US law school now technically you don't need it at least not anymore in the past pretty much every school required it but in recent years some schools including some of the very best in the country have waved this requirement and they'll accept a gr score instead because this change is relatively new it's still really hard to say whether or not it's wise to give the elsat the snub and frankly right now it looks like a pretty bad idea the vast vast majority of successful law applicants still take the LSAT for example in 2022 only 50 57 of the 564 firste JD students at Harvard got in with the gr at Stanford only 21 of 178 did and at UC Berkeley out of a class of 384 first years only four got in with the gr so while it's not technically required at least at some schools it still seems like a pretty good idea to take the elsat when applying to law school and this isn't just about admissions let's not forget about scholarship money your elsat score will be a major determinant in how much you will have to pay to go to law school where just a few extra points can mean thousands of dollars of debt that you do not need to be in when I took the test I scored 179 and this allowed me to go to NYU Law School for free I also received an offer from the University of Chicago for full tuition Plus 15,00 per year in stiped money yes they offered to pay me to attend of course these were extraordinary results and I was very very fortunate but often a higher elsat score is the pathway to a very auspicious start to a legal career there's a lot that you can do with a law degree but there's a lot less that you can do with a law degree if you graduate with a quarter million dollars of debt to pay back if you take the lset seriously now you will have the freedom to follow your dreams and not just follow the money when you emerge after three grueling years of law school with your newly minted JD in hand the lset is so important for law school admission that it typically counts more than all of the other application elements combined yes I know you spent four years of your life taking dozens of undergraduate classes and participating in extracurriculars and doing internships and yes I know the elsad is a test that takes less than 3 hours to complete but we can't change the facts law schools have a hard time comparing gpas from different undergraduate institutions or between applicants with different Majors the elet on the other hand is standardized it's a quick way of comparing you to thousands of other applicants before they decide whether or not to even look at the rest of your materials it's just the way it is the elsat matters a lot put in the effort now and try to do your best so far we've talked a lot about why the elsat matters now let's talk about the test itself the lset is a digitally administered test which you can take at home or at a testing center it's offered frequently most months of the year but only on specific days and registration closes typically about 6 weeks before test day so you're going to want to stay updated with the latest information about upcoming tests so you can plan ahead the test itself consists of four 35 minute sections each with roughly 25 multiple choice questions with a 10-minute break in the middle now two of these sections will focus on what's called logical reasoning or LR questions in this section sometimes described erroneously as the argument section consist of a small passage usually one to three sentences a question question about that passage and then five answer choices from which you'll have to pick the best one we'll go into a lot more detail about this section in lessons 3 through 5 so just hang tight for now a third section will focus on reading comprehension or RC this time the section will consist of four longer passages with multiple questions for each one there will still be five answer choices for each question though we will cover RC in lessons 6 and 7 generally speaking it's better to work on logical reasoning before reading comprehension because many of the skills that you hone in LR can be applied in RC as well now the fourth section On Any Given LSAT will either be a third LR section or a second RC and it's going to be what's called an experimental section your performance on this section will not count toward your score it's it's just an opportunity for the test creators to experiment with different ways of asking questions like a sort of quality assurance mechanism unfortunately this doesn't mean you can just sort of chill out during your experimental section you know maybe take a nap or something the reason is you won't be told which of your sections it is these four sections make up every test but the order is randomized and the experimental section is not marked so you have to treat every section like it's real and give it your best shot finally there's also an unscored writing section which you take at a separate time up to 8 days before the main exam or afterward it is an additional 35 minute section in which you write a short persuasive essay based on a prompt that will be given to you the elet writing section is kind of a weird part of the test conventional wisdom is that while law schools do receive the essay that you write for this section they don't really care about it it's totally unscored and it seems like its main function is just to demonstrate some minimal ability to write in English we'll cover this section briefly in lesson 8 but you can mostly just forget about it for now ultimately preparing for the writing section will take just a couple of hours of your time a fraction of what you will spend on your overall preparation one more important point there is no penalty for guessing on the lset your responses to questions are either right or wrong an unanswered question is always marked wrong so if you run out of time or you just can't figure out a question simply guess that gives you at least a 20% chance of getting that point speaking of points let's talk about scoring of the roughly 75 to 80 questions that actually count you'll get what's called a raw score this is then conver converted on a test by test basis to your actual score a scaled score which will be between 120 and 180 these scores are standardized such that they allow law schools to compare applicants here's a rough breakdown of the percentiles that the scaled scores correspond to scaled scores are on the left the numbers on the right are percentiles they indicate the percentage of test takers that you'll have done better than if you get the score on the left when beginning your elsat journey it's a good idea to take a look at some of the schools that you might want to attend and see what elsat score you'll need in order to have a good chance at admission some people just want to reach their elsat potential maximize their score and see where they'll be competitive others have a specific school or a set of schools in mind from the very