Resources

Tuitions are soaring at U.S. colleges and universities, and short-sighted student loan policies may be partly to blame. This week, Ben and Nathan discuss the latest round of student loan forgiveness, which treats the symptoms of high education costs but won’t fix the problem. The guys also correct a common misconception about “test-optional” admissions. They consider the scholarship chances of applicants with low GPAs. And they advise a listener to pick a new personal statement topic. 3:48 - LSAT Optional No, the LSAT is not “going away” in 2025. Law schools will continue to value the LSAT even if they aren’t required to use it. 15:32 - Low GPA Applicants with low GPAs aren’t locked out of law school. Grade forgiveness may help some. But a high LSAT score is the real key to getting scholarships. 23:24 - GPA and Law School Rankings An anonymous listener considers taking a course pass-fail to avoid hurting their GPA. Nathan and Ben approve. The guys explain why law schools are so invested in their GPA medians: it’s all in the rankings game. 31:40 - $100,000 a Year Some colleges will soon charge $100,000 a year. Ben and Nathan bemoan the unhinged state of tuition hikes and student loans. 39:34 - Personal Statement The guys advise an anonymous listener to avoid a vague personal statement. 43:00 - Graduate School An anonymous listener wants to drop out of grad school but worries about what law schools will think. Nathan and Ben think the choice is clear. 46:38 - Extra Test Attempt Leslie, LSAT Demon’s admissions guru, shares the story of a student who successfully appealed for an extra test attempt. 50:48 - Word of the Week Listener Syd recommends Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day.

Two weeks ago, Ben and Nathan revealed a shadow ban targeting LSAT Demon on Reddit. The sole moderator of the r/LSAT subreddit, Graeme Blake from LSAT Hacks, responded with personal attacks and false accusations of “sockpuppeting.” He then banned LSAT Demon entirely. This week, Nathan and Ben recap the strange saga and question Graeme’s motives for attempting to silence LSAT Demon and its supporters. Later, the guys offer advice to a student who’s missing too many easy questions in Logical Reasoning. Nathan and Ben instruct Lawrence to slow down and avoid making sloppy mistakes. Logic Games are an opportunity, not an obstacle. Ben and Nathan advise an anonymous listener on how to master LG in time for the June LSAT. Listener Lauren has a stellar GPA and LSAT score, yet she was waitlisted at every school in the T14. The guys blame a combination of yield protection and bad luck. They encourage Lauren to write letters of continued interest and to reapply next year. Ben and Nathan invite you to join the waitlist for their law school admissions course. Word of the Week: Inchoate

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Testing accommodations are meant to give students with documented disabilities a fair shot. But recent LSAT scoring data suggests that the current time-and-a-half minimum might not level the playing field—it might give an unfair advantage to people with accommodations. Ben and Nathan discuss the problematic state of LSAT accommodations and what it means for students.  Later, the guys weigh the costs and benefits of taking the test five times. Does it matter to law schools how many times you've taken the LSAT? Your highest LSAT score is all that matters to law schools as it's the only score that law schools report. Then they draft a short character and fitness addendum for another listener. If you need more help writing addendums, contact editor Leslie Blodgett.  Finally, they urge students to avoid the comparison trap. Do what you can control and stop comparing yourself and your circumstances to anyone else.  Word of the Week: Obscurantism

