Customer Reviews

Kaplan LSAT 180

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

The first time I took the LSAT, I scored in the 74th percentile. The second time I took the LSAT, I scored in the 95th percentile.

My advice to anyone looking to achieve something similar:

1. Buy this book. "Cracking the LSAT", Master the LSAT, and the more basic Kaplan LSAT are books that I had bought the first time around. My opinion is that the strategies that are suggested in these books won't help seperate you from the thousands of other LSAT takers that you're forced to compete with. So what you need to seperate yourself from the crowd are strategies that go beyond everyday, run-of-the-mill LSAT advice. And this book gives that to you in spades. Also very detailed answer explanations that go beyond probably any other on the market.

2. Buy the 10 Real LSATs. Practice until you can do sections in 30 minutes. It's all about speed. If everyone had as much time as they wanted to take the LSAT, perfomance would probably be significantly higher. If you can get into about a 30 minute rhythm per section, you'll be fine. You'll avoid last minute panic on sections, and you'll have time to check over your answers. Personally, I found that the 30 minute rhythm came to me naturally after enough practice. Be prepared to take many practice tests if you want to achieve this. Whatever you do, DO NOT give yourself more than 35 minutes when taking old tests.

3. Examine your wrong answers on old LSATs. Essential if you hope to make any progress. It's really important to see here what other strategy or method could have helped you answer the problem more successfully/quickly.

4. Get plenty of sleep the night before. Eat a good breakfast the morning of the test. Bring a candy bar to eat at the break, if you like chocolate. Don't underestimate the importance of how you feel physically.

In addition, there was much more stress in my life the first time I took the test. I'd be stating the obvious, though, if I suggested that you minimize personal stress in your life.

That's really all there was to it. Good luck.

This book is the latest book by Kaplan that attempts to prepare the masses for LSAT stardom. The book is worth the on-line price but it has some flaws. In an effort to be "hard" it seems to waste time, being so convoluted, that it defeats the purpose of practicing. As someone who has purchased nearly every LSAT book on the market and has taken dozens of practice tests, I can truly say that if you can wade through the swap of LSAT 180 - you can do very well on the exam. But...just as a side note, if I only has 30 bucks to spend on a book I would go with LSAT PreTests and pound away at the real questions.

In training for the LSAT, I used only official preptests sold by LSAC. Many reviewers recommended studying multiple books, like those available by Kaplan or Princeton Review. I have found that Kaplan and other study aides add to the confusion many test takers experience, and Kaplan even admits that its study guides do not help 40% of those who buy the books.

If you want to do well on the LSAT, this is the way to study:

Your first purchase should the 10 More Actual, Official LSAT PrepTests. The PrepTest book will give several of real LSATs to take, though without question analysis. All of the answers are given, but they are not explained. I find this to be a bonus, because I believe that a test taker can learn more from figuring out why the answer is what is, instead of just going by the problematical answers Kaplan gives. Kaplan's answers have a tendency to be too long and lack an accurate answer. It is similar to when a person is talking but they are not really saying anything.

Just getting used to taking the test is the most important part of the preparation process. If you finish all ten tests, get the older 10 Actual, Official LSAT PrepTests.

DO NOT buy Kaplan's LSAT 180. It is full of the toughest questions that KAPLAN could MAKE UP. These questions are so bogus that they lowered everyone in my study group's score: we all had scores over 170 before this book. Some reviewers recommend this book for those with a score of 165+, but I do not think this book will be a use to anyone, no matter how well they have done on past tests. On one page, Kaplan gave two complete different explanations for two questions that were the exact same type of question. Kaplan's answers to MADE UP questions are lacking judgment. Kaplan is simply too lazy to buy official questions.

Also, both www.LSAC.org and Amazon have individual PrepTests available for $8 each. Get the latest tests: these aren't a good buy like the books of ten, but seeing the most up to date material - even if it's just 1 or 2 tests - is worth it. If you are not in a hurry, you can get the tests free of shipping from LSAC, and they have the MOST RECENT tests, while Amazon tends to lack the two most recent tests.

Specifically, get the June 2000 (PrepTest 31) exam. This contains the notorious "CD Game," the second game, which is commonly considered the most complicated LSAT logic game ever.

BUT...

If you REALLY want to, go ahead and pay in the thousands for a LSAT class prep course, like those offered by Kaplan and Princeton Review. I do not suggest doing that, but confidence is essential for acing the LSAT. If you feel that taking an over-priced prep course will boast your self-assurance, feel free to do so.

As the authors would readily admit, LSAT 180 is not a typical test preparation book. There are no full-length practice tests, and the questions are more difficult than average LSAT questions. You should only use LSAT 180 if you have taken plenty of timed practice LSATs (preferably real ones from recent years) and received high scores. The questions in this book are difficult, and they will do little to improve your score or your confidence if you are having trouble with easier questions. Also, you should not use this book if have not yet mastered time allocation on the LSAT. The writers suggest that you can allow "extra" time to solve these problems because they are so difficult, but this could generate bad habits if you are already having trouble finishing sections in the time allowed. Due to the absence of practice tests in this book, you'll have to learn LSAT time management elsewhere.

