I recently graduated college in 2010, and have decided that I want to go to Law School.
My major in college was in Agribusiness/marketing (whatever you want to call it). For the past 10 months I have been working a job related to my major, and despite the fact that I am making a decent salary for a first year grad in a tough economy, I am unhappy and want a change.
Initially when I decided to take the LSAT (back in September), I looked at it as lottery ticket. If I did well on the test, "great", if not "oh well.. at least I still have a job". Subsequently, I registered for the February 2011 LSAT.
As time went by, and I become increasingly less content at my job I started to look at the LSAT as more than just a lottery ticket. I purchased both the Logic Games Bible, and the Logical Reasoning Bible. I also purchased two books of practice tests. Unfortunately, despite my investment I never really mastered the LSAT. Although I never took a full test timed, I did practice timed sections. Results:
Logical Reasoning: 15-19 correct was average
Reading Comprehension-13-17 was average
Logic Games- 8-12 was average
As you can see the Logic Games Bible didn't really help me. I'm not exactly sure how Logic Games is a precursor to Law School performance, but nonetheless I am terrible at them.
Yesterday, I took the Feburary 2011 LSAT, and it went as bad as could be imagined.
Section 1-Logical Reasoning: Adrenaline killed me in this section. For me, it is imperative to get minimum 8 out of the first 10 correct in a reasonable amount of time. My nerves really worked against me, I guessed on nearly 7 questions.
Section 2- Reading Comprehension- This was what I considered to be the make or break section for me. The first passage was OK, but the next three did not go well. It must be considered that I never am only able fully read 3/4 reading comprehension passages in the 35 minutes. Thus it is critical that I am able to distinguish which passage is the "difficult" passage. In this case, it was passage 3. If I can go back in time I would have chosen passage four to read fully. Almost 7-10 guesses on this section. A complete bomb...
Section 3- Logical Reasoning- This was the experimental section, and I felt like I aced it
. Basically what LSAC did in this test was switch up location of difficult questions. The easy questions were 10-19, the medium/hard were 1-9, and the last five were challenging.
Break: At this point I was praying to god that I would see another Reading Comprehension passage
Section 4- Logical Reasoning- When I saw this, I was mortified. I knew my suspicion about Section 3 was correct
. I definitely let it effect me for the first few questions of this section. Nonetheless this is the section I actually felt best about, other than the experimental section
Section 5- Logic Games- Wasn't the worst Logic Games section I have ever seen. The first two I worked through a little bit, although I highly doubt I got all of the questions correct. The last two games were pretty much guesses. About 10 guesses on the Games section. Overall I didn't practice Games sections timed enough, and it hurt me.
Overall about 40/101 questions were guesses
Raw Score estimate: 35-40....This will look great next to my stellar 2.7 GPA
So... Finally... Here is my question...
Is there a Tier 4 ABA accredited Law School that could accept me
If so, after reading my analysis, would I better off going to one of those schools, and trying to transfer to a better school after year 1; or re-take the LSAT?
Also note, that I have made enough money to hire a tutor to teach me logic games, and I will promise to take at lest 20 full length practice tests from now until June.
However, the LSAT seems so risky..... I have had friends that consistently scored 160 on practice exams, and then came away with 148 on game day.
At the end of the day, I simply may not be cut out to do well on the LSAT. Just want to know if there are other options towards achieving my goal prior to spending the time and money on this test.
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