  Update (Mar 25, 2024): Cofounders Ben Olson and Nathan Fox discuss the continued censorship and lack of response from the moderator of r/LSAT, Graeme Blake. While providing flimsy evidence and baseless reasons to continue LSAT Demon’s limitations, the moderator neglected to address the shadow ban. LSAT Demon students have also had popular threads mentioning the shadow ban locked. Users, including the one below, have been banned from r/LSAT and r/lawschooladmissions, which conveniently share the same moderator. LSAT Demon team members, including Ben, Chris, Reggie, and Abigail, have been permanently banned from the subreddit without clear cause. After requesting explanation, no one has received a response.   Update (Mar 19, 2024): Cofounder Ben Olson has addressed some of the discussions happening on Reddit. For a deeper understanding of our perspective, check out LSAT Demon’s Stance. Many of us at LSAT Demon started just like you—on r/LSAT.  Unfortunately, our students haven’t been able to fully contribute to this community for almost a year. Their posts and comments about the Demon are secretly banned. If you search for “Demon,” you won’t find any image posts for the last year. This void started shortly after a moderator posted About those Demon Bots - New Policy. We’ve never used bots. And the two staff members mentioned didn’t mean any harm. Since then, we’ve told every team member to make it clear that they work for LSAT Demon if they decide to post anything. Demon cofounder Ben Olson responded. After that, we let it go. Let Reddit be Reddit. But about a year ago, we sensed that something was wrong after several of our students showed us posts and comments that were later removed or shadow-banned. What Is Shadow-Banning? A shadow-banned post appears normal to the poster but invisible to other users.  Below are some examples of posts that Reddit users have shared with us. Comments mentioning LSAT Demon are visible from the poster’s perspective (left) but hidden from everyone else (right). Here are several more examples: This post is now removed with several shadow-banned comments. This post is removed with shadow-banned comments. This post is removed. This post is removed with shadow-banned comments. This post about 7Sage has a single shadow-banned comment when the poster mentioned LSAT Demon. This post is not removed but has shadow-banned comments. This post is not removed but has shadow-banned comments from users who were not the poster. Attempted Outreach and Next Steps Writing this blog was not our first choice. We contacted r/LSAT moderators 10 months ago through Reddit to figure things out. We later sent emails to members of the moderator team seeking clarification. No response.  We believe that r/LSAT should be an open community where students are free to share their experiences—good or bad—free from secret censorship. Bots and disingenuous posts suck! That’s why we’ve never used them. We hope that the secret ban will end, allowing r/LSAT users to discuss our tools openly. 

When Ben and Nathan say “the LSAT is easy,” it’s not to suggest that LSAT improvement comes effortlessly. This week, the guys elaborate on their motto. The LSAT becomes easy when you do it the Demon way. Later, the guys discuss strategies for negotiating scholarships with schools that claim not to engage in such discussions. Some law schools claim not to negotiate scholarships. But every offer of admission opens the door to negotiation. Asking for more financial support carries no downside. Listener Jess asks how to tackle the fourth passage in Reading Comprehension with limited time on the clock. Ben and Nathan advise her to ignore the clock and to treat the final passage the same as any other. Lauren was offered a stipend to attend WashU, but she’s disappointed by her offers from other top law schools. Ben and Nathan encourage Lauren to reapply next year and not to settle for less than she’s worth. Word of the week: Opprobrium 

Ben and Nathan address a frequently asked question: “Why the name LSAT Demon?” The name’s origin aligns with their belief that every LSAT question can be solved with certainty. Later, the guys critique some shortsighted advice for Logical Reasoning. They also explore strategies for negotiating scholarships, and they discuss a rare exception to their advice not to pay for law school.