beginning and this allows them to set their target score accordingly generally speaking you're going to want to score score of at least 150 in order to get accepted into one of the top 200 ranked schools in the US within that range here's a breakdown to give you a better sense of things this table gives you a list of law schools and the elet scores for students in the 25th 50th and 75th percentiles of the admitted class although of course the ranges extend a bit lower and a bit higher you should aim to be within this middle range and preferably as high as possible within it to have a good chance of attending the school in question your GPA the second most important part of your application matters here as well a higher GPA can help you if your elsat score is toward the low end of the range while a lower GPA will probably need to be offset by an impressive elsat score as you can see you'll pretty much need to score in the mid to high 160s to have a chance at a school in the top tier typically referred to as the T14 at the highest ranked schools it's going to be tough without breaking 170 if you can score 170 or higher though and this is no small feat you'll have an all right chance at any school in the nation if you're in the high 170s you're competitive pretty much everywhere and serious scholarship money may be offered at any school except for Harvard Yale and Stanford who simply don't give out merit-based Aid if we go down and ranking a bit we enter the range of what are typically considered considered tier 2 law schools according to law school data schools in this tier offer strong employment opportunities though graduates especially near the lower end of the range often have an easier time finding opportunities near the school's geographic location in this tier there's more variety when it comes to elsat score so I've provided some selections to give you a sense of what you'll need the Fuller list is easy to find online if you just search for law school elsat scores but I'll just say for now that scoring in the high 150s or low 160s puts you in the running for at least some tier 2 schools though things are much safer once you're well into the 160s the next 100 or so ranked schools comprise tier three again there's a lot of variety but you're going to want to score at least 150 in order to be competitive here finally the last 50 or so schools ranked by US News and World Report are not actually given individual rankings instead they are grouped together in what is typically considered tier four an elsat score in the high 140s will put you in the running for these schools so far we've talked about what the lset is how it's structured and why it matters for law school admission now let's shift to talking about preparation how should you go about preparing for the elsat the first thing to understand is that the elsat is a self-contained skills test what I mean by this is that it's not really a test of what you know as much as it is a test of what you can do there are Concepts to be learned certainly but the emphasis when it comes to elsat preparation is on practice I cannot stress this enough preparing for this test is a matter of developing certain skills and you need to practice those skills in order to improve them let's compare the elsat for a moment to the MCAT which you would need to take if you as an indecisive overachiever wanted to become a doctor instead of a lawyer here is how the makers of the MCAT describe their test in order to solve these problems students need content from introductory biology chemistry and physics and first semester biochemistry psychology and sociology that's a lot of material before taking the MCAT test takers learn this material through many hours of coursework and studying over years of pouring through textbooks and watching lectures the LSAT is not like this at all there are no facts to regurgitate on the elsat rather you'll have to demonstrate your proficiency with certain skills that are valuable in the legal profession these are first and foremost the ability to parse and understand complex bits of English language and the ability to analyze and evaluate arguments and this makes sense think about what lawyers do they navigate a vast body of law which is written in very precise but very complex language and then they make arguments on behalf of their clients they also try to defeat arguments made by the opposition now is your chance to begin honing these skills skills this is a word we'll be coming back to time and time again even more than in the original videos I have organized the material in this updated series around skill development whenever possible I will not just EXP explain Concepts to you but link them to specific skills that you can develop over time through practice practice practice there are things to learn for the elsat certainly but you can get that basic information more or less from any course or textbook approaches differ no doubt and in this course I will give you my version of things which I have thought about and carefully developed over time but no matter which educational sources you go with learn can only take you so far with the elet and honestly it's not that far I cannot stress enough that you have to practice with nearly a decade of tutoring experience under my belt one of the most common mistakes that I see people make is putting off practice and instead just passively taking in more and more information there is more instructional material out there now than ever before books and videos abound don't drown in them at best you'll waste time exposing yourself to redundant material but more likely you'll just confuse yourself I can't tell you how often I see people spend months reading book after book taking this course and that watching countless hours of videos just to see their scores Plateau or even go down at the end of the day taking the lset is a performance almost like in music or in sports you have to learn the basics sure but then it's all about practice practice feedback slight modification rinse and repeat as a result I have two major pieces of advice for thinking about your preparation as a whole the first is that you should root yourself in real elsat material as presented in previously administered tests these past elsat exams commonly referred to as practice tests prep tests or pts are available in digital format on a platform currently called law Hub advantage and put out there by the test creators the law school admission Council as far as I'm concerned signing up for lawhub is a non-negotiable when it comes to preparing for today's test there you will find all of the previously administered elets think of it as your treasure Trove your body of source material that you can draw from not just when taking practice tests but also when drilling question types and working on sections my second piece of advice is to think of your preparation as progressing along a path moving from