October 2010 LSAT – Is it too early to start preparing?
Hello Early Birds!
If spring classes or your work life has left you unprepared for the June LSAT, your eyes are probably affixed to the October LSAT. But then it might feel a bit silly to start studying this far in advance — it’s just a test, right? You may be correct — most people study 3-5 months for the LSAT, so for many, starting in June or July is fine. But, you should go ahead and take a practice LSAT – under timed conditions – to see where you’re at. If you’re aiming for a 170 and you’re below 150, start prepping now. If you’re already in the 160s, enjoy the springtime but dedicate June – September to the final battle!
Even if you’re going to take an LSAT prep class, it might be worth going ahead and buying the LSAT prep books associated with your course and reading them over and doing a bit of practice. What you do NOT want to do is take tons and tons of PrepTests before you’ve learned some strategies. Every year we see tons of unhappy folks on the forums who say “I’ve done all 60 LSATs, now what?!”
If you’re going to study on your own, you should definitely follow the above advice and work in a systematic fashion. Learn some strategies, practice them with sets of questions, do a PrepTest here and there along the way. Then, once you have the basics learned for each question type, start poring on the PrepTests, with in-depth review. Here are some tips on how to review your work. If you’d like to make sure you stay on track, you may want to look into a self-study program.
If you are going to start now, you should also round out your preparation with some good boring reading 🙂 The LSAT (and law school) requires you to read a lot of complex text that you may not find interesting. Go and buy some academic magazines – Smithsonian, American Scientific, Foreign Affairs, etc. Put down Twilight and pick up something that does not involve lots of sexual tension and blood-drenched plot lines.