I’ve written explanations for thousands of LSAT questions, and I’ve made videos for thousands more. I consider myself extremely fortunate to do so. The test is a fun, easy game if you approach it correctly, and I love helping students see it the way I do. My constant goal is to help students learn the aggressive, offense-first approach that helped me, the rest of the Demon staff, and hundreds of our former students achieve killer scores. One key to this approach is learning to have the proper disrespect for answer choices, 80% of which are bullshit by definition—since only one out of five answers is right, four out of five answers are wrong. Novices give the answer choices far too much respect. Most answers aren’t even close to right—most of them are wrong for multiple reasons. But students read answer A (which is wrong 80% of the time) hoping that it’s right. They come up with all sorts of convoluted reasons why it might be correct. They latch on to two words that they think are good, ignoring the fact that the rest of it is bad. They willfully misinterpret some or all of it, trying to shoehorn it into being right. They add all sorts of implausible and unwarranted assumptions, hoping to force it into correctness. But it’s not correct—like answers B, C, D, and E, answer A is wrong 80% of the time. Students fail to see why it’s wrong because they’re trying so hard to make it right. Then they repeat the process for the remaining four answer choices. It’s unnecessarily time-consuming and even worse—it results in multiple “contenders.” Having two or three “contenders” for each question is the kiss of death. Narrowing it down to three answers is terrible—there are never three good answers. All you’ve done here is get seduced by at least two wrong answers. Even narrowing it down to two answers isn’t nearly as good as you might think. You’ve increased your chances from 20% (one in five) to 50% (one in two). That’s three-tenths of a point of increased expectation. That’s not what we want. We want full points, not partial points. The lightbulb won’t go on for these students until I can convince them to stop trying so hard on behalf of wrong answers. I need them to be active instead of passive. I need them to expect wrong answers to be wrong, then gleefully eliminate each one the instant it stops making sense. To teach students this aggressive approach, I will frequently stop halfway through a wrong answer and say something like, “Huh? What does this even mean? Next” or, “No way—that’s not even what this passage was talking about” or, “Come on now, how could that possibly help this argument?” On the real LSAT, I wouldn’t give this wrong answer a moment’s more thought. The wrong answers are wrong, and often they don’t even make any sense. Terrible answers—and there are tons of them on this test—deserve no better than a cursory dismissal. If my responses sometimes have a bit of stink on them, that’s fine too. It’s intentional! I’m trying to teach you to disrespect the wrong answers. But sometimes, I get pushback along the lines of: Can you please ask the people preparing the answer explanations to not be so obnoxious? Explanations that begin with “Yeah right...” or “What?...” put off students who are genuinely trying to learn. This continued snarky badgering has turned me off to an otherwise wonderful learning tool that is LSAT Demon. I’m sorry you’re offended, but I’m not yelling at you! I’m yelling at the LSAT. Please don’t take it personally. When I drop-kick a wrong answer, I’m trying to teach you to do the same. My “snarky badgering” isn’t directed at you, unless you’re the one who wrote the test. I’m just trying to show you how truly revolting these wrong answers are. Wrong answers are obnoxiously bad. They twist the meanings of the passages under discussion. Or they completely fail to respond to the questions being asked. Or they simply don’t make any sense. Sometimes, all three at once. If you think one of my dismissals is hasty, and the answer merits a more detailed response, we’re happy to give you one. Just use the Ask button, ask a detailed question, and our team of tutors will get back to you within 24 hours. But please don’t take my snark personally. It’s not you—it’s the LSAT. In time, I hope you’ll learn to see the test the way I do. Students who stop giving the wrong answers so much respect are most likely to see dramatic improvements in their scores. “I started expecting the answers to be wrong instead of right” is music to my ears.