learning to practicing you have to start by learning the material on the test this is mostly a matter of understanding some fundamental aspects of logic as it functions on the elsat and how to analyze and evaluate arguments you'll also need to learn about the types of questions that feature on the exam this is especially the case in the LR section where in this course I identify 11 distinct types of questions and provide specific strategies for dealing with each of them finally you need to understand how to read for arguments in the RC section and how the questions in that section relate to the longer passages once you have these Basics you need to practice what you've learned I recommend spending between 3 and 6 months preparing for the elsat you should start practicing in untimed conditions allow yourself to get a feel for things without the pressure of time you'll begin to really apply what you've learned and you'll start to improve eventually you can move to timed work and practice performing Under Pressure you'll Focus Less on learning new strategies and much more on executing them the closer you get to your actual test day the less you're going to want to add new strategies or methods it's exec ution time now rather than trying new stuff make sure you can consistently perform using the tools you've already taken on board of course if you postpone your test or you take it again you can revisit your strategies and try new things but that's a bridge you cross when you get there on the Insight training platform I implement this way of thinking about preparation by separating your work into three stages stage one learn stage two practice and Stage three hone the mix of videos exercises practice tests and sections changes from stage to Stage as does the nature of the algorithm that determines your personal recommendations I hope that those of you who are going through the program on the platform find that this approach balances progression with comprehensiveness you can't prepare forever Time Marches On and the test approaches so you need to stay on track at the same time you want to make sure that your efforts are well spent at each step along the way there's only so much elsat material out there because the number of previously administered tests is limited you're going to want to use your prep time and your prep materials efficiently and this is a matter of making sure you know what stage you're at and what matters most at that stage okay let's begin to wrap up now by summarizing what we talked about today and pre previewing what the rest of the course will look like in summary this is an eight lesson video course for the LSAT the single most important part of a law school application package the elsat is a skills-based exam meaning practice is more important than learning the major skills you'll need to develop involve understanding complex language as well as analyzing and evaluating arguments over the course of your preparation you'll want to move progressively from learning to practice and from untimed work to timed work again total preparation time will vary from Individual to individual depending on a number of personal factors but typically people prepare for between 3 and 6 months and finally this course can be used with or without the Insight training platform which is available at Insight Els set.com and now the plan going forward we're just finishing up lesson one an introdu to the test in lesson two we'll set down an important foundation by learning about elsat logic and arguments this extremely important lesson will introduce you to Core Concepts that matter on both the logical reasoning and reading comprehension sections as well as in law school in your future career in law we'll also do some exercises together in this section so that you can get a feel for things in lesson three we'll begin talking about logical reasoning in more depth I'll make some general comments about the section as a whole and also introduce a major distinction between front-end questions backend questions and questions without arguments we'll then Focus for the remainder of the lesson on front-end questions I discuss each type provide specific strategies for addressing the questions and demonstrate those strategies with examples I'll also provide homework for those of you following the self-study route in Lesson Four we'll move on to backend LR questions I'll discuss each one provide strategies and demonstrate with examples in lesson five we'll deal with three types of questions that don't have arguments I'll discuss provide strategies and give examples in lesson six then we'll move on to the reading comprehension section I'll provide an overview of this section discuss my general approach to improving at it and also talk about some special challenges that people tend to face here we'll spend the rest of the lesson focused on elsat reading skills I'll give you concrete tools for understanding and analyzing the passages and this will prepare you for tackling the questions in a focused efficient manner in lesson seven we'll shift our RC Focus from passages to questions it turns out that there's a lot more to this section than meets the eye there's a bit of a game involved in correctly answering questions where the emphasis is on matching answer choices to very specific bits of text next from the passage almost like you are providing citations once you see the section this way it'll change the way you approach it forever and you can actually make progress on what can be the most frustrating portion of the test for so many people finally in lesson eight we'll Point our gaze outward toward the Horizon looking into the future beyond the content of the course I'll discuss how to deal with time pressure on the exam and also provide other more global test taking strategies that relate to your per performance on the test as a whole this is the lesson where we'll also briefly return to the writing section and I'll give you advice for how to prepare for that I'm looking forward to helping you along this journey my mission with insight has always been to provide highquality elsat instruction in as accessible a way as possible there will be a lot of material going forward and I will try to explain things as clearly as I can I will also take every opportunity to identify specific skills that you can practice going forward we'll take things seriously but not too seriously the road to Elsa glory is a long one and the legal system is a very important consequential part of society but I believe that a little levity goes a long way so let's try to have some fun too congratulations on taking this momentous First Step next up in lesson two we'll Dive Right In with elsat logic and argumentation I'll see you there [Music]

Channel: Insight LSAT

Views: 7,627

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Id: VoHaiGgIWbY

Length: 27min 6sec (1626 seconds)

Published: Mon May 13 2024