LSAT 180 could be a useful book for people who have mastered all of the basic LSAT skills, and who want to be confident that they can handle anything that the LSAT can throw at them. I don't think that anybody really NEEDS this book to do well on the LSAT, but it probably won't hurt you as long as you also get plenty of practice elsewhere. It contains types of problems that I had not seen in other test preparation books (such as the "Time Warp" Logic Games, which have not appeared regularly on LSATs for several years, according to this book's authors). Preparing for rare problem types is probably a waste of time for most people, but a perfectionist might sleep easier knowing that he or she has seen everything there is. It can't hurt to do these problems, as long as you maintain a correct sense of perspective about their importance, and they may help improve your logical skills. I would recommend that after you use this book, you take some regular, timed LSATs before the real test just to remind yourself that most problems are not as difficult or time-consuming as those in LSAT 180.

Kaplan offers a "Higher Score Guarantee" for LSAT 180 (at least in the edition I have). If you do not get a higher score or you are otherwise not satisfied, you can return the book with a receipt within 90 days and get your money back (minus sales tax and shipping costs).

Overall

In this book, Kaplan includes the "extra tactics" to obtain an even higher score. Why weren't those tactics included in Kaplan's regular LSAT book? Good question.

Anyhow, this book focuses on some of the rare and difficult LSAT question types and how to do well on those. The book provides a great mental workout, but, since the questions covered are indeed rare, will studying this book necessarily help out your score? Perhaps. You may find the regular LSAT question types easier after hammering away at this book. On the other hand, you may find that you've actually hurt your score by focusing on questions which don't appear much, and neglecting those that do appear often. Hard to say what will happen. It depends on how you learn.

Methods

Good, but you've got to be familiar with Kaplan's methods and terminology, which, if you aren't already, don't take too long to figure out.

User Friendliness

Well-written, easy to follow.

Who Should Buy This Book

Advanced students (those with practice test scores above 165) who have completed at least thirty of the former LSAT exams, have no issues with timing, are at a plateau, and feel that learning a bit more will help them out of their rut. However, if you are at this point, you're probably at your saturation point and it's unlikely that this book will help much. We suggest another approach instead. Find someone who's scoring low ?135 to 150 - and provide free tutoring for them. You'll be likely be amazed at how much teaching the exam will help you understand it and your own test-taking skills better.

...

I began studying for the LSAT in July. On my first practice tests, I was scoring around 160. When I finally took the test in December, I got a 174. This is how I did it.

In preparing for the LSAT, I have used a wide variety of study guides--10 Actual, Official LSAT PrepTests, 10 More Actual Official PrepTests, Kaplan's LSAT 2004, Kaplan's LSAT 180, Princeton Review's Cracking the LSAT 2004, and REA's Best Test Prep. Of all of them, only REA's was bad. As for LSAT 180, it is a unique and valuable study assistant--the questions in here are the toughest LSAT questions you could imagine. Trying to tackle these questions under timed conditions forces your mind to work through the fundamentals of any problem type faster. Thus, when you go back to working on standard questions, you will be able to work more quickly and confidently. However, this should not be the first study guide you look at--if you are still struggling with standard questions, working on much harder ones won't help you out. But if you've been preparing, getting good scores on PrepTests (at least around 165), and you want to take the next step, this is the only book of its kind out there, and it is very effective.

If you want to do well on the LSAT, this is the way to study:

Your first two purchases should be Kaplan's (or Princeton's, if you prefer) most current LSAT guide and 10 More Actual, Official LSAT PrepTests. Kaplan's book will give you a good intro to the test, along with 3 full tests with a detailed analysis for each question. The PrepTest book will give you plenty of real, recently-administered LSATs to take, though without question analysis. Just getting used to taking the test is the most important part of the preparation process, and between the two books, 13 full tests should be plenty.

If, after 4 or 5 tests, you're noticing your scores plateau around 165, and you want to bump them up, get Kaplan's LSAT 180. It is full of the toughest questions that Kaplan's crew could come up with (along with a few nasty ones you might see adapted from real questions on LSAC's PrepTests), and strategies on how to approach them. The regular, yearly guides are a great way to start studying, but they will only take you so far. LSAT 180 can take you the rest of the way, as its name implies. You should be warned beforehand though--these are THE TOUGHEST questions you will find anywhere. If you can handle these, most of the actual test will seem like cake.

If you burn through all of Kaplan's Tests--including the free online one--and all 10 Actual tests (Like I did), you can always get the older 10 Actual, Official LSAT PrepTests. It's still good prep; the only difference is that the tests are older--December '92 is the oldest; September '95 is the most recent. Some minor things have changed: the tests are a little harder, which means a lower raw score here translates into a higher scaled score; the wording of questions is different; and some of the types of logic games that are on the newer tests aren't on these. However, if you've taken all the tests in the more recent book, and you know what to expect to see on the actual test, taking the PrepTests in this book is a good way to keep your practice going.