Now that anyone who believes in science is vaccinated—or soon will be—the world is re-opening. I don’t know about you, but I’m most excited for movie theaters, restaurants, and art museums. There are some experiences that just can’t be replicated at home. LSAT prep is not one of those things. Not only is online LSAT prep just as good, it’s actually quite a bit better. I’m as surprised about this as you are. I’ve been teaching LSAT since 2007. I’ve taught thousands of students in person in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and across the country. I’ve loved every minute of it. If you would have asked me for my resolution on New Year’s Eve 2020, I might have resolved to continue teaching those in-person classes forever. But the pandemic forced me to move my classes online. And, as a result, student outcomes improved dramatically. My teaching experience did, too, but that’s not what really matters. Scores matter. Scores improve faster online. So I’m never going back. Sure, Ben and I might do a special weekend class in New York just for the laughs. It’s a delight to meet in person and take y’all out for drinks. But lawyering is for serious folk, LSAT prep requires a serious investment of time and energy, and online LSAT prep is more efficient—seriously. That’s why my classes will be online from now on. Here’s what I’ve learned in my 14 months of teaching exclusively online: In-person LSAT classes require an immense waste of time and energy. Students waste an insane amount of time and energy commuting to live LSAT classes. Every minute spent getting there is a minute not spent studying. You’re in the car, you’re in a parking garage, you’re on a bus or train, you’re walking 10 city blocks—hopefully you’re listening to the Thinking LSAT Podcast—but you’re not working on actual LSAT questions. Even once you get to the venue, you’re still not working on actual LSAT questions. You’re finding the classroom or conference room, you’re climbing over other students to find a seat, you’re waiting for everyone to get settled, you’re faking a smile at whatever dumb chit-chat wastes the first few minutes of class time—so far, zero learning has taken place. Then, maybe an hour after class begins and every hour thereafter, people have to pee. Sometimes there’s a break for everyone—the chit-chat resumes, people go get coffee or a snack, everybody queues up for the toilets, and the whole resettling process commences. A “five-minute break” takes fifteen minutes. Even if there’s no formal break, people leave the room and return on their own schedules, causing slight lapses in everyone’s concentration each time. When class is over, everyone treks to their car, bus, or train and wastes even more time getting home. None of this happens online. The “commute” to and from an online class is a matter of a quick tab over to a different screen. There’s no shuffling for seats, no delay in waiting for the room to settle. And once we’re rolling, there are no breaks—when you need to pee, or get a coffee, just turn off your camera and instantly blink out of the room. When you’re ready, turn your camera back on and instantly blink back into the room. When you’re running late, there’s no need to apologize. It makes no difference to anyone else. Just show up when you can. When you have to leave early—peace! There’s no need to wait for a stopping point, and no need to say goodbye—just go. We’ll see you again soon. Minutes saved add up to hours, and hours add up to days. All of this time can be spent doing actual prep work. And even the prep itself is more efficient. Online, there are no bad seats. On Zoom, there’s no getting stuck in the back of the room, struggling to see over a sea of heads. There are no bad side angles, no glare from any classroom windows. Blow up my face on your monitor as big as you dare. Feel free to take screenshots of my logic games setups if you find it helpful. If you’re struggling to hear me, turn up your headphones. If I’m yelling too loudly, feel free to turn me down. If you want to participate, please go ahead and unmute yourself and make a comment or ask a question! When you do, no matter how many people are in the room, your face will jump onto my screen. When you participate I’ll be able to refer to you by name, even at your very first class, because Zoom has built-in nametags. I’ve had students participate in every Zoom class for a month, then tell me that they had always been back-row, no-question students in the real world. Everyone’s in their own safe space online. In person, there were all kinds of human discomforts to be endured. Your neighbor on one side took up too much space; the dude on the other side brought smelly food or chomped loudly on his ice. On Zoom, you’re in your own office or home, enjoying whatever comforts you prefer. In my Brady Bunch view of 25 faces at once, I see students lounging in Aerons, recliners, couches, and patio furniture. I see you making coffee, pouring glasses of wine, and petting a wide variety of pets, children, and partners. Some wear suits and ties, but sweaty workout gear and—especially—pajamas are even more common. Online LSAT class fits seamlessly into your life. I don’t care where you are or how you look. All I care about is what’s happening inside your brain. And the results indicate that a lot is happening there. Zoom’s chat feature vastly improves the learning experience. As it turns out, Zoom’s killer feature for LSAT isn’t the audio or video—it’s the chat. In the live classroom world, students whispering to each other was the bane of my existence. I appreciated that students wanted to help each other, but I could hear them. It distracted me, and it distracted their fellow students. When one person gets helped but the teacher and the rest of the room get distracted, that’s an overall loss for the room. Online, it’s a different story. I was initially surprised, and am continually delighted and humbled, by how helpful LSAT Demon students are to one another in Zoom’s chat. Students, especially those who are new, ask a lot of questions. Higher-level students, who have been with us for a while, are quick to respond with answers and resources in the chat. This happens silently, without any distraction to me or anyone else. The chat can be hidden with a click. Students can participate as much or as little as they want. Need to ask a private question or make a private comment? Cool—you can private message your teacher instantly. In bigger classes, I have TAs tagging along. They can answer questions and share resources in the background while I continue doing my thing on camera. Have a study partner in the room? Awesome. Have whatever private conversations you want while class proceeds. Ultimately you have to figure this stuff out for yourselves, and teaching and learning from your fellow students is one of the best ways to make that happen. Need a link to a recent class or lesson? It’s all in the chat. Want to make a slightly off-topic comment or joke? Sure, we can have a bit of fun—in the chat. Lost, confused, angry about a particular aspect of a question? Let it out in the chat. Your fellow students probably feel the same way, and they offer support and encouragement to one another in every one of our classes. These voices, in the live classroom, were a distraction. Online, they’re a vibrant community of LSAT learners working toward a common goal. Everything is recorded automatically and available 24 hours a day. Something came up and you missed class? No worries—watch it tomorrow. Found a favorite teacher that you wish you started with months ago? Wish they had class more than once or twice a week? For you, they do—you can binge their last three months of recorded classes on demand. Woke up this morning hankering for an advanced reading comprehension class? Need to work on some logic games basics instead? Want to do a timed section or test, then review it with a teacher? It’s all there—just hit play. Online LSAT learning is better, and students are improving faster than ever before. If online didn’t work, Ben and I would go back to in-person classes. But the results from these last 14 months of teaching exclusively online speak for themselves. Ten-point improvements are expected. Fifteen- and even twenty-point improvements are almost mundane. The LSAT Demon community of teachers and students is killing it, online, every day. Whether you’re just starting out, or you’ve been studying for months and need to get out of a rut, I strongly recommend you give online LSAT prep a try. If you’re looking for a date, the bars are re-opening—those will always be in person. If you’re looking for serious LSAT improvement, online is better. And there’s no better place to do it than LSAT Demon.

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