Customer Reviews

Kaplan LSAT 2010 Edition: Strategies, Practice, and Review

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I've recently written a more detailed review of this book on my LSAT blog, but I briefly wanted to note a few things here:

This book consists of generic advice and 3 Kaplan-written, not LSAC-written, practice tests and explanations (despite the fact that the book's table of contents claims that these are "Real LSAT Practice Tests and Explanations").

One of the biggest problems, however, is that Kaplan reuses much of the advice in this book in its GMAT and GRE books as well. I searched Google Books with several phrases from this book and found search results in over a dozen Kaplan GMAT and GRE books, not just in older editions of its LSAT books, which would be more excusable. Even one of the sample LSAT questions (referred to as a "genuine Logical Reasoning item") has appeared in GMAT and GRE books (it's about a product called SlimDown). This question has probably never appeared on any of these exams.

Another problem with the book - Logic Games included in the beginning (learning) portion of the book, are re-used in the practice tests at the end of the book. It would likely corrupt your practice test scores to have seen the questions before.

Furthermore, many of the practice Logic Games don't even fit to one page. You actually have to flip the page over multiple times if you want to refer to your previous diagrams. Why didn't they make it realistic?

Do not buy.

The fact that the Kaplan book does not purport to have actual LSAT tests for prepping is a BIG REASON not to buy this book. I also found many mistakes in the "3-full length practice tests" which included the answer sheet not matching the explanation (or the logic!), missing explanations, and multiple choice responses without identifiers so that the correct choice could be selected. In retrospect I would only purchase books published through LSAC or that contain actual LSAT tests. It was disconcerting that the LSAC publications I also purchased recommended markedly different test taking strategies than the Kaplan ones. I am going to go with the LSAC guidelines since they make more sense for me. Why go through a middle person when you can use the real deal?

I thought the Kaplan LSAT study guide was helping me... until a week ago I started discovering errors in the practice tests. These mostly consist of disagreement between the correct answers of the answer key versus the answer explanations, but include, as one other reviewer has noted, an instance in which the explained question is completely different than the given question in the test. On the bright side? I realized that I had been making significantly fewer errors than I thought I had been. The downside is I now have no way of knowing how prepared I actually am for the test.

If I had realized this well in advance, I might have had time to switch to a more accurate study guide. Unfortunately, I didn't find these errors until this past weekend, and I'm taking the test tomorrow. Sucks to be me. Hopefully this review will steer you away before you make the same mistake I did.

The only saving grace of the whole situation is that I borrowed the book from the local library, so Kaplan won't be getting any profit off my mistake.

This is not a book to waste money on for deep learning. The "concepts" and approaches to question solutions are really basic and will not teach you anything new, outside of your normal commonsense. The questions also appear too easy, when compared to real LSAC questions which makes me question the overall goal of the book. Also they recycle their own questions!! yes the practice questions in the front also appear in the practice tests in the back! What the heck Kaplan you couldn't come up with additional questions. Lastly, Kaplan, I have noticed uses very similar question structure throughout so many times you can easily guess the answer by simply looking at the word choices or format, which is not the case in with real LSAT questions. I say use this only if you need more practice thinking logically or simply getting more comfortable with the general format for the test. I have been studying now for over 50 hours using powerscore and lsac materials and these products seem much more effective for those who are "on their own" and not taking a prep course. I really feel that powerscore is perfect for those venturing out on their own and who need vast details on how to go about solving problems. Again use Kaplan only for "extra" practice assuming you have extra time to prepare or to boost your ego on down days, since your scores will rock on the EASY practice tests. **I have no idea how Kaplan prep classes are, as I have never taken one, so my criticism is purely based on the publications.

This book is inexcusably poor, riddled with typos and errors. Grievous errors include, but are not limited to, a) the answer key for a practice test listing a different answer than the explanation of correct answers for that same practice test; b) practice test explanations addressing different questions than were actually asked; c) practice test explanations referring to a different number of answer choices than were listed in the practice test; and d) reusing practice test questions in the examples you read through in the chapters, reducing the amount of material you are exposed to. Having also ordered and worked through the Princeton Review's LSAT prep book Cracking the LSAT, 2010 Edition (Graduate School Test Preparation), I can report that that book not only has no such errors, but also gives more useful tips anyway.

When I received this item it was supposed to be in good condition, there were coffee stains throughout the entire book. It looks as if someone spilled an entire pot of coffee on the book.

Bought this book last month, have taken 5 full tests up till now and I'm pretty satisfied! I started off by buying this book before joining Princeton Review just to get a heads up what I was getting myself into; this book really prepared me well! I'm loving it and I would surely recommend it.

An effective tool that will help you prepare for the LSAT. Better to take the regimented classroom course for those who truly want to improve their score.