Also, both LSAC.org and Amazon have individual PrepTests available for $8 apiece. You can get all the most recent tests--sometimes right up to the one most recently administered. These aren't as good a deal as the books of 10, but seeing the most recent material--even if it's just 1 or 2 tests--is worth it. Though I haven't taken it, I've heard that PrepTest 31 (June 2000) has the most difficult Logic Game ever on it... that might be worth checking out. *****UPDATE***** I took PrepTest 31. The CD game was thoroughly underwhelming--I didn't even think it was the hardest game on the test. Maybe that's just me.

Anyway, that's about it. If you want to prepare for the LSAT as thoroughly and effectively as possible, this is the way to do it.

I believe this book -LSAT 180 - paired with numerous actual practice tests is the best route to achieve one's desired level of success on the LSAT.

The difficulty of the problems are higher than the majority material on the test. But by raising the bar to such a high level, the problems on the LSAT were much more approachable. The book provides detailed explanations of the right and wrong answers which was a godsend for such complicated material. By reading the in depth explanations of the correct and wrong answers to a question - I developed a better ability to discern between those pesky ambiguous answers.

The book is also quite witty which helps break the tension during the down time between the practice sets.

I wouldn't rely on this book alone, however. I feel nothing compares to the actual practice tests. LSAT 180 is a perfect complement.You won't be disappointed.

I've used this book for a week, and I've found numerous weak points in this so-called book for advanced students.

The weakest part of the book is that it does not use any real question -- all of the questions in that book are "imagined" by kaplan staff who will never have a chance to write a real question for a real test.

Among all the dissimilarities of three types of questions, LR questions have the most similar materials to the real ones, because kaplan staff did not invent any "new" types of those lr questions. They just changed contents in real questions without ruining the overall logical structures.

Games questions are so ridiculous that you will never have one-millionth chance to see any of SIMILAR ones even if you take the lsat in the rest of your life( let's say 50 times). They are out of scope of real questions.

For reading, they excerpted some philosophy essays or so called plain tough articles from law documents or academic research magazines. They call those articles hard because no layman can possibly understand it without any peripheral assistance. That is totally opposite to LSAC reading principle that you do not need any further assistance to understand the passages. Those passages in the book are not similar to the real ones not only in contents, but also in strutures. They usually do not contain any argumentative elements which prevail in real ones.

I did not raise my practice score after I had finished this book. Instead, I raised my practice score from 165 to 175 after I had gone over all the tests I had done.

Therefore, I think if you really wanna achieve a high-170's in the real one, you should focus on real tests only. Kaplan will waste time of any high-score achiever.

The book gets an E for effort, but the questions are lacking in flavor from what you'll see on an actual LSAT.

For example, in many of the questions in the games section, you can solve the entire question by appealing to only one of the rules of the game. This is a rarity on the LSAT, and certainly doesn't make for a particularly hard quetion. Much more often, you'll have to combine several clues, and the complexity of the deduction is what makes for a hard question.

Another example -- In the arguments sections, a key feature on the LSAT is the verbatim repeating of several key phrases from the passages to the answer questions -- it is this key rephrasing that greatly helps in choosing the right answer among several answer choices that appear to be of similar quality. This book is, in some cases, much looser with how it repeats phrases, which loses the LSAT flavor, and also makes the arguments questions hard, but not for the same reason that the hard LSAT questions are hard.

The techniques given in the book are all valid, but on the other hand, they're not earth-shattering, and the likely audience of the book (those that would already score at least in the mid 160s or higher) probably already have a good grasp of them.

This book, therefore, probably won't get you from the 165-170 range to the near-180 range. You're better off getting one of the Official LSAT books with explanations (these are good because it gives you insight into how the test-makers think) -- or Kaplan's 2 LSAT's explained. Even though a top-flight test taker won't miss more than a dozen or so questions in the first place (thus limiting the set of explanations that actually would tell you something you didn't already know in the first place), it gives you a set of explanations for the tough questions from which you can derive tactics for getting these quesitons right on test day.

The best prep for the LSAT is to take actual tests and examine your mistakes - for example, 10 Actual, Official LSAT PrepTests and 10 More Actual, Official LSAT PrepTests (Lsat Series). This book from Kaplan is a nice addition, although it's not required.

The questions in this book are not the official questions, and most are far harder than anything you'll see on the LSAT. However, the value in this book isn't getting realistic questions. The value is training yourself to think like the test-makers want you to think. Think of this as high-altitude training. You get your mind ready for the types of questions you'll see on the LSAT, and you do that under tougher conditions than you'll see on the real thing.

Don't rely solely on this book - the core of your prep should be real test questions. But it's worth spending some money for some variety on a book designed for people shooting for the very highest scores.