LSAT Prep

Should you prepare to take the LSAT? Of course, and in a serious manner if you hope to go to a competitive law school. The real question is how. At AdmissionsDean, we help you answer this question.

As an initial matter, you should understand clearly that you will improve the score you earn on the LSAT by studying in any serious manner. The LSAT is a very structured exam. It always has the same sections, with roughly the same number of questions, testing the same topics in the same manner, for a specified length of time. So, if you just take the time to familiarize yourself with the basics of the LSAT by reading through its rules beforehand, understanding the kinds of questions it contains, and taking one or two of the actual, old LSAT (all old LSATs are available for sale at LSAC, LawBooksForLess, or Amazon), then you will almost certainly score a couple of points higher than if you did nothing to prepare and walked in "cold" on exam day.

If you hope to do better than just score a couple points higher, you're still in luck. You can buy a number of LSAT prep books containing actual exam questions and study exercises. This includes the books the LSAC sells that contain the old LSAT exams they have offered through the years. You can increase your score by several points if you engage in a rigorous self-study program, taking multiple old exams under simulated testing conditions and working through various practice exercises.

Beyond self-study, many third parties will help you (for a fee, of course!) conquer the LSAT. We strongly recommend that you consider one of these third-party methods if you are applying to a competitive law school. Think of LSAT prep providers or independent tutors as law school application insurance: while you've likely experienced considerable success in preparing for and taking exams in lots of different academic settings, you can't afford to score lower than your abilities on this particular exam. After all, at most competitive law schools, your LSAT score counts for anywhere between 40% and 80% of your overall application for admission. That's not a scare statistic. That's just the reality of applying to competitive law schools.

There's a lot of information out there about a lot of different LSAT prep providers, from prep company websites to blogs to discussion board postings. What we found lacking--and what we thought we could offer to you--is an unbiased summary of the main offerings of the Top 5 LSAT prep providers: Kaplan, Testmasters, Princeton Review, PowerScore and Blueprint. Below are several charts summarizing information contained on the websites of these 5 companies about their core LSAT prep services: full-length, instructor-led LSAT courses; weekend, instructor-led courses; live online courses; self-paced online courses; and private, one-on-one tutoring with instructors from these 5 companies. While we do not endorse any particular LSAT prep company's offerings--and we are certainly aware of many other smaller providers and private LSAT tutors who can help you prepare for the LSAT--these 5 companies command the lion's share of the prep market, and Testmasters, Blueprint and PowerScore in particular each have provided significant innovation in the market in the last decade, to the benefit of all LSAT prep customers. We encourage you to review the charts below.

About LSAT Prep Providers

Kaplan

www.kaptest.com | 800.KAP.TEST
Kaplan pioneered test prep in the 1930s and, since then, boasts that it has helped "more than 3 million individuals achieve their educational and career goals through programs ranging from high school and college admissions consulting to graduate school, professional licensing, and English language training." Today, Kaplan has perhaps the most advanced online test prep platform among the Top 5 LSAT providers, as well as more than 180 Kaplan test prep centers worldwide.

The Plusses of Kaplan. Kaplan is big and old, and those aren't necessarily bad things. With bigness and age come unparalleled resources and refined instruction. Kaplan offers just about every conceivable kind of LSAT instruction format (except a weekender course), including a few notable ones not mentioned in the charts above. For example, Kaplan offers a platinum-plated "LSAT Summer Intensive" course where you literally go to LSAT School for 300 hours over a 6-week period at Boston University. Kaplan bills this as the "most intensive LSAT prep experience available--a true immersion course, combining classroom instruction, testing sessions, small group workshops, and one-on-one tutoring." Such all-encompassing LSAT prep comes at a hefty cost of $7,999, or $10,999 including housing at BU.

Kaplan's resources also allow it to offer hundreds of free seminars each year in the form of LSAT Preview Classes, LSAT Practice Tests, and Law School Insider Seminars & Panels. While these free seminars are not-so-subtle ways for Kaplan to build its brand among prospective law students, they also offer free useful services to learn about the LSAT, to take the LSAT, and to learn a little bit about the law school admissions process.

