Has anyone taken the Princeton Review prep course in TO?

[chloe]

I'm eating humble pie - thought I could ace by cramming for two weeks - Feb '05 161 yikes (got 172 on the Dec '04 practice)!
It's a joke, this is really going to limit my choices for schools - U. of T. is 165 min, even though I've got an over 80 average and a masters.

So I thought maybe tutoring will boost my self confidence and help me score  170+ which I really, really need now.

Anyone have any thoughts on how Canadian schools would view my writing the LSAT for the second time?

Thank you for your help.

[Jewls]

I took a PR course before writing the October LSAT... Overall, it was just OK.

Starting with the positive: For me, the course was helpful because it forced me to get out of the office (I was working really long hours at 2 different jobs) and to really focus on the LSAT. I also liked that we wrote a full proctored LSAT almost every weekend during the course, which was good practice - especially because similarly to what you found, when I practiced on my own, I got really high scores, but when I actually wrote strictly proctored tests, I tended to score lower. One of the instructors I had that taught the games sections and conducted the 1-on-1 tutorials, was great - he really knew his stuff, was quite good at teaching it, and I learned a lot from him.

Now the negative: You have to be very careful what instructors you get. In my case, the games & tutorials guy was awesome. In contrast, the guy that taught reading comprehension and arguments sections, was quite awful. He obviously knew how to do well on LSAT (otherwise there's no way he would be at the school he's currently attending), but the guy really couldn't teach. Having paid about $1200 for the course, I was not thrilled with having him answer my questions about difficult problems by saying: "...ya, I thought that was a hard question too..." Also, there was a very wide range of abilities and understanding of the material in my class, so it sometimes got frustrating when certain people got stuck on what seemed like really simple problems and held up the entire class over it.

As for whether it helped: Taking the course was good in terms of developing a strategy for approaching the LSAT instead of just going randomly at it as I did when practicing on my own. We also got a ton of practice material that was all taken from real LSAT's. At the same time, when I wrote the LSAT, I only got a 163, whereas by the end of the course I was pretty consistently scoring about 170. I really couldn't tell you though, what went wrong there or whether that was the result of the course or something totally different...

I've heard good things about Kaplan or Power Score prep courses. You might want to look into those before choosing PR, but whatever you do, good luck!

[The Overman]

I have a couple of friends who took the Princeton Review course and also said that it was just OK.  They experienced the same gap in their LSAT scores.  They had much higher scores on the final practice LSATs than they did on their real LSAT.  My guess is that the pressure and stress of writing the real thing has a negative impact on your score.  I'm taking the Kaplan's course this summer so I guess I'll see how that goes. 

[thwarpit]

princeton review sucks ass, stay away!

[TomServo]

I personally still cannot get over the difference in terminology.  Does anyone in Canada say "taking the LSAT", and does anyone in America say "writing the LSAT"?

I wonder what the origin of this particular word usage is.   

[SilverDolt]

I took the PR course, and I wouldn't say it was that helpful. Sure they taught you a few tricks, but some people didn't understand the method that the teacher was trying to explain (and never did end up understanding it). In my opinion the main benefit of the course was that it forced you to get off your butt and study. That's the benefit I got from it. If you're the kind of person who is motivated and can do a lot of studying on their own, I don't think the course is that important. And if you got a 161 without the course (which isn't a bad score by the way, I don't know why you're disappointed with it), then taking a course won't be much help.