The Minuses of Kaplan. Kaplan is big, and that isn't always a good thing. Kaplan is a multi-billion dollar company that offers tons of products and services outside its LSAT business, so it's fair to say it's not laser-like focused solely on LSAT prep like Blueprint is. Kaplan's bigness also means that its instructors, as a group, have not scored as high on the LSAT as PowerScore's or Testmasters's or Blueprint's. At most, Kaplan guarantees that its instructors for its premier offerings, such as its LSAT Summer Intensive Course and its Hyperlearning courses, scored at a minimum in the 95th percentile, but it does not make such guarantees for other offerings, such as its self-paced, Premium Online course. While a high actual LSAT score does not guarantee that an instructor is a high quality teacher, Kaplan's instructors as a group cannot match the LSAT scores of some of its competitors. In addition, Kaplan usually has among the most expensive LSAT prep offerings.

Testmasters

www.testmasters.net | 800.696.5728
Launched in 1991 solely as a LSAT prep company, TestMasters today is one of the most successful LSAT prep providers and has since expanded into GMAT, GRE, and SAT prep, as well as law school admissions consulting. TestMasters is much, much more than one person, its founder Robin Singh. Yet since its founding in the early 1990s, Singh has remained front and center in its marketing: "We offer students something that other companies do not: LSAT expertise that is unparalleled. Robin Singh, the creator and author of the TestMasters LSAT Course, has achieved a world record twelve perfect scores on the actual LSAT. Since 1991 tens of thousands of TestMasters students have increased their LSAT scores by applying powerful methods and techniques that Robin Singh has developed."

The Plusses of Testmasters. Singh's methods include his pioneering decision to base TestMasters instruction on actual old LSAT questions, rather than simulated ones as competitors Kaplan and Princeton Review were doing when TestMasters first entered the market. As an often insightful Fast Company article about Singh recounted in late 2007, even Testmasters's competitors grudgingly concede that the TestMasters LSAT prep methodology is especially rigorous. TestMasters has married this successful approach to a requirement that all its LSAT instructors score in the 98th percentile or higher on an actual LSAT and that each undergo rigorous training on LSAT prep. (See our interview with a TestMasters instructor for more details.) Plus, TestMasters has licensed all old LSAT test questions from the LSAC and packages them in the full-length course materials its students receive, a practice Kaplan and others have since followed.

The Minuses of Testmasters. While TestMasters today offers a full-length, live instructor course, as well as a weekend LSAT course and private LSAT tutoring, it has not gotten into the online LSAT prep course business. And while its instructors are widely regarded as some of the best and most qualified in the business, TestMasters no longer boasts that its instructors all have scored in the 99th percentile or higher on an actual LSAT, as they did as recently as December 2007 in the Fast Company article. The new king of highest-scoring LSAT instructors is PowerScore (99th percentile), with TestMasters and Blueprint (170 scaled score) close behind.

The Princeton Review

www.princetonreview.com | 800.2Review
Founded in 1981 as a SAT prep company by John Katzman, The Princeton Review has grown in the last 30 years into an international test prep and educational services company that became publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange in 2001. Like Kaplan, The Princeton Review has experienced significant competition from TestMasters and PowerScore in the last 20 years, and The Princeton Review has recently overhauled its LSAT prep materials and methods of instruction, as well as received a $60M investment from Bain Capital Ventures & Prides Capital in 2007. This restructuring led to Katzman's retirement as CEO and a refocusing of the business on test prep, among other ventures. Today, The Princeton Review is second only to Kaplan in the breadth of LSAT prep services and materials it offers prospective law students.

The Plusses of Princeton Review. Like Kaplan, The Princeton Review has decades of LSAT prep experience, and it has soup-to-nuts LSAT prep offerings across the US and worldwide. The Princeton Review boasts LSAT prep courses with multiple formats and, like Kaplan, offers a money-back guarantee if your score does not improve after taking some of its courses, or the ability to re-take some of the courses if you are otherwise not satisfied. In addition, The Princeton Review offers numerous free seminars each year in the form of Strategy Sessions for the LSAT, LSAT Free Practice Tests, Free Hyperlearning LSAT Classes, LSAT and Law School Admissions Forums, LSAT Free Pre-Law Forums and LSAT Debriefs. As with the free Kaplan seminars, these Princeton Review forums can be both helpful resources to learn about taking the LSAT, the law school admissions process and preparing for law school, as well as not-so-subtle ways for The Princeton Review to market its paid services.

The Minuses of Princeton Review. As a publicly traded company offering test prep services and other educational services in many areas outside of the LSAT and law school, The Princeton Review is focused on many things, not just the LSAT. While their recent revamping of their LSAT teaching materials and methodology in the form of Hyperlearning and related offerings is laudable, The Princeton Review guarantees that its LSAT instructors scored at a minimum in the 98th percentile, but only for some LSAT prep offerings like Hyperlearning. This is higher than Kaplan's instructor guarantee, but lower than others, like PowerScore. In addition, The Princeton Review rarely offers the lowest pricing among these 5 competitors.

Powerscore

www.powerscore.com | 800.545.1750
CEO and Founder Dave Killoran launched PowerScore in 1997, after years of experience in test prep. PowerScore boasts that its instructors "make the difference," each scoring at a minimum in the 99th percentile, which is the highest published scoring among the 5 major test prep providers. PowerScore also is the pioneer of "weekender" prep courses that pack an intensive LSAT prep course into a single weekend for last-minute studiers. Today, PowerScore offers test prep for the SAT, GMAT, and the GRE in addition to the LSAT, and it has also ventured into admissions counseling and test prep publications (the most famous being its LSAT Bible books). For the LSAT, PowerScore offers full-length, instructor-led courses, live online courses, and tutoring, in addition to weekender courses.

The Plusses of Powerscore. PowerScore has 3 main plusses. First, PowerScore's instructors as a group are the highest-scoring in the industry. Second, PowerScore's pricing is among the cheapest among the 5 major prep companies. Third, PowerScore's written materials, including its Bible series, are stellar.

The Minuses of Powerscore. Unlike Kaplan and The Princeton Review, PowerScore does not offer a money-back guarantee; the cost to repeat its full-length, instructor-led course is $475, and the cost for the weekender course is $200 if you require new materials (or free if you do not). Plus, like Kaplan and the Princeton Review, PowerScore focuses on many test-prep services other than the LSAT, although PowerScore certainly is smaller than those 2 competitors.

Blueprint

www.blueprintprep.com | 888.4.BP.PREP
The newest innovative entrant into LSAT test prep is Blueprint, founded in 2005. Blueprint claims to "make the LSAT fun, or as fun as a test of logic could ever be," and the early Blueprint buzz is positive. Blueprint is the only major test prep company to focus solely on the LSAT, and their method of instruction is best described as both insightful and irreverent. While Blueprint started offering LSAT test prep in California, it has since expanded to New York City and in 2009 began advertising full-length, live-instruction courses in Massachusetts and Texas as well. In addition, Blueprint offers a self-paced online LSAT prep program and private tutoring.

The Plusses of Blueprint. Blueprint has high-quality instructors, each scoring 170 or better on the LSAT. Blueprint's full-length, live-instructor LSAT prep courses are 100 hours, the longest among the 5 major competitors. Plus, Blueprint alone among the 5 competitors has conducted and published a third-party study of the improvement its students make on the LSAT. Blueprint claims that students of its full-length, live instructor course average a 10-point score increase, based on a first-score to best-score comparison of 4 practice LSATs. And Blueprint's pricing is among the lowest of the 5 major LSAT prep companies.

The Minuses of Blueprint. Blueprint is new and growing fast. And while the buzz on Blueprint is largely positive, it remains to be seen whether their national expansion plans will come at the expense of quality instruction or instructors. Plus, as a smaller company, Blueprint lacks the resources to offer free seminars to prospective law students on a national scale, as Kaplan and The Princeton Review do.